I…..am at loss for words. Like, how is it possible that The King: Eternal Monarch is written by Kim Eun Sook. I have watched EVERY SINGLE drama she has written and I’m not even talking about her recent year trendy hits like Goblin, Descendants of the Sun, Heirs and Secret Garden. She wrote my all time favorite K-drama City Hall, and I loved loved loved On Air (sniffles Park Yong Ha!). On Air is one of her most underrated K-dramas and probably her most personal, Song Yoon Ah played basically Kim Eun Sook as a fictional drama screenwriter and now I’m wondering if the real Kim Eun Sook has that many young screenwriters doing her heavy lifting that once they left she’s churning out superficial, disjointed, and emotionally devoid drama like The King which remains totally flat in delivery in episode 5.

Episode 5 could and should change the course of the drama, it brought female lead Jung Tae Eul to the Kingdom of Korea and removed all reasons for her blustery disbelief. And yet we spend an entire episode of her still insisting none of what she is experiencing is true in the most annoying ways (aiming a gun at the King, wandering around Seoul asking cops if they remember her, and calling to ask stupid questions), I have never wanted to bitch slap a female lead this much, and also double up with the same slap to the one-dimensional second female lead. Sure Kim Go Eun is acting like she’s never ever acted before (she sucks here) but her character is fundamentally the bigger problem. Lee Min Ho is fine, he’s just a beautiful King and that’s all he is and that should be enough normally other than there is nothing else or no one else to like in this drama so if all we have is a blank sheet then it’s even glaring that there is nothing here. It’s like the Emperor has no Clothes and the ratings drop to 7.6% and 8.6% on SBS reflect what the South Korean viewers think as well.