MY DEAREST EPISODE 11. Since DB is probably going to give us an Ep. 11-12 recap, I’ll post my Ep. 11 thoughts while they are still raw and wriggling. Beware plenty of *spoilers* below.



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    1) I’ve never felt the hand of the writer so strongly as now. Maybe I’m out of practice submitting to writers since I’ve been away from kdramas for months, but it feels like there is some powerful hand moving the players, guiding their sometimes-erratic decisions, throwing them into rather forced situations, all for the sake of making the characters and the viewers suffer. I am not sure if this is good storytelling to be honest.
    2) To give an example: Gil Chae happens to catch the eye of the Qing enjoy in Joseon and somehow, he gets the brilliant idea of taking a married woman of noble status captive. Just her, mind you.
    3) To give another example: THAT KISSS! I understood why she left him at the end of Part 1, but that is just so bitter to watch in hindsight and makes her decision seem cruel.
    4) Her father, a convenient plot device to keep her in Joseon, has now disappeared. Must we infer that he has passed away? Why is her sister in this drama again?
    5) The break between Part 1 and Part 2 somehow lost me regarding the timeline.
    6) What exactly is this drama trying to do with my boy Crown Prince Sohyeon? I’ll give the drama a few episodes, but portraying him first as a sheltered peacock and now sheltered hostage isn’t working in his favor.
    7) Injo’s increasingly cray cray behavior is interesting though. It’s like him and I are losing it together.
    8) One good thing to be said is that I did not once think about Gone With The Wind during this episode. Truth be told I hated the constant comparisons and could not quite come to terms with the writer’s own admission that she was “inspired” by GWTW. I can’t fight the writer though, which is making this a rather stressful watch.
    9) It seems Jang Hyun will risk his life and fortune for anyone he has ever met, however briefly, but he could not take responsibility for Gil Chae (i.e.: marry her) and thus lost her. He’s paying for it now but trying to move on. Gil Chae chose a loveless marriage and mainly thinks about becoming rich. She chose her fate and accepted its pros and cons. I dunno… I feel like the writer is just forcing them to be together at this point. Couldn’t they have met again through trade networks, or escaping refugees, or even the shoe industry?
    10) Click on the GIF above to see my current opinion of writernim and my own resigned state.

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      I think the GWTW parallel universe should be over.
      Rhett is a multi millionaire from war profiteering and he and Scarlett live as such. Scarlett still had Ashley Wilkes on the brain , which Rhett threatens to squeeze out her skull .
      I really don’t think writer can or should try to portray a Joseon equivalent of the life style of the ultra rich and miserable.

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      I must say, I was a little disappointed watching the first episode of the second part. I particularly agree with the example of Gil-chae you referenced in your second point. Their reunion should have been written more organically. Hopefully, things will improve.

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      1. I had difficulty staying awake while watching this episode in the middle of the day. That never happens in the first part of the show. I’d watch the raw version and then subs from Kokoa and viki. I think I just lost that love and feeling for the romance. It’s messy and forced for the sake of more suffering. It’s like twisting that knife until it breaks.

      2. Gil Chae is going to make an example of how married women suffered in captivity and like damaged goods for their husbands when returning home. That’s why the writer thinks it’s a good idea to copy-paste Scarlet’s marriage life into a Joseon show.

      I’m glad not to be obsessed with this show anymore. Lol
      BRB.

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      💯💯💯

      I struggled to get through it, especially the first half. The second half was a tad more entertaining just because the escaped slaves thing added a bit of stakes but ultimately that also was superfluous and poorly set up, so it was cheap entertainment:

      I can handle angst and pining but not at the expense of dumb writing, which this is clearly has maintained over the break and is in a rut of.
      So I’m just not really feeling the separation angst; his pining, RE crying, and found her staring at the Moon after her wedding night to be tasteless and hardly romantic.

      The background of the boys stealing slaves from under the noses of the Qing previoualt should’ve been established in prior epsiodes and especially before they did what they did in 10 with Ryang Eum’s character. He can’t be truly sympathetic as a half Wing ex slave when you’ve constantly only focused on his petty ruinous jealousy and one sided crush instead of his and JH’s backstory.

      Then the slavery sub plot is revelaed to only serve as background morbidity to get Gil Chae to Qing and foreshadow what is to come, rather than having a place in the story or history itself.
      Additionally for which she didn’t need to be married to SL guy in the first place, or for him to even exist.
      So that whole arc of episodes 9 and 10 still didn’t need to happen either, and only exists to drag out the angst to torture the characters and the characters [repeating you here but you echoed my already written notes word for word lol].
      The only reason I can see her being married for is as @Kiara also points out [we’re all parrots lol] to drive home and capitalise on the spoiled women angle, and put Gil Chae through it even more, which is both really trashy, but also is contrived because there’s no *internal* story reason or historical background for this to happen, unlike the first half which made sure its stakes, plot and therefore its tension were based in something and paralleling something and so the heaviness of the subject matter was more enjoyable and also more justified.
      Not saying this^ didn’t happen at all in history, it did, but the story now feels cut up and disjointed rather than everything flowing and being connected and making sense and the writing using all the parts and locking them altogether to tell the story.
      They missed their opportunity for getting GC to Qing in a way that felt right, and did this instead.

      Ofc now I’m even more mad about 9 and 10.

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        And I found some of the actions of JH and GC to be a bit OOCm GC has proven that she’d do anything to survive herself in the past, but I felt her diatribe at her worker to be off. She went to desperate measures on the island to escape with her and the girls, and this was a terrible decision to make (one that, along with the dead Mongol I think should still be haunting her), but the way the slave conversation was handled didn’t feel as justified as that hard decision on the beach, and there was no set up for why she might be acting, that we might draw from the show itself. Like okay yeah she doesn’t want to be sent to Wing either. But this is GC. She’s savvy and cunning. I feel like her figuring out a way to defend the worker as well as his grandson and get them both out and her name clear, without just name dropping her husband, would’ve been more in character.
        And, if she’s become complacent in her marriage and status, then SHOW that.

        Additionally, it’s not completely untoward, and I’d like to think it’s just a moment of good character development, but JH of part 1 basically only ever did things because of GC, those associated to GC, and only very occasionally RE and other exceptions.

        If his motivations have changed, we need to see how and why.
        He can’t be wanting to die at the start of 11, and then we flashback to actually, he saved a bajilion slaves last half, you just didn’t see it, but all that time he was also neglecting GC and never sent her word of any kind, and was still anti commitment (whilst risking his life not just for himself in Qing but apparently 100s of slaves… cos that adds up…)
        He can’t be wanting to die, lost all motivation and will, and justifiably so with how you set up his character (a bitter cynic btw, who has 1 joy in life…) and what we know before this, at the start of 11 and then being the benevolent Robin Hood and greeting all his friends equally and with equal grace.

        Either put something in there that justifies this writing decision, and shows the many facets of Jang Hyun PROPERLY… Or I’m going to put your jumping jack character writing in time out also.

        It’s not impossible! We know he cares more about the people than his king or politics.
        We know he avenged the old couple. The exceptions and his cloaked backstory would be good start!

        But for crying out loud, make it make sense.

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        @sic
        Can you post your comments again when the recap comes out?

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    I agree with you. I have not watched Episode 12 yet, but Episode 11 felt more like a set up. I am still morbidly curious about how the characters will get out of the terrible situation they are in.

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