Since the demise of Drama Fever, there have been several dramas that I was really wanting to review which aren't available legally anymore on any streaming site that I know of for US fans. Most of my readers are in the US, as am I, so at first I was just bummed and thought I would just skip reviewing them altogether. I changed my mind however, because I really do want to review them even though you can't get them here anymore, because I DO actually have readers in some other countries. So on the chance that those readers can get it in their country, I will write reviews after all.
(UPDATE: Viki does now have this drama available for US viewers! Hooray!)
♥♥♥♥/♥
TITLE: 100 Days My Prince / 100 Days' Husband [백일의 낭군님]
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: September 10 to October 30, 2018
WIKI: asianwiki.com/100_Days_My_Prince
SEASONS/EPISODES: 1 / 16
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2020-03-04): Viki Standard
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: September 10 to October 30, 2018
WIKI: asianwiki.com/100_Days_My_Prince
SEASONS/EPISODES: 1 / 16
US AVAILABILITY (as of 2020-03-04): Viki Standard
Crown Prince Lee Yul is the victim of an assassination plot but instead of dead he winds up with amnesia in a small rural village, where he's forced to marry a woman who claims his name is WonDeuk and that she's his fiancee. Not understanding how the world works after his sheltered upbringing, "WonDeuk" gets into trouble with a loan shark. Needing to earn money to pay back his debt, he and his wife start "Solutions Agency" where they solve problems and do odd jobs for money. Eventually all secrets have to come out though, and the amnesiac prince isn't the only one with a secret identity. Meanwhile back in the palace, those involved in the prince's assassination are getting away with murder.
Basic plot intro:
Crown Prince Lee Yul has been miserable since childhood. He was only the son of a noble (but of royal descent) when he met Yoon YiSa the feisty little daughter of a nobleman. The young boy fell in love with her almost at first sight. Wanting to better himself for her drove him to study harder to be a more educated and better person. He confessed his love for YiSa and swore to marry her. Before their love story could even begin though, her family was assassinated before his eyes and Lee Yul found out his own father was involved. Kim ChaEon is the puppetmaster behind it all, having convinced Lee Yul's father to replace the king and then using that to control him through the years, so they framed YiSa's father as a traitor to the crown. To add to the pain, Kim ChaEon convinced Yul's father to send his wife (Yul's mother) away when he becomes king, for political reasons, and as soon as she's away Kim ChaEon has her killed also. Kim ChaEon tells his new puppet king that the thing he wants most as a reward for making him king is an arranged marriage between his daughter and the new little prince Yul. Lee Yul grows up hating his father for the deaths of his beloved and his mother, and living as a cold and miserable crown prince who shuns anything that brings joy.
Meanwhile YiSa and her brother survived the initial slaughter of their family, barely, but they were separated when her brother hid her and led the soldiers chasing them away. YiSa was adopted by a kindhearted and loving stepfather and raised as a peasant named HongShim in a small rural village. She still holds out hope that her brother is alive and will find her someday.
When the crown princess' father, Kim ChaEon, finds out his daughter (who is the wife-in-name-only of prince Yul) is pregnant, he's livid. Prince Yul has never touched her and he has never made that a national secret by any means: basically the whole palace knows the marriage has never been consummated. If she can't get prince Yul into bed within a short enough amount of time to cover up her infidelity, daddy will just have to get rid of the prince so there will be no one to contest the child's paternity. The palace occupants pressuring the prince to consummate his marriage using the excuse of balancing nature so it will rain has only resulted in the stubborn and contrary prince Yul declaring that he can't balance nature alone so EVERYONE in the kingdom of marrying age will also have to marry, so as to more thoroughly balance nature. *giggle* When Prince Yul finds out his bride-in-name-only is pregnant, he is stuck with the riddle of how best to extricate himself from his unfaithful and unwanted bride, as well as solve yet another mystery: who has been slowly poisoning him for years. Prince Yul is also realizing that Kim ChaEon is the puppetmaster behind many awful things, and tries to reach out to his father. The king unfortunately becomes defensive rather than listening, and orders Yul to attend the rain festival, which Yul knows will put his life in danger.
Sure enough, masked assassins show up on the journey through the mountains and attempt to slaughter the crown prince and everyone with him. His closest friend and personal guard makes prince Yul change his clothes to trick the assassins, and thus in the confusion the person who is wounded and fell over the edge of the mountain is not realized to be the prince! Waking up with amnesia in a rural village, Yul is told he's someone named WonDeuk and that he's engaged to a woman named HongShim, whom he will have to marry IMMEDIATELY due to the crown prince's order that all unmarried adults be wed by that evening.
