Im Ji-yeon and Heo Nam-jun ham it up in a two-timelines story as a pair of star-crossed lovers. While it doesn’t get top marks for originality, it does score highly chemistry wise. The leads are visually appealing and they put in consistently good performances. Whoever did the casting struck gold on that front. Despite having seen some of the dramas that he’s been in (yes, I checked), I keep wondering where Heo Nam-jun has been languishing all this time particularly because he is the biggest beneficiary of what has become a high profile show.
As the story unfolds what immediately strikes me about My Royal Nemesis is how derivative it is. Several past dramas come to mind: Mystic Pop-up Bar, Tomorrow, then See You in My 19th Life, Rooftop Prince, Bulgasal and also the vastly underwhelming Moon in the Day. Calling it derivative is not necessarily derogatory if the usual tropes are handled skillfully although it will invite the inevitable comparisons. My Royal Nemesis is entertaining and occasionally amusing but it’s not a particularly sophisticated or polished script considering the ambition driving the storytelling. Stories with dual timelines are very hit and miss which reflects the K drama industry’s track record with time skip shows. This one doesn’t do anything impressive with the temporal device. In fact it relies heavily on the actors to lampshade plotting issues at the cost of wholesale character development.
It turns out that like a lot of K dramas of late, characterization and even plot has become subservient to the theme. As I said in my podcast with absoluteM, the show is thematically self-aware right out of the gate. As it turns out, the show plonks every one of its cards on the proverbial table within the first five episodes. There’s not much mystery to be unravelled and it’s in-your-face about the messaging — the weaving of narrative by vested interests, how public discourse has been controlled and how the so-called “winners” occupy the marketplace of ideas to shape perceptions of public figures. No one would disagree that the technological tools currently at our disposal exacerbate the problems many times over as the jokes about “deep fakes” are meant to illustrate. Furthermore few would dispute that history is far more complex and messy than most would be comfortable with.
Unfortunately theme and plot don’t mesh seamslessly considering there’s plenty of scope for in-depth exploration in a 14-episode drama. There will be some who are tempted to make the romance culpable for the show’s underlying weaknesses but romances are ultimately written by people who lately for reasons only to them are always trying tinker around the edges of the genre — often in a fit of vanity rather than inspired artistry. From the perspective of an audience who lives on a diet of romance, tweaking the romance in a misguided bid for originality usually means changing the recipe needlessly.
Because the romance is the main thing here, it is odd (to this viewer at least) that it’s entire construction is so flimsy that it reflects poorly on Seo-ri’s character development. She’s put through the wash cycle. She alternates between hot and cold depending on what advice she’s getting on the day. Then it’s rinse and repeat because somehow the push and pull must go on. Part of the problem is that she becomes the vehicle of an incoherent diatribe against fatalism. There’s a lot of hair-splitting mumbo jumbo about karma and changing one’s fate that doesn’t seem to be reflected consistently in the loop de loop timey wimey convolutions.
The person I feel most sorry for is Jang Seung-jo. It isn’t because he’s playing a villain again. The problem is that he’s playing a fairly generic K drama villain that the writer wants us to sympathize with. Jang Seung-jo has great chops but in this, his talents are underutilized although I liked Choi Mun-do’s relationship with his son. Even then, there are missed opportunities there. A lot more could have been done also regarding the chairman’s relationships with the biological grandson and the “placeholder” successor. In general it’s a flaw of the show that supporting characters feel like passing ships in the night. They are part of the scenery undoubtedly and for the most part they are just cardboard cutouts that get shifted around to remind us that they exist in this universe. Only Se-gye (Heo Nam-jun) gets the kind of development that is sorely missing for most of the cast.
At the end of the day, My Royal Nemesis offers nothing that hasn’t been seen before elsewhere and in some instances, done better. Mystic Pop-up Bar is a case in point. The humour and tragic aspects there are far better balanced. It even features a similar type of female lead. My Royal Nemesis is not terrible but neither is it memorable. 14 episodes is too long for a story like this one. It’s a one time watch for me and I lament that none of the more interesting aspects of the script get the proper treatment they deserve.
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