You may want to try- Queen In-hyun's Man. it sort keeps going back and forth from past to present times. So it doesn't feel very saguek-ish. Plus time travel is always a bonus!

I admit that part of the reason I stuck with Moon Lovers may be because I love the Goryeo costumes - such a change from the usual Joseon sageuk aesthetic. The hair, especially.

Whoever push this poor into acting, I blame them. She basically is expressionless in every scene. I'll at least sympathize her character a bit, if she is sincere with Ha-won.

At this rate, I just wish Ha Won let Sky House and further her study in the overseas or let's she end up with SeoWoo who is much more sincere with her or Mr Bodyguard. Just leave Ji Woon and Hyun Min fighting over Hye Ji ???

Agree. I love the changing herione in W, whereas really find it annoying in Cinderella.
Bad written character + bad acting = disaster -_-

I just don't know why Naeun always choose to play annoying character. In Twenty Again, and now in W.

More than Ji Woon as a lead (which i dont mind at all since I am the shipper ) it is like changing of heroine which is total messed up.

Which is now I think I want Cinderella just end up with Seo Woo who is sincerely like her. Even Hyun Min pissed me off a lot this week because he does not settle about his feeling towards Hye Hi.

HJ's boring story basically stole Seo Woo and Bodyguard Lee screen time.

Yup - I was afraid that around the middle it would fall yet again into the the old cliche Candy Girl syndrome, and sure enough it did. I was really hoping they would not go there.

Ep9 was nearly all fluff, with almost zero happening or moving forward and most of the characters just sitting around talking to themselves. Ep10 first 2/3 was more of the same. Basically you could skip 9 and FF 40min into 10 and not miss a thing except for filler scenes.

I so agree on cable - my favourite things this year have been PU38 and Age of Youth. Scarlet has me for now because of oppa and my unfamiliarity with the source novel/cdrama, but with a different cast I wouldn't be so into it.

I have just 3 eps of AoY left and Han Ye-ri destroyed me so hard in ep 9 I ugly cried. It's amazing how good she is at conveying the nuance of an emotionally repressed character who likes to pretend everything's fine - usually, when actors who aren't up to par take on such roles, people explain the subsequently bland/wooden performance away as the character being written that way, but HYR puts the lie to all those excuses.

Even this year, drama on public stations probably better than last year, but my favorites still from cable.

@The other Kiara: Luckily I'm not familiar with either source material so they're both unpredictable for me! Although, lol, like I said in my original comment, I've never thought about ratings before and I never get them anyway, because I haven't watched anything on a TV in years or even livestreamed (I watch everything on my laptop), so if they were ratings shows airing where I live, even if I was watching them, my viewership wouldn't count, which is odd to me. I practically don't know anyone who watches currently-airing media on the TV unless it's a with-dinner ritual or something. It's all rather interesting!

Honestly, I personally don't think people being let down was a huge factor for the ratings. I won't deny it contributed, but I don't think it played any significant role.

If after the hype, after the trailer, after the interviews, after the investment etc., people still didn't give the drama a chance in the premiere itself, then it's hard to argue that they were let down is why the ratings are low. That is because even if SH had lived up to the hype in the first week itself, those would still be its premiere ratings. (Unless people were waiting to confirm whether it was living up to the hype before starting to watch, which doesn't usually happen tbh). It would still be difficult for it to make its way up from there, because even if as good as the trailer, it would only be living up to what people should have already expected and thus rejected through non-viewing. If the majority was actually let down, SH would have followed UF's trajectory, people would give it a chance and then switch. But the switch happened before the first episode aired.

I don’t think people really badmouthing it as the worst of the worst beside the overanalyze idol acting criticism

They did, because it wasn't only acting that was absolutely trashed (the entire focus on Baekhyun and IU and the secondary on the princes), so was the editing, the direction, the music direction, etc. In short, everything that makes a drama. Not all of it invalid ofc, the first 2 episodes were all over the place imo.

Moonlight had that range in first week, yes, but it's jump in the second was unprecedented. Expecting SH to do the same after their premiere went up against a drama getting 16% in the same time-slot, may have made it the first drama ever to do so. Even Moonlight wasn't up against a drama already highly rated and gained that rating only after Doctors ended and that viewership freed up.

Even if people had been very, very impressed by the second episode of SH the ratings would only have risen marginally, because viewers had already started watching Moonlight so there'd be no real reason for them to shift, unless Moonlight was terrible and SH extremely good, which obv was't the case. Especially since it's not like you can never watch a drama if you don't watch it in its airing slot, since online viewing is incredibly easy anyway.

It still staggers me that someone at SBS possibly saw that final cut of episode 1 that originally aired, complete with horrible music and all, and didn't think for one second that this was not a good viewer experience.

I mean, I thought pre-produced dramas at least allowed someone time to review what was actually going to air on the channel.

I really hate Kim Gyu-tae's style so I did haha. I think the reason he gave everyone such ridiculous bangs is so the lace front wigs won't show in his close ups. Oh well, at least he's done butchering Noh Hee-kyung's scripts.

This is what really makes me rage - when the network has to force a re-edit of episodes, you know you messed up.

4 and 5 are great episodes but Scarlet Heart stumbled at the starting point and is probably never going to recover because it had the task of proving that it lived up to its hype, and flubbed the first time around so viewers simply didn't tune in afterwards. It breaks my heart that Lee Jun-ki is going to have this chalked up as a domestic failure against his name when it's all the fault of a production team that couldn't be bothered to do their jobs.

50?? They should at least shorten the episode length. The ratings aren't bad, so, good for the cast.