Posting on here as well because it became long enough to be considered an essay and therefore is required for archival and bookmarking purposes. *n.b. last episode context probably required*
.
.
.
ADAMAS FINAL: COMMENTARY and REVIEW (of sorts)
.
.
.
I think I’m going to have to say that the ending is unsatisfying for me.
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
– Neil Gaiman (who in turn paraphrases the original G. K. Chesterton quote that I will put at the very bottom of this)
Sometimes, a story’s purpose is to leave you with the message that the fight against the dragon is a constant and ongoing battle, but it is a noble battle that must be fought, over and over again, if necessary, nonetheless. And that’s fine.
But sometimes your story should just let the dragon be beaten, and properly, wholly defeated, as the end note instead. And that’s also fine, because that’s what fiction is for.
For me, this show should’ve been the latter, rather than the former.
Although Woosin’s comments to Seohee about constantly fighting for truth are not WRONG, I felt the show had better set up for a proper takedown, and indeed would’ve been more narratively satisfying if so, than a “well the battle is fought (or is it though) but the war is not over” approach, instead, and used Haesong as the metaphorical dragon to instill a sense of hope and fulfillment in both the characters and the audience.
You can do that you know; you don’t HAVE to torture your characters for all eternity. You don’t have to succumb to a kind of (purportedly) inevitable meaninglessness or cynicism.
I think it would’ve been stronger for this.
To end on a note of true defeat for Haesong, and for the Twins and Seohee on a note of peace, or the beginning of finding peace.
I think this would’ve made the Twins’ (and Seohee’s) fight, for each other, their adoptive father, their real father, and all the people that died on the way more worthwhile; why leave Seohee and Woosin fumbling to pick up the pieces (which aren’t even necessary if Soohyun isn’t dead) at all. Why not give them a moment of respite, that the dragon has been beaten, not without sacrifice, but still beaten, and then they can go and nurse their wounds and each other’s?
And similarly, I think I would’ve given this kind of ending to, and favored this for Hye-soo also.
As interesting in some ways as it is for her to decide to steal Haesong from those who have wronged her and her dead lover, instead of being its downfall, I think I would’ve preferred overall had she stolen it from out under the Chairman and her husband, and then just utterly destroyed it.
I felt like they were originally going for that also; a ”I will take down this entire company and burn it to the ground, for you have killed my lover and you will rue the day” arc for Hye-soo, and then decided to switch to and end on a ”I will take everything from you and have it for myself as revenge whilst you suffer in silence/death whilst I succumb to my thirst for retribution turning to a thirst for power” arc instead.
But I felt like this switch wasn’t as earnt as it should’ve been, and the more I think about it, the more sudden and out of place I find it. Both can work, but for this story, I think sticking to the former would’ve made more sense and would’ve been easier to resolve.
I think a better ending then, would’ve been something along the lines of the following:
> Hye-soo kills Chairman Kwon at the hand of Lady Kwon. (What happens to Lady Kwon after that I don’t know. Maybe she turns herself in, after the below. Whatever is most necessary for her arc to resolve other than killing the Chairman, that I haven’t thought of yet.)
> Hye-soo steals Haesong from under her husband, but instead of merely ruling in his stead, she tears it to the ground: although opening it to the public and stepping down is AN option, I think I’d prefer full collapse, as we all know most of the shareholders are shady and ex-Team A and implicit in the company’s sins anyway. She exposes everything. She throws Team A under the bus. She doesn’t just dissemble Ares, she pulls the entire rug out from under Haesong and watches it burn; she razes it to the ground.
> And, SHE’s the one that saves Soohyun somehow.
(N.B. this could happen MULTIPLE ways- multiple scenarios here could work to the same effect, some of which don’t even necessarily involve her saving Soohyun outright, not going into all the HOWS right now-)
But the important thing is that she does so because of her line to Secretary Yoon through Sun: ”at least the one you love most is alive.”
Essentially, she saves Soohyun and betrays Team Leader A and Team A, because Soohyun is the one Woosin (and Seohee) loves the most. This would be more in line with her actions to Hyunjo, and her motivations pertaining to Minjo, and would also resolve the arc between her and Woosin thematically (imo.)
> Of course, the entire set up for the finale could be changed so Soohyun is never in danger either of his own stupidity, the script’s stupidity, OR Lee Teamjangnim, who, should he have been following his motivations with more accuracy, should’ve gone after Woosin instead and attempted to make Soohyun watch, which Hye-Soo and Lee Changwoo would’ve then interfered on, thus saving the twins, and ending on a more cathartic note, wherein Lee Changwoo dies fighting Lee, to the horror of the brothers, enabling his death to have more impact than it did in current canon (which I found very disenchanting after so much build up), and resolving his arc thematically with the twins, and the twins with the Adamas.
