Sword and Flower: Episode 2

by HeadsNo2

The bizarre quotient of the first episode thankfully takes a back seat this hour, though there are moments where it can’t help but chime in with the drama equivalent of an “Are we there yet?” (Me: “Don’t make me turn this recap around!”) So we get an episode that we should’ve just opened the show with, minus most of the drawn-out moments that kind of killed the last one for a bunch of us. More importantly, the music is less obtrusive and the story gets to breathe a little.

Warts and all, I don’t have it in me to pass up a drama from PD Kim Yong-soo, so I’ll be enlisting the help of Dramabeans (and none from the fourth dimension, screw that guy) so that we can cover Shark and Sword simultaneously. Crazy? Probably. Worth it? Hopefully.

 
SONG OF THE DAY

The Evpatoria Report – “C.C.S. Logbook” [ Download ]

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EPISODE 2 RECAP

Once Mu-young affirms her trust in Choong, she takes her place a small distance away and puts an apple atop her head for him to shoot. While blindfolded, no less.

Choong takes aim, shoots… and misses? He misses the second arrow too, by a wide berth. The crowd erupts in cheers, and Mu-young smiles proudly as Choong takes off his blindfold to catch her gaze.

Then it’s time for the second round. As he’s blindfolded again, the sounds from the crowd instantly die out. Mu-young clenches her eyes shut as more arrows land near her head. Am I missing the point of this game, or is Choong just really bad at it?

He gets it on the fifth try, at least. Mu-young smiles again and searches his gaze for some kind of reaction, but Choong just struts away.

She follows with the coin she earned from the game, and attempts to strike up a conversation with him by offering the money to him instead. He refuses—a promise is a promise—and attempts to end it there.

You can tell Mu-young just wants to keep talking to her intriguing stranger, so she tries to ask why he’s not putting his considerable talents to good use.

“Good use?” Choong asks, slightly amused. She stutters out that he could be.. um… a palace guard! He doesn’t say a word, but it seems as though he’s trying not to smile.

He stalks off, but after a few paces he stops to look back while she does the same. When their gazes meet, she gives a little nod and a bright smile.

There’s a public announcement that the palace is recruiting guards, and that anyone can try out regardless of station. Choong watches from the crowd, and his companion chirps, “Can a slave try out, too?” It’s like he’s asking the question for Choong.

Choong considers the offer as he flashes back to his brief, masked standoff with Mu-young after he killed her hostage. He heard her cousin call her “princess” then, so he’s been aware of her identity this whole time.

King Young-ryu announces his plan to send the Crown Prince to Tang in order to avoid a war over an alleged battle they may or may not have started, which his council fiercely argues against. They’d rather fight.

The princess’ cousin/bodyguard, Jang, is running the selection process for palace guards, as he announces to a group of nearly fifty men that only one of them will be chosen in the end.

Mu-young peeps into proceedings to spot Choong in the group of recruits, and grins from ear to ear.

The king’s council argues back and forth about whether to instigate all-out war with Tang, with General Yeon remaining silent even when the focus returns to ousting their supposedly weak chief minister.

Their words don’t change the king’s mind about sending the Crown Prince as part of a delegation to prevent war, but he does admit that he’s only doing so in order to buy time. War with Tang is inevitable.

Cut to: Choong and some other recruits in a prison, as Jang declares that any prisoner who defeats them may go free. Likewise, any recruit who lives gets to go to the next round. Good times.

The king announces that the best course of preparation for war is to finish constructing a wall between their borders, and that General Yeon would be perfect for the job. Is this his way to get Yeon out of his hairpiece?

General Yeon finally speaks up to remind the king that this isn’t a decision he can make on his own—he’ll have to defer to his councilmen first.

In another quick cut, we see the prison in chaos as the prisoners are released to fight the recruits.

All two of the king’s supporters fret that if they don’t protect their chief minister, General Yeon and his supporters will oust him and use their newfound control to start a war with Tang. They want to hurry to appoint the Crown Prince as part of the delegation in order to assert his power.

General Yeon’s supporters fret about the same thing, but from their standpoint—they know the king wants to send Yeon to the wall in order to get rid of him, so they want to get rid of the king’s chief minister to appoint someone more sympathetic to their cause.

To all this, a sleepy General Yeon yawns, “If that’s what it takes to keep Goguryeo standing.” So… yes?

Having made it through the prison battle royale with a flesh wound, Choong faces the last test that stands between him and the position of a royal bodyguard—which is basically the Goguryeo version of a triathlon (or a typical episode of Running Man).

Mu-young watches from a distance as Choong races his fellow recruits up the mountain. As his arm starts bleeding and the climb gets tougher, he flashes back to a memory of his mother as she urged him to rise above his slave-born status to become something more.

