Bullet Point Review: 100 Days My Prince

Spoilers Ahead…

• 100 Days My Prince begins with a coup. A supposed tyrant is dethroned and his younger brother (Jo Han Chul) takes the throne. But in this process, the new king loses his wife, and his son, Lee Yul loses his mother and the girl he had just professed to marry. Like how most sagueks go, at the end of the bloody coup, the young boy finds himself the crown prince of the nation, and the girl, now an orphan, is in hiding. One part of this seems predictable — the boy and girl will soon have to meet as adults and fall in love once again. However, I was intrigued by the political portion of the drama — where will the story go from here? In most sagueks, this coup and its planning and implementation would be the main plot, but with this achieved in less than an episode, what was the drama going to be about?
• I never watch trailers, so after two excellent episodes in the palace, I was initially put off by the change in location and was miffed that a smart prince was turned into an amnesiac commoner! (My brain was like, AMNESIA! This story could have gone anyway, and you chose memory loss as the major plot point!) Despite some initial scepticism, my reservations were laid to rest, mainly on account of Do Kyung Soo’s (or D.O., as us EXO-Ls know him as) fantastic performance. Though he loses his memory, he still retains all the bearings of a prince. He stands with his back straight, his walk is purposeful, his noble Hanyang dialect intact, and his catchphrase, ‘Oh Ho! Am I the only one feeling uncomfortable?’ is still in use.
  But outside the palace, without the fine robes and servants, he comes off as demanding, spoilt and difficult and yet there is an endearing quality to him. Yes, he does constantly complain. He doesn’t do any of the household chores, and he even takes a loan from a loan shark to redecorate the humble hut to his liking. But instead of a spoilt prince, I saw someone trying to grasp parts of his former life, through his various demands and purchases.

• The shift harks back to when Hong Shim/Yoon Yi Seo (played by Nam Ji Hyun) teaches the prince, that royals shouldn’t only care about the nobles, but the commoners as well. In the subsequent years of the coup, in order to survive the cold palace life, the prince forgets this lesson. But this change of identity not only lets him witness the problems commoners face (from ridiculous laws, that forces all the single people in the kingdom to be married to increase the chances of rain, or expecting a mountainside village to sell salt to the palace to the commoners constantly being threatened to be sold off as slaves) but also provide solutions to them.
• This also shows the disconnect the palace has from the lives and troubles of the commoners. As people are struggling to find food to eat (a running joke is how Hong Shim hasn’t pooped in ten days, as she hasn’t had anything to eat), the palace still orders the villages to contribute their produce to the palace, and despite a severe drought, many of the nobles still take baths in large tubs of hot water.
  Similarly, the conspiracies that takes place parallelly, upon the disappearance of the prince, feel pointless in contrast to the difficulties the commoners are facing. So, letting the prince experience these problems first-hand, gives him a greater chance of being a better and more understanding king than his father.
• Sadly, these teachings don’t get any resolution. Once the prince is back in the palace (after a whooping 12 episodes), the focus shifts back to him reclaiming his memory through a treasure hunt of sorts. While I did enjoy this, I also wanted to see what changes he would have implemented in the kingdom, now that he has lived the life of a commoner. Except for a comment on why he is served so many side dishes, and how lonely and isolating the palace is, we don’t get much of a reflection from him.
• This is my only gripe with the show. It was definitely funny and heart-warming and I enjoyed this drama a lot, but the pay-offs were underwhelming (especially for a villain as treacherous as Kim Cha Eon, played by Cho Seong Ha). With each episode, running for over an hour and being a pre-produced drama, some themes and characters could have been developed more, like the theme of resentment, and the king and the crown prince’s relationship and the crown princess’s (Han So Hee) relationship with Moo Yeon (Kim Jae Young).