Reaction shot: Kingdom episode 5 (or, GODDAMMIT BEOM-PAL)

[spindizzy]

• Is she trying to wash the blood out of her clothes? I can't tell because this scene is super dark on my laptop.


• Mu-yeong trying to reassure him and remind him that he COMMITTED TREASON in order to stay alive! Bless Mu-yeong, it is the weirdest tack to take for reassurance, but also is kinda appropriate?


• "I wanted to be different. I wanted to be different from those who abandoned the weak."
  "And you were."
  I love Seo-bi. She says something blindingly sincere, and then leaves.


• Seo-bi, have you considered that maybe going off to look for herbs alone, in the dark, in the woods, when no one knows where you are, is possibly a bad plan?


• I still haven't looked up what that thing she's digging up herbs with is. Whoops.


• When Mu-yeong said "We still don't know his name!" I did have a brief horrified moment of "Wait, is it not Yeong-sin?!" IT'S FINE, IT'S FINE, IT'S THE NAME HE'S USING, IT'S JUST BLATANTLY A FAKE ID. COOL.


• And the Crown Prince is just like "Yes, yes, he is dangerous enough to kill all of us in our sleep, but he's USEFUL."


• Okay, the current in-universe speculation on where he got his rifle skills is that he was a member of the Chakho, who apparently hunted tigers. Which I guess explains his skills? And why he gives NOT A SINGLE FUCK about danger? But also it's kinda cool that this group apparently are selected solely for their fighting skills, rather than class or other drama.


• I'm just saying, telling a man beating himself up for doing what he had to do to survive that the man you want him to distrust would ALSO do whatever he had to to survive? Probably counter-productive.


• Listen, Yeong-sin is competent and I love him. And also he needs a nap, because I think all of them have been going for three days straight with no rest.


• That sounded like zombies. Oh no.


• SEO-BI GOING INTO THE WOODS ALONE WAS A TERRIBLE PLAN.


• LOOK AT HER GRABBING HER TOOLS AND GETTING READY TO FIGHT BACK, I LOVE HER. She is being brave! Even if she does end up screaming into the rest of the party because women in media!


• (I find it interesting that she takes cover behind the Crown Prince. HM.)


• Also I want to know what happened to her torch that she didn't set the entire forest on fire.


• It's Beom-pal! Hi! YOU ARE SO GODDAMN LUCKY THAT YEONG-SIN DIDN'T SHOOT YOU ON GENERAL PRINCIPLE!


• Beom-pal: Your highness?
  Crown Prince: *kicks him twice and steps on his face*


• "He is not worth killing" is fucking damning.


• The way everyone reacts when he says "The disease spread on the ship!" is pretty good.


• BEOM-PAL WHY DID YOU LISTEN TO THE CUNTPUFFIN, YOU HAVE SERIOUSLY MADE ERRORS THERE.


• Congratulations on depriving everyone of ANOTHER night of sleep.


• Also I don't know that I trust that the Cuntpuffin is dead, he seems like the sort of character who would definitely come back another day.


• ... Oh no, there he is! Definitely a zombie! I approve!


• Where did they get the extra horse from?!


• I am so suspicious of everything. So suspicious. Like, full-on "Can any of us truly believe that things aren't terrible in this setting?"


• There hasn't been a messenger! GOD DAMMIT BEOM-PAL.


• THAT was a very significant pause. I guess we found the person who knows the true extent of the plot! And how to kill zombies!


• "I am leaving the mountain" is an excellent dramatic declaration. I may use it to announce myself.


• Man, the salespeople work FAST in capitalising on rumours. Damn.


• Wow, everything just STOPS for him, that is impressive.


• Okay, the ship full of rich people ran aground near where the plot is going. Got it.


• At least they let Beom-pal scrub up so that he wasn't actually wandering around still coated in the blood of every rich person in Dongnae.


• That is. A lot of blood. I'm just saying.


• Stoic Grandma, you really should not have – holy shit that box is full of blood. And scratchmarks. And mainly blood.


• "The floors and walls are covered in blood, so where are the injured or the dead?" Oh noooooo.


• Look at them finally having food! And pork that is definitely pork rather than, y'know, human flesh.


• "That's odd. People die in the famine, yet they eat pork and rice."
  DEFINITELY NOTHING SUSPICIOUS HERE.


• Of course you recognise your own fabrics. And OF COURSE you brought a bunch of fancy fabrics in the cargo space that you could have used for MORE PEOPLE YOU GREEDY TWO-BIT SON OF A GLITCH.


