Letter #46: Kingdom

Good morning, Erin.
 
Christmas shopping? Done. Tree decoration? Done. My annual viewing of Last Christmas? Done.
 
So, all that’s left is pretending I’m not totally alone in my apartment with no one to talk to by taking notes every time something I’m watching inspires a thought—which brings us to Kingdom and you and this letter! (And then…done!)
 
I love it when a plan comes together.
 
I also love Kingdom, a historical drama that happens to take place during the zombie apocalypse, so let’s have a little chat about that (no spoilers), shall we?
 
1. Holy cow did I like this show. I mean, it’s The Walking Dead but Game of Thrones—and in a way that, like Oreo cheesecake, manages to be better than either of its component parts. (Unless you don’t like zombies or cheesecake, in which case neither is going to seem like much of an improvement.) Compelling plot and solid characters. Excellent story pacing. Episodes are generally about 45 minutes long, so they speed by. There are only 12 episodes (with more coming in the future), which also makes it a quick binge—and, despite the promise of more to come, the 12 available episodes (which count for two seasons) form one complete story, so it’s a complete viewing experience as-is.
 
1A. As I mentioned, there’s going to be at least a third season forthcoming, and they clearly set this up at the end of the second season. And then set it up further with a (dull and somewhat infuriating) 90-minute special episode about (who I imagine will be) the upcoming antagonist. But, despite the excellent track record over the first two seasons, I was not left with excitement at the prospect of this probable conflict. It feels a bit tacked-on, given how the story resolves itself—but that’s not even one of my concerns. No, it’s the new antagonist and what the plan for her looks like it’s going to be. I mean, maybe I’m wrong and they won’t choose the obvious storyline that they seem poised to unleash. But…well, I’ll believe it when I see it. Which I hope will be sooner than later. 
 
2. The zombie stuff is pretty darn clever, if you ask me. I can’t promise it always makes sense, even when they explain it (potentially because they explain it…or maybe just how they choose to explain it), but it’s still pretty darn clever. 
 
3. One of the great things about the characters is that none is strictly a good guy or a bad guy. (Well, none is strictly a good guy, at least.) Everyone has his or her own reasons for doing what he or she does, and those reasons typically make perfect sense for those characters. Which is nice to see. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for stalwart and true heroes and malevolent bad guys, but that doesn’t carry as much weight if the writing for those kinds of characters doesn’t make their motivations and decisions internally consistent. 
 
4. I think my favorite thing about this show is that it does ALL the cliche historical drama stuff, especially early on: scheming First Counselor, daughter of scheming First Counselor is newly-married to the king, the Crown Prince is the noble leader the kingdom needs, everybody’s dressed the same and has the same facial hair so it’s impossible to tell who anyone is—all the greatest hits! And then the zombies start. But the tropes are like, “Nah, dude, we gon’ keep on tropin’.” And it’s fantastic. 
 
5. This show has some of the smoothest expository dialogue I’ve ever seen. 
 
6. My favorite character is what I’d describe as a nurse, but the show refers to her as a “female physician.” I mean, she seems to be a generalized “healer” rather than a studied doctor, and she seemed to be performing more nurse-y (or maybe physician’s assistant-y) duties, as far as I could see, rather than making diagnoses and the like. So I wonder if “female physician” is a literal translation or, like, a rank (of sorts) or…I dunno, it just seemed strange. No one seemed surprised that a woman was practicing medicine, so it didn’t feel like a distinctly sexist description, though the implication of such (that is, that it is in some way necessary to repeatedly note that she is a woman) might have been assumed on the part of the Korean audience in a way that it was not by me. Who knows. I just kept calling her “Nurse” in my notes, because that seemed to be the closest description of her function. (Again, outside of “healer.”) 
 
6A. Regardless, she was cool, and I liked her very much. 
 
7. To that end (being cool, I mean), it was a nice touch that every major character in the show got at least one moment to do something totally badass. 
 
8. This show is not afraid to…go places. Nothing too terrible—or, rather, not too terrible to sit through. But there are some grim moments and events that you wouldn’t normally see on a show. Just…FYI.
 
9. But, don’t worry, they even manage some standard romcom moments. Which you’d think wouldn’t have a place in this kind of story—but it does. And it’s pretty great. 
 
10. There is a point at which our squad of protagonists consists of a 60-year-old retired soldier, a 45-year-old chubby palace guard, and the reasonably pampered Crown Prince…and the show wants us to believe they each have the same endless stamina of the super-elite young soldiers. And, past a certain point, it becomes a little silly. Not game-breaking, but still silly. 
 
11. I think pretty much everything in the show is set up in advance of its payoff. And mostly without any amount of fanfare to let you know that those things are setups for stuff coming later on. 
 
12. My second-favorite character was probably the magistrate. Just for the record. 
 
13. And we’ll end with ye olde list o’ folks I recognized:

• the protagonist science lady from The Silent Sea as the nurse

• the wheelchair guy from Sweet Home as the Crown Prince’s personal guard

• CEO Ma from Because This is My First Life as an investigator 

• little Nam Do-san from Start-Up/little Mr. Koo from Hotel Del Luna as a young boy

• Glasses Lawyer from Vincenzo as an exiled man

• the main girl from My Love from the Star as the (I assume) Season 3 antagonist

 
Which is all there is to say about that. Well, except, of course, that you should tooootally watch it. 
 
Now, as I was in the middle of working on this, we appear to have (too quickly, in my opinion) reached the Christmas break, whereupon you have graciously prepared me a list to keep myself occupied (and whereupon I once again must retreat to your YouTube videos to keep me company at work).
 
Which means this will be the first in the bundle of self-important ramblings I will have presented to you upon your return. So, let me take the opportunity to officially hope you had a great break, that it was full of…I dunno, all the greatest things you could have gotten out of it—plus one or two things that were just unprecedentedly fantastic. I want you to have had such a good break that I am absolutely sick with jealousy over it. I think you’ve earned that. 
 
—Daryl