That’s his impetus to keep pushing forward, even when one of the recruits knocks him down in order to get ahead. It’s short-lived, since they’re soon all standing at the edge of a steep gorge with ropes dangling down from the other side.

Choong is the first to leap across, managing to barely grab onto one of the ropes as he begins his climb to safety. The other recruits follow, and the same one that pushed him earlier plays dirty again by grabbing Choong’s ankles to pull him down.

But Choong perseveres, and is the first one to shoot his color-coded arrow back to Jang to prove he’s in the lead. He stays in the lead for the swimming portion, but he suddenly loses consciousness after he dives underneath and starts to drown.

A savior dives into the water in the form of Mu-young, who grabs hold of him and swims toward the flag. It’s because of her hoisting it out of the water that Choong is declared the winner. So she saved him and won the competition for him? I can get behind that. (What happened to the other guys, though?)

Mu-young manages to drag a still-unconscious Choong to shore, and that’s where her chariot-savior Shi-woo finds her looking oddly dry.

He asks if she has feelings for Choong, since her going to such lengths to save him doesn’t make sense otherwise. “If feeling pity for him, being worried about him, and wanting to help him means having feelings for him… then yes, I do,” Mu-young replies.

Shi-woo tries the but-you-don’t-know-him argument, which she brushes off by saying that the heart sometimes rules over the head. She adds in a rationale though, in that she’d like to have Choong and his martial arts skills at her disposal.

Sad Trumpet wakes Choong up, and we see him looking obstinate later as his friend argues that even though he didn’t technically finish the race on his own, who’s to say otherwise?

Then Mu-young finds out that Choong said otherwise, since he gave up his win.

Hah, but Mu-young isn’t the type to give up easily—as Choong takes a boat to it-likely-won’t-matterville, she gallops across the shore to catch up to him. I love how his friend’s all, The hell is going on?

It’s only once they’re alone on a beach that Mu-young asks him why he gave up his winnings. Choong’s reply is a straightforward one—it’s because he didn’t win on his own. Mu-young’s a little taken aback. Has he never done anything dishonest?

“I know very well what you have done for me,” Choong says. “However, I cannot accept it. I tried to take advantage of your feelings.”

Mu-young doesn’t understand, sure that he wouldn’t have done this if he knew about her feelings. Then she has a moment of epiphany: “You only care about your own feelings. If I were you, I would have considered the feelings of the person that showed me kindness.” Aww, Choong, look what you did. Now she’s sad.

The king meets with his council again under more informal circumstances, to discuss—wait for it—war with Tang. Only this time, there’s been a scuffle over some pillaging that someone on their side committed against Tang. Curious.

King Young-ryu then dismisses everyone but the chief minister and doesn’t mince words when he tells him that everyone wants him gone. It doesn’t seem like the king is willing to let him go so easily, though.

The chief minister has plans of his own, as he sends assassins that night to kill General Yeon. But a noose suddenly drops around the chief minister’s neck and hoists him up to hang from the rafters—so General Yeon made his move against him at the same time.

Yeon’s play is the only one that works, since the chief minister’s assassins are dispatched easily. Not by Yeon, of course. He’s too busy looking cool.

Everyone discusses their political plots and worries at the chief minister’s funeral the next day, but the schism is a simple one between General Yeon’s supporters and the king’s. Aside from wanting to elect a new chief minister that works for them, Yeon’s supporters want to bring over a notoriously neutral general YANG MOON to their side.

The chief minister’s daughter throws flowers at General Yeon, perhaps knowing that he was behind her father’s death. It starts a squabble between the parties that’s only broken up when the king and his retinue arrive to pay their respects to the late minister and his family.

The king announces that they must elect a new chief minister immediately, and we flash back to the discussion he had over this with his family. Jang assured him that as long as they had General Yang on their side, they would win.

But General Yang has been refusing company, leaving the king without a chance to convince him. Mu-young steps up to this task, and sneaks into General Yang’s home while he’s unaware to ask him for help.

General Yang hasn’t thrown his support behind the king because he broke his trust by cooperating with General Yeon to name the crown prince as successor, leading Mu-young to actually have an honest debate with him. She argues that his disappointment in her father doesn’t merit his joining hands with the man (General Yeon) guaranteed to drive their country to war. Go her.

Choong waits for her outside, and a flashback reveals why: He’d realized that it was insolent of him to refuse Mu-young’s kindness, so he returned to the palace to be instated as her personal bodyguard. Now he’s just doing his job.

Mu-young discusses her father’s concerns with Choong, who notes that she’s pretty interested in affairs of the state. To her, it’s more about family than anything—doesn’t he have a family?

He admits that while he does have a father, because they’re not family it’s the same as not having one. Mu-young has no idea who his father is and unfortunately segues the conversation into a discussion about General Yeon and how she hates him because of the disorder he brings to the nation.