> But EITHER WAY you do it, I need an angsty reunion scene between both Woosin and Soohyun, and Soohyun and Seohee, which is shot in parallel to the collapse of Haesong, Lee Changwoo and Lee’s deaths, and Adamas sinking to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again, and then a final series of shots with everybody Less Sad ™.
> (I don’t particularly care what happens to Sun. I know some people do. I don’t really. Oh ok, rewrite her to have more depth with her sister earlier on and make us like her as much as the writer seems to, to justify their current ending, or kill them both off somehow in whatever way is most satisfying narratively, which I can’t really think of right now, because I don’t really care. Same with the SIH. (Except that Woosin really shouldn’t be so nice to Taesung for killing that innocent guard lmao.))
> Logistically, I don’t know how this all works as it doesn’t answer or solve everything, but it doesn’t really matter as long as the narrative and thematic beats are the same and have the same conclusion: Haesong collapses. Lee Changwoo dies saving the Twins. The Adamas is lost. The Twins and Seohee take a VERY LONG ACTUAL HOLIDAY (maybe a permanent one). (Hye-soo fades from public view and goes back to her flowers somewhere, having avenged her beloved’s death, and leaving viewers to argue about whether this would send a too positive message regarding revenge or not :P)
.
.
.
I kept trying to figure out why they decided to end the show like they did, instead of above.
In my opinion they had more than enough incentive and set up and narrative direction, to justify the above, indeed, the above seemed most likely in a lot of ways.
They also had enough brains behind the writing and directing team imo, to write a version of the above that might not’ve made 100% sense or addressed EVERYTHING, but would’ve made enough sense to feel resolved, and right.
But they just didn’t. I can’t say I think it’s wholly that it “lost its way” or “didn’t know where it was going”, because too much of every other week implied otherwise. I do think it lacked some of the “how to get there” in the last quarter particularly (the cracks in which became more obvious after the finale for me), but not enough for this to be the sole problem.
Instead, the most obvious answer to me seems to be that they decided to push for a second season.
But that just leaves me with another “why”, in place of the first, one that I constantly have for writers everywhere when they decide to keep going, when they should just stop, and one I still don’t have an answer for, besides the material, and one that I am thus in constant frustration over.
Why. Just end your story well there. Better to end it well now, than to never end it at all, or to open up the possibility of ending it badly in another year. Just. Why. You had all the pieces. Why didn’t you use them. What was stopping you. What is your fatal flaw? You seemed to have enough vision at least. Was I just blinded by the pretty all show and you didn’t actually ever have it? Did you get an idea bug that to end on another Adamas twist parallel was better than to end on an episode 1 opening parallel, or, God forbid, you deny your cynicism the light of day and end on a Eucatastrophe instead? Gosh.
*heavy and heartfelt sigh*
Despite all this, and everything else unmentioned, I have to say I enjoyed the ride and journey of this show immensely. I was pretty much never bored or bothered by the pacing, (which I know wasn’t the case for some people who watched this elsewhere, and is quite the feat for me in general, since boredom is a frequent killer), I loved the directing especially- it was so enjoying to watch visually and technically from that perspective and I will be keeping an eye out for the PDnim in future projects, I ended up enjoying several characters (y’all know who) enough (a lot) to keep me invested (another feat) for the full run time, and I found the plot FUN for most of it, rather than anything else… which is a feat in itself again, and perhaps a bit of an oddity, because I could’ve easily found it annoying instead.
Anyway, an honourable shout out to the scene in #15 where the Twins uncover the Adamas in the figurine, because that was phenomenal, and, I’ve been drafting reunion scenes between Woosin and Seohee, and Soohyun in my head all morning (under or over arm hugs?) so… BRB going to write some indulgent fanfiction lmao.
.
.
.
“The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it– because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
~ G. K. Chesterton, The Red Angel in Tremendous Trifles
To be honest, I always felt that this show was indeed part, or a kind of fairytale:
The haunted castle. The evil king. The creepy grounds. The Twins. The missing treasure. The quest. The secret passages and forbidden rooms. The eerie settings, the warring factions, the disturbing butler, and the trapped princess in the tower.
Whilst it lost a little (or maybe a lot) of its modern gothic fairytaleness as it went on, instead settling into an indulgent thriller (whilst still somehow maintaining a similar tone, and its particular style), nonetheless I think it deserved a fairytale ending 😉
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word count: 2076
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💜🍍☠ Sicarius The Queen of Melonia ☠🍍💜
September 16, 2022 at 7:09 PM
Posting on here as well because it became long enough to be considered an essay and therefore is required for archival and bookmarking purposes. *n.b. last episode context probably required*
.