Meanwhile YiSa and her brother survived the initial slaughter of their family, barely, but they were separated when her brother hid her and led the soldiers chasing them away. YiSa was adopted by a kindhearted and loving stepfather and raised as a peasant named HongShim in a small rural village. She still holds out hope that her brother is alive and will find her someday.
When the crown princess' father, Kim ChaEon, finds out his daughter (who is the wife-in-name-only of prince Yul) is pregnant, he's livid. Prince Yul has never touched her and he has never made that a national secret by any means: basically the whole palace knows the marriage has never been consummated. If she can't get prince Yul into bed within a short enough amount of time to cover up her infidelity, daddy will just have to get rid of the prince so there will be no one to contest the child's paternity. The palace occupants pressuring the prince to consummate his marriage using the excuse of balancing nature so it will rain has only resulted in the stubborn and contrary prince Yul declaring that he can't balance nature alone so EVERYONE in the kingdom of marrying age will also have to marry, so as to more thoroughly balance nature. *giggle* When Prince Yul finds out his bride-in-name-only is pregnant, he is stuck with the riddle of how best to extricate himself from his unfaithful and unwanted bride, as well as solve yet another mystery: who has been slowly poisoning him for years. Prince Yul is also realizing that Kim ChaEon is the puppetmaster behind many awful things, and tries to reach out to his father. The king unfortunately becomes defensive rather than listening, and orders Yul to attend the rain festival, which Yul knows will put his life in danger.
Sure enough, masked assassins show up on the journey through the mountains and attempt to slaughter the crown prince and everyone with him. His closest friend and personal guard makes prince Yul change his clothes to trick the assassins, and thus in the confusion the person who is wounded and fell over the edge of the mountain is not realized to be the prince! Waking up with amnesia in a rural village, Yul is told he's someone named WonDeuk and that he's engaged to a woman named HongShim, whom he will have to marry IMMEDIATELY due to the crown prince's order that all unmarried adults be wed by that evening.
Flow and sequence:
In the first few episodes; see Basic Plot Intro above.
First main story arc: WonDeuk (prince Yul) and HongShim (YiSa) spend 100 days getting to know each other and falling in love in natural and gradual way.
Second main story arc: Things are coming to a head in the palace and "WonDeuk" aka Prince Yul is found and dragged back to the palace against his will. Still only having fragments of his memory and unsure of who his enemies are within the palace, he must search for clues secretively.
Third main story arc: The final battle is approaching... Prince Yul must outsmart his enemies and fight for his own happiness and the safety of those he loves.
Ending. See the spoiler section if you wanna know how that pans out.
First main story arc: WonDeuk (prince Yul) and HongShim (YiSa) spend 100 days getting to know each other and falling in love in natural and gradual way.
Second main story arc: Things are coming to a head in the palace and "WonDeuk" aka Prince Yul is found and dragged back to the palace against his will. Still only having fragments of his memory and unsure of who his enemies are within the palace, he must search for clues secretively.
Third main story arc: The final battle is approaching... Prince Yul must outsmart his enemies and fight for his own happiness and the safety of those he loves.
Ending. See the spoiler section if you wanna know how that pans out.
Cast/ Characters/ Acting:
So many delightful characters! EXO's D.O (Do KyungSoo) makes a very convincing prince Yul. His acting can make you snort a giggle at his character's straightfaced denial of facts, or fight back tears of sympathy at the obvious pain and sadness in his eyes. His chemistry with Nam JiHyun who plays YiSa/HongShim is good (so much so that I had a hard time feeling too much of that dreaded second lead syndrome for the likable Jung JeJoon, played by Kim SeonHo), and the kiss scenes are verrrrrry good... hehe... Heo JeongMin plays a lovable dork similar to his role in Evergreen (That Man Oh Soo). Kim JaeYoung as the tormented assassin MooYeon who unwillingly works for Kim ChaEon. Speaking of whom, Cho SungHa is convincingly clever and evil in the role of that villain. Han SoHee is convincing and sympathetic as the unfaithful crown princess. One of my favorite side roles was Ji MinHyuk as crown prince Yul's younger half-brother, prince SeoWon. He never harbored ill will toward anyone and was a seldom-seen but still memorable and likable character.
Writing and directing:
Although some of the political nuances were *left unexplained, we figured it out well enough to understand the story as the drama went on. Over all it was a much more complicated plot than I expected- in a good way. The characters were more nuanced and the plot twists more numerous, also. I expected the "100 days" to monopolize most of the timeline and was at first just surprised when it was only a part of a larger plot, but later was actually glad they did it how they did because the story was so much deeper and richer. I loved the character development of Prince Yul during his time as WonDeuk, and I was pleased with how YiSa/HongShim and Magistrate Jung JeYoon were both true to their morals and didn't compromise those in the end (even if they wavered at first) even to keep or win the person they loved. Sometimes I feel like drama writers compromise established character qualities later in order to further the plot, and I'm glad they didn't do that for this one. It's believable for a character to waver in the face of potentially losing what they love or want, but it's not believable for them to go against their established character qualities without a significant driving force + angst over the decision + regret/remorse afterward and I see too many dramas where that is completely ignored for the sake of a plot device.