“For Goguryeo to be at peace, General Yeon must perish,” she says. Which, eeeek. That’s his DAD you’re talking about.

She totally misinterprets Choong’s worried face and adds with a smile, “Don’t worry. His Majesty will take care of General Yeon.” Ack! Ixnay on the political talk, Mu-young.

General Yeon pays a visit to General Yang that night to convince him over, but he’s refused at the door and stoically visits another councilman instead.

Election day. To describe the scene as very pretty would be an understatement, as ministers in jewel tones file in to the stark grey meeting room accented with sparse red furniture. What’s essentially a giant wooden scale is hauled into their midst. Oh, cool. This is literally a case where one’s vote could tip the scales.

The scale is split evenly—one side for the king’s supporters, one side for General Yeon’s.

The king is in his quarters with a giant calligraphy brush and a sheet of paper so large it almost engulfs his whole floor. Then he sets to painting a Hanja character, which requires him to use his whole body to move the brush. Okay, this is actually pretty awesome.

All the nameplates we saw the ministers bringing into the meeting hall are now used as weights for the scale, so casting a vote meant adding your weight to whichever side you chose.

The scales look basically even as the last votes fall to General Yang and his men, and there’s no telling whether he was sufficiently convinced by Mu-young or whether he’ll give the vote to General Yeon.

Everyone waits. The king hesitates slightly before finishing the last of his calligraphy, while Mu-young sends Choong to the meeting hall.

The air is tense as General Yang slowly approaches the scale. The moment is certainly drawn out for tension before he finally places his nameplate on the king’s side, which erupts in cheers.

But the moment he turns his back, all his men cast their votes for General Yeon. Agh, it’s the councilman Yeon visited the night before, and convinced over via blackmail. So the councilman has now betrayed General Yang, and got the rest of their men to betray him too.

Jang leaves the meeting hall as the new chief minister, General YEON JUNG-RO, is announced. Mu-young and her cousin deliver the grim news to the king, who finishes up his Hanja symbol and announces that he’ll go hear the new minister’s acceptance speech. He’s not angry? No kingsmash?

And because I was curious about the untranslated Hanja character the king took so much time on, I took the question all the way to the top, aka javabeans. And she took it to an even bigger authority—her mom. So, here’s some trivia we all probably spent way too much time on, as told by javabeans:

The hanja written by King Young-ryu reads “Dae Goryeo,” or “Great Goryeo,” which had me scratching my head a bit since the Goryeo nation followed Goguryeo by two and a half centuries, and by god Sword and Flower ought not be a time-traveling sageuk. (BY GOD.) So I asked JavaMom how this made sense, and here’s what she sez:

Dae Goryeo was a term introduced during the reign of King Gwanggaeto the Great, who ruled approximately 200 years prior to this drama’s timeline. Gwanggaeto’s reign was a prosperous one and he is one of only two Korean kings in history to be called “the Great” (the other being Sejong, inventor of hangul); Goguryeo was at its most expansive during his rule. Dae Goryeo in that context was not a new name for Goguryeo, but a sort of alternate name to refer to the kingdom; everyone would have continued to refer to the nation as Goguryeo, as they do in this drama. (Fun fact: That’s where Korea gets its name, as Goryeo = Koryo, and Koryo + funky pronunciation = Korea. Math in action.)

Hence, in invoking that name now at this crucial political juncture, Young-ryu is harking back to Goguryeo’s bygone years of greatness, as if to say, “I will usher this country to new greatness.”

Thanks Mom!

General Yeon starts to walk out as the new chief minister begins his speech, standing for all the things we know General Yeon wants—like war with Tang, for instance.

He then mentions the construction of the wall between their borders, and orders that General Yeon be sent to oversee its construction. Crap. Yeon’s been betrayed by his own man.

His side rises up in anger, and the moment is conveyed through slow motion pillow-throwing as General Yeon stops dead in his tracks.

It’s all actually kinda neat, up until chin! Eyes! Face! Eyes! Beard! Eyes! Face! Cheek! One eye! Face! Brow! …Oh, it goes on, but you get it. It’s about ten seconds of total silence while Choi Min-soo’s face is dissected by the camera, and it kills the joy I was feeling from this scene.

The bedlam continues behind General Yeon, who stands with his back to the worst of it. Only then does he lift his gaze to meet his son’s, since he’s arrived somewhere during the uprising.

Flashback to the king meeting with the then-candidate Yeon Jung-ro, whose younger brother the king declares responsible for the pillaging cases going on in Tang land. The king literally cackles with glee now that he’s found something to blackmail Yeon Jung-ro with, which explains how General Yeon was blindsided by the election. King Young-ryu: 1, General Yeon: 0.

The meeting hall empties until it’s just Choong and Daddy Dearest, and he asks his son why he came to the palace. “There’s no reason why I can’t come here,” Choong says in defense, and suddenly you know he totally took the job just to be closer to his dad.