.
.
ADAMAS FINAL: COMMENTARY and REVIEW (of sorts)
.
.
.
I think I’m going to have to say that the ending is unsatisfying for me.
“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
– Neil Gaiman (who in turn paraphrases the original G. K. Chesterton quote that I will put at the very bottom of this)
Sometimes, a story’s purpose is to leave you with the message that the fight against the dragon is a constant and ongoing battle, but it is a noble battle that must be fought, over and over again, if necessary, nonetheless. And that’s fine.
But sometimes your story should just let the dragon be beaten, and properly, wholly defeated, as the end note instead. And that’s also fine, because that’s what fiction is for.
For me, this show should’ve been the latter, rather than the former.
Although Woosin’s comments to Seohee about constantly fighting for truth are not WRONG, I felt the show had better set up for a proper takedown, and indeed would’ve been more narratively satisfying if so, than a “well the battle is fought (or is it though) but the war is not over” approach, instead, and used Haesong as the metaphorical dragon to instill a sense of hope and fulfillment in both the characters and the audience.
You can do that you know; you don’t HAVE to torture your characters for all eternity. You don’t have to succumb to a kind of (purportedly) inevitable meaninglessness or cynicism.
I think it would’ve been stronger for this.
To end on a note of true defeat for Haesong, and for the Twins and Seohee on a note of peace, or the beginning of finding peace.
I think this would’ve made the Twins’ (and Seohee’s) fight, for each other, their adoptive father, their real father, and all the people that died on the way more worthwhile; why leave Seohee and Woosin fumbling to pick up the pieces (which aren’t even necessary if Soohyun isn’t dead) at all. Why not give them a moment of respite, that the dragon has been beaten, not without sacrifice, but still beaten, and then they can go and nurse their wounds and each other’s?
And similarly, I think I would’ve given this kind of ending to, and favored this for Hye-soo also.
As interesting in some ways as it is for her to decide to steal Haesong from those who have wronged her and her dead lover, instead of being its downfall, I think I would’ve preferred overall had she stolen it from out under the Chairman and her husband, and then just utterly destroyed it.
I felt like they were originally going for that also; a ”I will take down this entire company and burn it to the ground, for you have killed my lover and you will rue the day” arc for Hye-soo, and then decided to switch to and end on a ”I will take everything from you and have it for myself as revenge whilst you suffer in silence/death whilst I succumb to my thirst for retribution turning to a thirst for power” arc instead.
But I felt like this switch wasn’t as earnt as it should’ve been, and the more I think about it, the more sudden and out of place I find it. Both can work, but for this story, I think sticking to the former would’ve made more sense and would’ve been easier to resolve.
I think a better ending then, would’ve been something along the lines of the following:
> Hye-soo kills Chairman Kwon at the hand of Lady Kwon. (What happens to Lady Kwon after that I don’t know. Maybe she turns herself in, after the below. Whatever is most necessary for her arc to resolve other than killing the Chairman, that I haven’t thought of yet.)
> Hye-soo steals Haesong from under her husband, but instead of merely ruling in his stead, she tears it to the ground: although opening it to the public and stepping down is AN option, I think I’d prefer full collapse, as we all know most of the shareholders are shady and ex-Team A and implicit in the company’s sins anyway. She exposes everything. She throws Team A under the bus. She doesn’t just dissemble Ares, she pulls the entire rug out from under Haesong and watches it burn; she razes it to the ground.
> And, SHE’s the one that saves Soohyun somehow.
(N.B. this could happen MULTIPLE ways- multiple scenarios here could work to the same effect, some of which don’t even necessarily involve her saving Soohyun outright, not going into all the HOWS right now-)
But the important thing is that she does so because of her line to Secretary Yoon through Sun: ”at least the one you love most is alive.”
Essentially, she saves Soohyun and betrays Team Leader A and Team A, because Soohyun is the one Woosin (and Seohee) loves the most. This would be more in line with her actions to Hyunjo, and her motivations pertaining to Minjo, and would also resolve the arc between her and Woosin thematically (imo.)
> Of course, the entire set up for the finale could be changed so Soohyun is never in danger either of his own stupidity, the script’s stupidity, OR Lee Teamjangnim, who, should he have been following his motivations with more accuracy, should’ve gone after Woosin instead and attempted to make Soohyun watch, which Hye-Soo and Lee Changwoo would’ve then interfered on, thus saving the twins, and ending on a more cathartic note, wherein Lee Changwoo dies fighting Lee, to the horror of the brothers, enabling his death to have more impact than it did in current canon (which I found very disenchanting after so much build up), and resolving his arc thematically with the twins, and the twins with the Adamas.
