In The Scandal, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses is tweaked and relocated to Korea during the Joseon dynasty, and the result is an eye-catching collection of black hats and colorful costumes. It's a fashion parade of sorts, with actors posing and walking in grand clothes and with a royal attitude that, combined with vibrant structures and striking trees whose leaves gently fall to the ground or rustle in the wind, paints heavenly pictures on the screen that never starve the eyes. The Scandal is always pretty to look at, and this prettiness is both surface-level and compulsory. Without it, you would find it impossible to stick with the show for long. Because even with all the prettiness in front of your eyes, you struggle to stop yourself from dozing off repeatedly.
The Scandal tests the viewers' patience with all its might. It doesn't flow so much as start and stop frequently. There are scenes like the one where So-ok (Shin Youn-ha), the new concubine hired to bear Lord Yoo's (Lee Ji-hoon) child, is asked to copy the chapter introducing Confucian learning a hundred times that want to be lightweight and funny. Then there are scenes such as the one involving Ahn Hui-yeon (Nana), a widow, and Cho Won (Ji Chang-wook), where the two weep and the latter assures the former that he will keep her alive. These scenes are so melodramatic, so heavy, that they yank you out of the moment and encourage you to close your ears and eyes.
Everything else between these two spectrums is dead and static, and these portions comprise maybe 90–95% of the entire series. This means The Scandal has a lumbering pace; it drags so heavily that there is no juice left to make the experience entertaining or even titillating. Every other scene falls flat with a thud, and you slowly feel numbness spreading through your body. This story about a cruel bet between Won and his cousin/lover Cho Yun (Son Ye-jin) involving the seduction of the innocent Hui-yeon lacks a mood of mischief. Director Jung Ji-woo is too plain, too straightforward, to charge his images with sensual electricity. Despite the presence of sexual content, the material doesn't feel sexy. This has to be one of the most unsexy sex shows ever filmed.
Ji-woo doesn't spice up his scenes with creative flair or style. He merely points his camera towards the props and the actors and records it all impersonally. One can't do anything but pass the time by inspecting the patterns on the costumes or wondering how much time and effort these characters must have taken to do their makeup, braid their hair, and don their attire for the shoot. I also wondered if people in the Joseon era really dressed like this, how inconvenient it must have been for them to relieve themselves outside in the forest during their journeys. Today, you can "handle your business" by pulling down your pants or opening the zip. Imagine these historical figures spending five minutes opening just one layer of their clothing. I shudder to think about their plight during emergencies.
It's established early in the series that Yun could have been a great writer or scholar if she were not living in a male-dominated society. The credit that Won gets for his writing is the credit that Yun rightfully deserves, given that it's she who helps him achieve immense literary heights. But the only writing that seems worth listening to is the salacious kind, which sounds especially naughty when read by the women in the series. In one episode, a woman touches herself sensually while a female painter draws her carefully and curiously. In the hands of a looser director, such moments could have vibrated with a sultry spirit. In Ji-woo's sober hands, they come across as a simulation of something sultry.
The director drains the life out of the series. If it were an intromittent organ, it would be limp. What's more, Hui-yeon is such an uninteresting character that Won's eventual, genuine attraction towards her feels unconvincing. The elaborate costumes have more spark in them than anything Hui-yeon says or does in the series. If I were Won, I would have accepted defeat and begun pursuing So-ok to fulfill Yun's objective. No wonder your eyes remain dry when The Scandal, in the end, reaches for tragedy. Ji-woo mostly keeps you cold and bored throughout. Nothing in The Scandal, thus, moves you emotionally.
This eight-episode-long défilé de mode has more love for its production design than its story. Maybe the show's target audience is people who admire good-looking furniture and fabrics. The Scandal is made for all the objectophilics.
Final Score - [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times