[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The King's Affection" Episode 6

The previous episode opened up with Scholar Jeong protecting Crown Prince Lee from sprayed water outdoors. So naturally, this one opens up with Scholar Jeong protecting Crown Prince Lee from a falling object in the library. "The King's Affection" certainly knows its audience. This is a drama for people who enjoy watching romantic imagery between beautiful people wearing traditional Korean men's clothing and there's never any shortage of that.

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I like how the plot kind of covers for this with Crown Prince Lee's limited understanding of male friendship distorting her perception of what kind of behavior she's supposed to find acceptable from either Scholar Jeong or Scion Lee. You can actually see her kind of thinking, do men really put food in each other's mouths? Do they give each other flowers? I guess maybe? I've lived in the palace my whole life and I'm not allowed to go the courtesan clubs so I really have no idea.

There's also some similarly cute flashbacks which see a return of the adorable child actors. And here I can once again take issue with the questionable exposition of the earlier episodes, which clearly implied that Scholar Jeong and Crown Prince Lee, as kids, only knew each other for maybe an afternoon. Apparently they hung out a lot more than that. If this backstory had appeared in the early episodes plot points like Scholar Jeong becoming a doctor would have been far more intuitive.

That much is just bad editing. More generally bad plotting actually takes up the conflict of most of the second half though, as Inspector Jeong's plan to force his son to become the royal tutor backfires spectacularly and predictably when someone finally notices that Scholar Jeong was the doctor at the illegal clinic. Again, what was the point of actually arresting everybody instead of just threatening to? Scholar Jeong hates his dad because he saw him killing people! No one has any doubts that Inspector Jeong will do evil stuff to get what he wants!

The royal politics in "The King's Affection" are a bit questionable like that, although they're never so bad that they actually ruin the show. And I do have to give the script credit for actually forcing the villains to suffer consequences for their terrible strategies. The lack of a clear credible antagonist remaisn annoying. All the same, with cute scenes like Crown Prince Lee practicing her swordfighting, it's hard to complain too much.

Review by William Schwartz

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"The King's Affection" is directed by Lee Hyun-suk, Song Hyeon-wook, written by Han Hee-jeong, and features Park Eun-bin, Rowoon, Nam Yoon-su, Choi Byung-chan, Bae Yoon-kyung, Jung Chae-yeon. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2021/10/11~Now airing, Mon, Tue 21:30 on KBS.