> But EITHER WAY you do it, I need an angsty reunion scene between both Woosin and Soohyun, and Soohyun and Seohee, which is shot in parallel to the collapse of Haesong, Lee Changwoo and Lee’s deaths, and Adamas sinking to the bottom of the ocean, never to be seen again, and then a final series of shots with everybody Less Sad ™.
> (I don’t particularly care what happens to Sun. I know some people do. I don’t really. Oh ok, rewrite her to have more depth with her sister earlier on and make us like her as much as the writer seems to, to justify their current ending, or kill them both off somehow in whatever way is most satisfying narratively, which I can’t really think of right now, because I don’t really care. Same with the SIH. (Except that Woosin really shouldn’t be so nice to Taesung for killing that innocent guard lmao.))
> Logistically, I don’t know how this all works as it doesn’t answer or solve everything, but it doesn’t really matter as long as the narrative and thematic beats are the same and have the same conclusion: Haesong collapses. Lee Changwoo dies saving the Twins. The Adamas is lost. The Twins and Seohee take a VERY LONG ACTUAL HOLIDAY (maybe a permanent one). (Hye-soo fades from public view and goes back to her flowers somewhere, having avenged her beloved’s death, and leaving viewers to argue about whether this would send a too positive message regarding revenge or not :P)
.
.
.
I kept trying to figure out why they decided to end the show like they did, instead of above.
In my opinion they had more than enough incentive and set up and narrative direction, to justify the above, indeed, the above seemed most likely in a lot of ways.
They also had enough brains behind the writing and directing team imo, to write a version of the above that might not’ve made 100% sense or addressed EVERYTHING, but would’ve made enough sense to feel resolved, and right.
But they just didn’t. I can’t say I think it’s wholly that it “lost its way” or “didn’t know where it was going”, because too much of every other week implied otherwise. I do think it lacked some of the “how to get there” in the last quarter particularly (the cracks in which became more obvious after the finale for me), but not enough for this to be the sole problem.
Instead, the most obvious answer to me seems to be that they decided to push for a second season.
But that just leaves me with another “why”, in place of the first, one that I constantly have for writers everywhere when they decide to keep going, when they should just stop, and one I still don’t have an answer for, besides the material, and one that I am thus in constant frustration over.
Why. Just end your story well there. Better to end it well now, than to never end it at all, or to open up the possibility of ending it badly in another year. Just. Why. You had all the pieces. Why didn’t you use them. What was stopping you. What is your fatal flaw? You seemed to have enough vision at least. Was I just blinded by the pretty all show and you didn’t actually ever have it? Did you get an idea bug that to end on another Adamas twist parallel was better than to end on an episode 1 opening parallel, or, God forbid, you deny your cynicism the light of day and end on a Eucatastrophe instead? Gosh.
*heavy and heartfelt sigh*
Despite all this, and everything else unmentioned, I have to say I enjoyed the ride and journey of this show immensely. I was pretty much never bored or bothered by the pacing, (which I know wasn’t the case for some people who watched this elsewhere, and is quite the feat for me in general, since boredom is a frequent killer), I loved the directing especially- it was so enjoying to watch visually and technically from that perspective and I will be keeping an eye out for the PDnim in future projects, I ended up enjoying several characters (y’all know who) enough (a lot) to keep me invested (another feat) for the full run time, and I found the plot FUN for most of it, rather than anything else… which is a feat in itself again, and perhaps a bit of an oddity, because I could’ve easily found it annoying instead.
Anyway, an honourable shout out to the scene in #15 where the Twins uncover the Adamas in the figurine, because that was phenomenal, and, I’ve been drafting reunion scenes between Woosin and Seohee, and Soohyun in my head all morning (under or over arm hugs?) so… BRB going to write some indulgent fanfiction lmao.
.
.
.
“The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it– because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”
~ G. K. Chesterton, The Red Angel in Tremendous Trifles
To be honest, I always felt that this show was indeed part, or a kind of fairytale:
The haunted castle. The evil king. The creepy grounds. The Twins. The missing treasure. The quest. The secret passages and forbidden rooms. The eerie settings, the warring factions, the disturbing butler, and the trapped princess in the tower.
Whilst it lost a little (or maybe a lot) of its modern gothic fairytaleness as it went on, instead settling into an indulgent thriller (whilst still somehow maintaining a similar tone, and its particular style), nonetheless I think it deserved a fairytale ending 😉
.
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.
word count: 2076