• Like, I know that I can't blame the zombie apocalypse on Beom-pal, but by god I can blame some of the deaths on him and the Cuntpuffin.


• ... Also I'm kinda impressed that he just hustled up to the hut to see what was there, but I'm guessing that's because he still doesn't actually understand his own mortality.


• "Lessening" their punishments is not going to end well for you, friend.


• Hello, is that the sun going down?


• Gotta wonder why they brought tools with them, ngl. And why it takes so many people to lead them away.


• The shot of the villagers all standing stock still, ready to act? Yesssss, we like this.


• Beom-pal you idiot.


• And now we're back to the basic principle of blackmail, which is NEVER COMMIT A WORSE CRIME TO COVER UP A LESSER CRIME, COME ON.


• "Do you know who you're addressing?" ... Do they care?


• Man, if he'd just rolled with "I don't care about the thefts" to begin with, they wouldn't have so many problems.


• "Where are the bodies?"
  "You're stepping on them."
  OH, OH THAT IS REALLY WELL DONE AND A TERRIBLE PLAN.


• Suspiciously quick sunset: engage!


• Oh that growling is probably fine. There is definitely no problem with the grass growling at you.


• Oh, he has a lighter! That's really cool!


• "If you wish to live, raise your weapons and behead them all."


• The separate flattened areas full of corpses are great for, y'know, letting us know where the zombies are coming from while having the certainty that everyone we care about is going to die.


• It's still mostly light out! I just noticed!


• Also I don't know that I could recognise any of these people by their clothes so I'm just going to assume they got the same actors in to be their own zombies.


• (Is there a satisfaction in the rich dying twice due to their own arrogance and self-importance? WHO COULD SAY.)


• The fact that Yeong-sin is going into melee with the zombies is kinda great, especially because he went for a takedown that COULD HAVE KILLED HIM if he fucked it up.


• ... Beom-pal, did you try to repel a zombie with a decapitated corpse. Did you leave Seo-bi to try to fend the zombies off with her tiny sickle-thing? SHE IS SO BRAVE AND DESERVES SO MUCH BETTER THAN PROTECTING
  YOU.


• MU-YEONG NO – okay, it's fine, it's fine, he's fine, he literally just grabbed a zombie BY THE FACE while it was on top of him so that he could cut its head off more easily. THIS IS FINE.


• I LOVE ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS AND I'M SO WORRIED FOR THEM IN THIS FIGHT.


• Yeong-sin is down to taking them out with sickles and whatever he can grab off the floor, oh no.


• Oh, no, there we go, there's the sunset.


• Oh no, LEE CHANG GET UP, GET UP, GET UP


• Oh wow, who's firing those?! Who's setting the fields on fire?


• THE ZOMBIE HUNTERS ARE HERE OH THANK GOODNESS THEY CAN SAVE THE DAY!


• The ones who use hooked spears to trap/behead zombies are so clever, that's a great idea!


• How are more of the fields not burning? (Also that entire village is going to die because their crops burned.)


• THE CROWN PRINCE JUST REALISED WHO HAS COME TO HIS RESCUE AND I AM YELLING.


• Seriously, I don't have the visual lexicon to go "Ah, this is a flashback," until a character I recognise shows up. Whoops.


• Aw, bless baby Lee Chang, he is so small and cute and SOMEONE FINALLY GAVE HIM A HUG BECAUSE HE NEEDED ONE. Like, seriously, he is a tiny child who went to hide in a hole because he misses his mother and is worried that he's going to die, he DEFINITELY needed that hug!


• "You are not supposed to be here. This is definitely not where you should be." So we're all agreed that Ahn Hyeon is talking about both the hole in the ground AND the palace, right? Like, we've accepted that is a
  thing?


• And Ahn Hyeon is looking after him, but not letting him escape, ahhhhh.


• "The King has received a stack of letters that claim your deposition. To make it worse, there is no one in the palace who can protect you. So... You must protect yourself." I don't know whether this is making me want to yell more because of the acknowledgement of the role his mother would have played in keeping him safe and scheming on his behalf until he is capable of doing politics himself (SERIOUSLY WATCH NIRVANA IN FIRE, IT IS SO GOOD AT THAT.), or if I'm yelling because THIS CHILD IS MAYBE SEVEN AND YOU'RE TELLING HIM TO PROTECT HIMSELF IN A PALACE FULL OF ADULTS WHO HATE HIM.


• "Your highness is trying to protect not just your own life. You're in a battle against injustice." Knowing from being a tiny child that people are going to want to use and manipulate you, and that your only hope of making things right is to a) not let them, and b) be better at this game than them? I AM SO SAD FOR HIM.