*I feel I should explain what would be the most confusing instance if you didn't know this already; when someone was named a traitor to the crown, their entire family was ordered to die along with them or be sold into slavery, even the children. The beginning of the drama may seem confusing if you don't know this because YiSa's father is framed for treason but the soldiers are ordered to kill his young children too, chasing them into the mountains, and Prince Yul grows up assuming they were all killed that night. Later, HongShim can't just come back and say "oh hey by the way I'm Yoon YiSa and I'm not dead!" because unless she was officially pardoned first, or her father's name was cleared, she could be immediately executed as the daughter of a traitor. This is why she is very careful not to be recognized or found, and why she doesn't out herself to gain access to Prince Yul at any point in the story.
*I feel I should explain what would be the most confusing instance if you didn't know this already; when someone was named a traitor to the crown, their entire family was ordered to die along with them or be sold into slavery, even the children. The beginning of the drama may seem confusing if you don't know this because YiSa's father is framed for treason but the soldiers are ordered to kill his young children too, chasing them into the mountains, and Prince Yul grows up assuming they were all killed that night. Later, HongShim can't just come back and say "oh hey by the way I'm Yoon YiSa and I'm not dead!" because unless she was officially pardoned first, or her father's name was cleared, she could be immediately executed as the daughter of a traitor. This is why she is very careful not to be recognized or found, and why she doesn't out herself to gain access to Prince Yul at any point in the story.
Other:
My one pet peeve about this drama was actually the synopsis as found on wikis and streaming sites: They keep saying HongShim founded and ran the first detective agency in Joseon. Firstly, what she founded was something like "Solutions Agency" which was more like your local dirty jobs/ handy man sort of business and she made "WonDeuk" run it to repay his debt. One job was collecting leeches to sell, one was retrieving a valuable that had been dropped in poo, one was carrying water, one was posing as a suitor, several involved finding something that had been dropped on the road in travel (which simply required retracing the path and picking it up, no detective work needed), and often it was just transporting things around town... no actual detective work was involved at any point that I recall. I kept waiting for it and waiting for it. Lol! I thought maybe they would be detectives to find out WonDeuk's true identity as Prince Yul but nope. The only time detective-anything was even mentioned was in the very first episode when child-Yul said he would play detective to find out who that girl (YiSa) was. If that translation is right then detectives were already a thing long before YiSa grew up and started her fake-hubby's dirty jobs business.
Happy Ending Factor?
We lose a few characters I was sad to see go, and several characters got a way better ending than they deserved, however our main couple survives everything this drama throws at them, and overall I give it a happy ending rating of 4 out of 5.
We lose a few characters I was sad to see go, and several characters got a way better ending than they deserved, however our main couple survives everything this drama throws at them, and overall I give it a happy ending rating of 4 out of 5.
(SPOILER SECTION! SKIP to Final Summary if you don't want to know how it ends!)
It's a long road but the clever Prince Yul eventually regains his memory and defeats the evil Kim ChaEon, even showing mercy to his lesser enemies for the sake of his beloved YiSa. He thwarts a war and pursues his beloved long after a man any less loyal and stubborn would have given up. It's a beautiful story and all the actors and actresses played their parts fittingly.
Final Summary:
I wish so bad this was still available in the US! Alas, Drama Fever had exclusivity on this one here and now Drama Fever is gone. I'm still holding out hope that Viki will pick this one up! It was such a great story. I would totally watch it again, if any of the US streaming sites ever get the license!
Check out the 100 Days My Prince OST on Spotify!
100 Days My Prince on Viki!
(Dramas may not be available on certain sites for certain countries. It depends who acquired the license for a specific drama for your country and who did not. Drama may be available on Netflix in your country but not even show up in mine, so check there if you have a Netflix acct. Ditto for Viki- may be available in your country but not mine. Click HERE for a list of legal Kdrama streaming sites and what countries they work in.)
If all else fails and you're desperate to know how the story goes, there's always the recaps on DramaBeans. ;)
(Dramas may not be available on certain sites for certain countries. It depends who acquired the license for a specific drama for your country and who did not. Drama may be available on Netflix in your country but not even show up in mine, so check there if you have a Netflix acct. Ditto for Viki- may be available in your country but not mine. Click HERE for a list of legal Kdrama streaming sites and what countries they work in.)
If all else fails and you're desperate to know how the story goes, there's always the recaps on DramaBeans. ;)
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