Review: The Master's Sun (2013)
In honor of The Master’s Sun having premiered today 8 years ago, I decided to finally sit down and watch the drama and review it. I know it’s a pretty universally loved drama as it is always brought up by a slew of people, even those that don’t like darker dramas and its MyDramaList score is fairly high. Going in the drama had a pretty big shoe to fill and sadly it never filled that for me. In fact, by the first episode I knew that it wasn’t going to be an enjoyable watch for me, but I continued for all seventeen episodes because I wanted to try to see what I was missing.
The Master’s Sun follows Tae Gong Shil (Gong Hyo Jin) a medium who is plagued with being able to communicate with ghosts. She meets stoic rich businessman, Joo Joong Won (So Ji Sub), who had suffered a tragic loss when he was younger and in trying to find out what happened, developed a disdain for anyone who says they can see ghosts. They meet and develop a relationship as she deals with her ability and he uncovers the truth behind his first love.
One of the biggest problems I had with the drama was the relationship between Gong Shil and Joong Won. The relationship is entirely based on him controlling her. Consistently. There was never a time I thought that their relationship was sweet, or that there was some push for me to believe that they should be with each other. Usually, these types of yelly/grumpy male interest dramas at least change the guy to a passable person that you can imagine the female being with, but that never happened here, he stays consistent till the end. I guess in a sense it’s the most realistic option as people don’t change like that (especially not with professional help)? An exhausting realistic option for a drama that’s main focus was romance.
Another part that was hard to watch with the drama was the fact that we never saw real growth from Gong Shil in any real sense. The drama wanted you to believe that she does, but she doesn’t. What little growth we saw was only tied to Joong Won, and that was only through her falling in love with him. She never believed in herself the way that she was and accepted her faults, and didn’t see the real good she was doing with helping the ghosts. She blamed everything on herself, and Joong Won never provided any true or lengthy support to help her see her strength or to make her know that it wasn’t her fault. She never got to grow the way she deserved. The imbalance in the power dynamic between the two stayed present and dominating throughout, making the relationship feel messy and uncomfortable. And that’s really sad. It was entirely a one-sided relationship that I was never rooting for and never felt good about.
While I did like the sub-story about his first love, I found that it was nothing like the rest of the drama and didn’t work well when paired with it. It was darker and felt like the writer was constantly forcing two completely different stories together. Even the stories of the ghosts tended to not be consistent, and while I do think the format of focusing on a different ghost and its story for an episode or two helped with the entertainment, you could tell their only purpose was to bring in the horror element and clashed just as much as the first love story. It just never fit for me, and I do think a lot of that had to do with Gong Hyo Jin’s character and how scared she was at not scary things it just made it seem like they were trying to hit you over the head that this was a horror drama through her (or just a catalyst for her to constantly run into Joong Won’s arms). I feel that a lot of times the ghost storylines were rushed to the point that I never connected with them, which is a loss because a lot of the heart and warmth of the drama was supossed to be pulled from those stoylines and fell flat, especially when they weren’t accomplishing that warmth through the main relationship. As far as it being labeled a horror drama, they do mean this in the loosest of terms. While some of the ghosts had a little bit darker storylines dealing with their death, for the most part they are the scare level of Disney’s Haunted Mansion.
While I didn’t like the drama, I don’t want to spend this entire review bashing it, because that’s not fun and not realistic. There were parts that I enjoyed about it and thought worked well. I specifically loved the assistant character played by Choi Jung Woo. I’m a sucker for the gentle fatherly type of presence, and I thought his character really did this well and was not only good for Joong Won, but all of the other characters. He developed realistic and healthy bonds with all of them, and I think that if anyone learned anything in the process of the drama, it was from him.
In a drama that is so fraught with the generic tropes (and I’m serious about this, they used every trope from wrist grabs to amnesia to random separation), the one thing it did surprisingly well was handle the evil mother in law. While she was a presence of nonacceptance, she was level-headed and not over the top. It was real and refreshing to see the character be handled that way, and I really enjoyed that her husband was equally as good and that their relationship was not a relationship of hatred, but of love and acceptance for their differences. It was really nice.
The second female lead was also not over done and drawn out as I thought she was going to be in the first couple of episodes. She was annoying, and created some minor barriers, but overall she was fine and allowing her to not be an evil character helped her storyline. I liked her parts with Seo In Guk, even if she was a tad too pushy, and their storyline was generally cute and not draining.
All-in-all I’m sad that the drama didn’t live up to what I thought it would be for me. With a strong cast of actors and the praise it constantly got, I thought that it would be a fun watch for me and it was anything but. Make no mistake, I know that the drama is outside of my genre tastes a bit, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t enjoyed other romcoms and with the addition of the horror element I was sure that this one would be at the least a fun watch but that just wasn’t the case.
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