General Yeon disapproves. “Do you know that in this world, there are two paths—one you should take, and one you shouldn’t take?”

“I thought you had nothing to do with me.” Choong throws his father’s earlier words back at him, all, Now you’re giving me fatherly advice?

Only then does Mu-young arrive to find her bodyguard, but her smile fades when she spies him looking extra-somber with General Yeon. Does she realize who his father is now?

 
COMMENTS

In trying to understand my relationship with this polarizing show, I was reminded of polarizing director Werner Herzog and his now infamous quote: “I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn out, they are abused and useless and exhausted.” Granted, in that same quote he goes on to blame television for killing our collective imaginations, but I’ll commit the sin of taking his one sentence out of context to describe why Sword and Flower began to appeal to me—it surprised me with new images.

I’m not talking the Spiderman scene, or some of the honest-to-goodness weird editing choices that plagued the first episode. It was the meeting hall sequence of this episode that actually caught me by surprise, starting from the stark grey room made up of intersecting lines to the red-robed ministers, arranged so neatly that the wide angles made it look like we were peeking into a very strange dollhouse. It was all so orderly, so composed to the last detail, that I couldn’t help but be a little wowed by it all.

That sequence was an example of creative frame composition and cinematography without the excesses of the first episode (at least for a little while). And that’s kind of weird in and of itself admittedly, since it was almost like watching a different show overnight. What differentiates most of this second outing from the first was that the beauty had some function, rather than endless scenes of sights and sounds that ultimately had no bearing on the story.

The reason why I find PD Kim Yong-soo’s endeavor praiseworthy is because of the effort that’s being given to show us something just a little different. We can chalk some of this novelty up to the fact that we’re covering an era rarely covered in sageuk—though so much of the Goguryeo we’re seeing, especially in the interior shots, is very stylized and surreal. The common Joseon era sageuk is full of familiarities to us at this point, so even if one show is prettier than another, the images start to look like variations of the same.

Think about it—how many times have we seen the same throne room, the same council hall, the same palace courtyard where every festival is held? How many times have we seen inter-palace conflicts centered around the endless parade of eunuchs and court ladies, which seem to be all but absent here? I’m not trying to beat down one of my favorite genres, but my point is that even if we take this drama on a solely visual level, isn’t it kind of nice to see something just this side of unfamiliar?

That being said, there can be too much of a good thing, and Sword is still trying to find its balance. PD Kim’s White Christmas was a perfect example of functional beauty—the crisp lines and moody atmosphere helped to tell the story, not detract from it. This show, on the other hand, feels a lot more experimental. I do think that the overload of style was reined in a bit, if only because the first episode gave me one too many unintentional laughs (some of the music cues were just as terrible if not more so than the egregious use of Coldplay in the first episode of Equator Man). I assume that bad music choices might just be a trend with this director, but at least the meet-cute “we will we will rock you” track didn’t rear its ugly head again this hour. Music has ONE job in a drama, and that’s to complement the story being told—not to make us laugh so had we forget what’s going on.

The same goes for editing. We were doing so well up until the stroke-inducing quick cuts when General Yeon learned he was betrayed, which left me feeling like the camera was doing the work that, as an actor, Choi Min-soo needed to do. I didn’t expect him to make a Scream face, but that scene seemed to rely on the camera jumping around to convey his shock. Did it work? Kind of. We relate to characters because we’re meant to find a commonality between them and us, but we can’t find commonality or connection with a camera, nor can we find a connection with flashes of Yeon’s eyes and chin while his expression remains static. We don’t need fifty shots when one would do.

The story is fairly simple as it stands, but I’m really digging Mu-young as a character thus far. (She reminds me of a Goguryeo Disney princess). Sure, we have no idea how she made it out to the middle of the ocean undetected by her cousin (who had eagle eyes enough to spot something as small as a flag out there), and how she then managed to drag the much-larger Choong to shore without a hair out of place. That’s just a continuity gripe, but it would be nice if the scene-to-scene editing at least lent the characters more realism, even if the world they inhabit is one made of surrealism. Another example: When we cut straight from Mu-young chasing Choong down to them just beginning their conversation posing on a deserted beach, all I could think of was, That’s neat, but what happened in the meantime?

What’s nice is that we get a clear understanding of Choong’s character, so that his mysterious moodiness begins to make sense in context. His central motivation seems driven by the urge to do right by his mother and to get closer to his father, which makes him as family-oriented as Mu-young, but to much different ends. I like the promise of revenge this show is offering, and am curious to see how Mu-young will have to grapple with her feelings of love and her sense of duty. Or whether Choong feels anything at all for her.

All in all, this is definitely a different breed of drama, and while Different ≠ Good, it’s definitely worth a closer look.

 
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