Hwarang (2016)

Third rewatch - perceptions change.

Well, I've been holding this back for a while.
The first time I watched this I was early in my Kdrama immersion and I loved it. Lots of eye candy and many quite engaging characters, some of whom I hated, some of whom I whole-heartedly rooted for. I found the acting for the most part excellent and enjoyed the simple but at times sad plot lines as well as the horrid and toxic manipulations of the powerful. Even that first viewing made me feel that most of the problem I had with this drama was centred in the tragic miscasting of the female lead. More later.
The second viewing was less satisfying but still engaging. This time the FL was even more misplaced, but I thought that the writing of her part and possibly the way she was directed sadly affected how she portrayed her character. One-dimensional, pathetic and gurny.
In this, my third viewing I find that Go Ara's role rendered it all almost unwatchable.
Please don't misconstrue this - GAR has been excellent in other roles I have seen her in, so I don't altogether blame her. She is a very skilled actress - when properly cast and directed
However I always felt that in this drama her acting was lamentably one-dimensional: she is always to some extent angry or scared or worried. Her method for conveying all these different states is centred on what I called "grumpy chin". It's almost laughable - even when she is experiencing the first stirrings of confused romantic love, she is Miss Grumpy Chin. Sometimes her chin calms down and is almost normal, but if so then her forehead becomes loomy.
Now, I think there is good reason for her character to be worried, vulnerable, scared, given her station in life, but even in the early stages of the drama when she plays a young woman about town making an unexpected success and good money by telling romantic stories for small crowds, she conveys every excitement of those romantic tales with her grumpy chin or sour forehead. When she drinks the wages that she is owed, she conveys her "relaxation" by means of her grumpy chin. Even in those warmer lighter moments with her best pal, she is Miss Grumpy Chin. She is a gifted if partially trained doctor having learned by watching her father, but invariably her interactions with every patient is dominated by Grumpy Chin and perhaps Loomy Eyebrows as well.
The character she plays - a young unmarried daughter of a one-time aristocrat - should have been married off by the age of perhaps even 13, certainly by 16, but most of her styling convinces me she is in her late 20s or even mid 30s. In fact all the young male characters should be in their late teens or early 20s and they also look much older - late 20s/ or 30s. Sadly GAR looks about twice the age she should be, and that's how she behaves too. In addition, the acting has none of the charm the character should have and mostly none of the spirit.
She spends elaborate amounts of time dawdling around being grumpy, or actively whining and weeping - she is transformed from a girl with agency and creativity to a wet rag. These more attractive characteristics do emerge later but only ever very briefly. Most of the time they are invisible, dominated by a passivity and that ever-present grump.
For me, one result is that, with the best will in the world, I fail to find any chemistry between her and the ML or 2ML. I find that deeply annoying, and a huge wasted opportunity : two of the most beautiful males on the planet, both doing a damn fine job of being sexy with a sword or a horse, and demonstrably trying to fall for her, but nearly every interaction is ...limp. Even in the context of conservative Korean standards, this is pathetic.
This is a drama sadly let down by poor directing and the pathetic miscasting of the monochrome and miserable role of A-Ro.
There are other flaws, of course, other reviewers have responded to those, and up to a point I agree at least with some of those. However, all of those weaknesses have been bearable. None has made the drama as nearly unwatchable as has poor old (and old is the right word for it) A-Ro, as caricatured by Go Ara.
My Stars/Scores are awarded mostly for every other actor or aspect of this drama - if I focussed only on the real issue here, I'd only find 2 stars at most.
Clearly she was doing what the writer/director wanted from the role. They should be shot by one of the used arrows that they wasted on Dog Bird,

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