[REVIEW] MBC TV series “The Duo” - Final Episode

"The Duo" - Monday/Tuesday MBC 9:55 P.M.

"The Duo" [MBC]

Everything returned to where they should be. Mak-soon (Yoon Yoo-sun) accepts Seo-dol’s (Jung In-ki) love for her while Nobleman Kim (Choi Jong-hwan) gives up his post in the government after repenting on his life which his actual son does not embrace. And MBC TV series "The Duo" ended with Chun-dung (Chun Jung-myung) marrying Dal-I (Seo Hyun-jin) and Dong-nyeo (Han Ji-hye) teaching the girls that it is right to use force against corrupted officials. But did they really have force all this into a single episode? “The Duo,” in its early stages, had done an excellent job in linking the epic stories of its various characters to how Chun-dung and Gwi-dong grow and the actions of righteous thieves clan Araejeok, absorbing its viewers even without a central story.

However, the show lost its vigor after taking too long to show how its main characters grow and to reveal the secrets to their births. It simply took too long for Chun-dung, who has witnessed the failure of a civic riot once, to let go of all his doubts before joining Araejeok. It also took a long time for Dong-nyeo as well to figure out her true feelings for Chun-dung and Gwi-dong, whether she was after true love or social status. The conflict the main leads were faced with and the stories surrouding the supporting characters that once worked so well together, started to shake which led “The Duo” to lose its merit which came from how they told of the lives of commoners from various perspectives. Although they made the right choice in writing about the civic riot which helped the drama steer away from becoming the typical heroic epic, there was still no reason to have the main characters mature at such a slow pace.

Given that, even though Chun-dung died and the civic riot ended in a failure which still managed to evoke a bit of awareness and change in people, the conclusion of this drama is probably more exemplary than tragic. The real tragedy of this show is that it just rushed through that exemplary ending which gave viewers no time to digest it -- even when it was granted a full 32 episodes worth of air time.

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Lee Seung-Han fourteen@
Editor : Heidi Kim heidikim@
Editor : Jessica Kim jesskim@