• Ahn Hyeon ending the fight and bowing to the Crown Prince is giving me SUCH FEELINGS OH MY GOD.


• "Show your respects! He is the Crown Prince, the heir to the throne!" HIS FATHER FIGURE BELIEVES IN HIM AND ACKNOWLEDGES HIM AS HEIR TO THE THRONE, WHICH NO ONE ELSE IN A POSITION OF POWER HAS DARED TO DO.


• "It has been a while, Master." *PUNCHES A PILLOW BECAUSE OF FEELINGS*


• Oh, he did remember to grab the physician's notes on his way out! And look at him as he says that his father has died, look at the way he hesitates. :(


• "Cho Hak-ju is as monstrous as ever," oh no, everyone knows that he is a a monster and no one can stop him.


• Look at him desperately appealing to his father figure with his plan, oh bless him.


• "When was the last time you had some sleep?"
  "What do you mean?"
  "Have you come all this way despite the hunger and dishevelled appearance?"
  I'm gonna be honest, I was with him until he got to the clothes thing, because someone truly needs to make this man have a nap. BUT LOOK AT HIS TEACHER STILL BEING A TEACHER AT HIM, AND TRYING TO TELL HIM HE'S SAFE
  HERE. *wails*


• "Don't you find it odd? Neither Lord Ahn Hyeon nor his servants were alarmed at the sight of the ill." I don't know if I ever told you my theory than Ahn Hyeon is actually also a zombie, but here we are.


• "It's as if they knew about the infected," Seo-bi says, and Mu-yeong looks like horrible realisations have struck him.


• Wow, the thing that gets an actual reaction out of the Crown Prince is the suggestion that Ahn Hyeon is involved with the Haewon Cho clan. INTERESTING.


• Yes, please, all of you sleep, I think all of you are running on three to four days of adrenaline.


• I was so sure he was going to burn the patient record then. SO SURE.


• I am now FUNDAMENTALLY SUSPICIOUS of any scene involving someone eating meat, which I'm sure the showrunners not only know, but intended for in the way they shoot things, but also OH MY GOD.


• Is that the same guy as was in the plank? I really hope it wasn't.


• OH NO. WE ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEAT IS.


• OF COURSE Cho Hak-ju is watching the whole thing. Of course.


• The fact that those guards can watch that with an expression of mild curiousity says QUITE A LOT about them.


• Okay, so they eat people until the people are dead, and then they go for the living? Hmmm.


• Also, kudos to the guy playing that zombie because THAT IS SO GRIM.


• (Is the detaching to comment on the quality of the acting a way to make things less scary and/or tense? All signs point to yes!)


• OH NO, NOW CHO HAK-JU KNOWS THAT THE ZOMBIES CAN CREATE MORE ZOMBIES. OH NO.


• Wait, the guy they fed the meat to wasn't chained down, but the potential victim was. And where did they find out this idea of feeding zombie flesh to someone anyway. And whose flesh is that?!


• Oh I am so worried about the way he says contained. Dislike. Downvote. Unsubscribe.


• Bless Yeong-sin, he has that reflex of waking up and not moving until he's sure he's safe, and he's just curled into such a tiny ball while everyone around him sprawls out and hoards the bedding.


• Yeong-sin, where are you going. Yeong-sin. Why are you staging an escape and why is Lord Ahn Hyeon watching you.


• You know, there's a whole lot of character work done in three seconds of a man spitting on a memorial to commemorate specifically "the victory of Governor Ahn Hyeon".


• ... I feel like there's a hell of a lot more to the story than "Oh, yeah, he defeated 30,000 soldiers with only 500 soldiers of his own!"


• Oh wow, that place is DESTROYED. Do you think he was expecting Sumang Village to still be standing? Or that this is what he expected?


• Oh wow, that's a child and they're messed up. What the hell.


• Yeong-sin looks so much less done with everything in the flashback, even though things were CLEARLY TERRIBLE there. Oh bless him.


• Holy shit that's so many graves. And I'm assuming he's most suspicious of the fact that there's incense burning? So there's at least one survivor, or one person who gave enough of a damn about the injured that they keep burning incense. GOT IT.


• BYEOM-PAL YOU UTTER DISASTER WHAT ON EARTH DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?


• YOU OF ALL PEOPLE DO NOT GET TO BE EXCITED ABOUT ALL OF YOUR STUFF ARRIVING WHEN THAT IS STUFF SENT AT THE EXPENSE OF PEOPLE.


• (I'm assuming that that parcel is something dodgy, something for Seo-bi, or both. Bless that disaster man but someone please give him the sense the universe gave an egg sandwich.)


• That messenger? The person he's speaking to? ALSO super done with Beom-pal's nonsense.


• Okay, so they caught most of the zombies that are heading north. GOOD.


• OH, the dude there knew that the ship was coming, and that's why he's putting up with Beom-pal but doesn't know for SURE that the Crown Prince is there.


• Ohhhhhhh no. Why are the armies marching.


• WELP. If they ARE coming to arrest the Crown Prince, they maybe brought the right number of dudes.


• (Everyone looks like they're doing so much better after ACTUALLY GETTING SOME SLEEP AND A BATH.)


• Beom-pal you idiot. I can't believe you thought that Seo-bi would actually go for that.


• "Are you running away again?!" CRUSH HIM SEO-BI, CRUSH HIM.


• "His Highness went through hoops to save the people that you abandoned, but here you are turning your back on him again. Is it really hard for you to show bravery once in your life?" Listen, Beom-pal, you
  don't have the excuse of the Cuntpuffin being there to give you bad advice anymore. You are seriously going to have own whatever you do now. DON'T LET ME DOWN.


• I love Seo-bi, she's so quiet and angrily insightful, it's great.


• OH NO MORE MEAT.


• Although here we go, here's where most of the female characters in this series are! Look at all of them being happy together! There is definitely nothing terrible waiting for them!


• Okay, so a secret mysterious benefactor has set up a free home for the care and feeding of pregnant women with no families. ... I'm not gonna lie, this is where the dominos started tipping over about the queen, because I'm just like "Okay, if she's not a hundred percent certain she's going to give birth to a son, I could absolutely see her keeping a supply of babies close to hand." I AM SO WORRIED FOR ALL OF THESE WOMEN.


• Listen, all of these women are good and have their priorities right and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.


• "My husband told me to be here." ... Wait.


• "My husband is the Crown Prince's guard," OH NO YOU ARE MU-YEONG'S BEAUTIFUL WIFE WHICH MEANS THAT SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU AND YOUR CHILD IS GOING TO BE STOLEN BY THE HAEWON CHO CLAN! NO, RUN! YOU DESERVE SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS!


• Look at how she's rolling her eyes at him being worried! I love her!


• Oh hey, look, we actually get to see someone putting make-up on a LIVING person for a change.


• That outfit is SO FANCY AND ELABORATE. I've never been one to be like "Oh, I'm into historical stuff for the clothes" but I COULD ABSOLUTELY CHANGE THAT VIEW.


• She is just shedding servants at every barrier.


• I love the music and the way this is shot, it feels so GRAND. Which is kinda as it should be considering she's, y'know, THE QUEEN and a linchpin for so many plots.


• All of this is fancy. All of this is beautiful. This set must have cost SO MUCH.


• OH, she has her own chair, I thought they were going to move the screen, but no, they were prepared for this.


• She definitely has the face of someone who wants the biggest throne.


• And that's DEFINITELY a ruling from her, DEFINITELY not Cho Hak-ju putting words into her mouth.


• "Which is why I shall brace myself and take over as Queen Regent." That is pretty much her win condition right there, isn't it? I can respect that, even if I am SO PARANOID about everything to do with this madness.


• So she's the Queen Regent, but she can still only speak through others? Do I understand the politics of what's happening there?


• (I NEED TO READ SO MANY HISTORY BOOKS, OH MY GOD.)


• So the five armies are supposed to be suppressing the disease? Not arresting the Crown Prince?


• ... I expected them to march right through the gates, but NOPE. SEIGE.


• "The western and eastern part of Gyeongsang will be sealed off." WHAT. You can DO that?! WHAT!


• OH, and not everyone marching out knew what was happening?! OH NO.


• WHY DO YOUR GATES CLOSE FROM THE OUTSIDE IN okay I guess because if you're leaving in a hurry you'll be pressing out instead of in but COME ON MY DUDES THIS IS GENUINELY A PROBLEM HERE.


• That short of him firing through the closing gate was VERY COOL.


• In fact this entire thing of all the gates closing and all the paths being barricaded look SO GOOD, it's a shame that it's because Cho Hak-ju wants to murder everyone.


• The way she looks at the camera then is just *chef's kiss*


• SO YEAH I LOVE THIS SHOW BUT EVERYTHING IS GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET AND THERE IS ONLY ONE EPISODE LEFT.

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