The Empire

Korean Drama " The Empire " is a melodrama with a criminal case twist.

The drama blends too many plotlines and genres together, like the family drama, the cheating scandal, the murder mystery, as well as the bonds between the characters. However, it doesn't do a good job doing so. It lacks cohesiveness, as the timelines jumps from one period to another, trying to enhance the suspense, but fails, making things confusing when they are not. The criminal case was lukewarm as well, especially when the finale was revealed.

On the other hand, the performances were quite smooth and enjoyable by everyone in the cast.

So, overall, three out of ten.

I wish the Kdrama industry would grow out of this conglomerate high-class trend, it's been over done to death now and each iteration is worse than its predecessor. In the first episode, the drama had a lot of flashy elements, big bold statements, bloated itself with trendy topics, and cast its net as wide as humanly possible; however, all of that was done and came across as nothing but tacky. Despite boasting a stellar cast, the drama turned out to be a colossal disappointment, a bloated spectacle that collapsed under the weight of its own ambition. Although the drama had a lot going on all the time but the infidelity was always its loudest and trashiest plot, overshadowing everything else. It occupied all of the tension the drama had to offer. There was also this narrative of all "men" are bad that the drama kept pushing for some reason. One more thing, at the end of episode 5, there was a ridiculously comical hacker-like-scene that immediately abandoned the slightest suspension of disbelief the drama ever had. It was a goner at that point.

The series looks at the scandals of a Chaebol family who accumulated vast wealth through their law company. Through the 16 episodes we see the affairs and backstabbing of the family members and how it eventually leads to murder. I thought the cast was excellent and the storyline interesting but my main problem was with the way the story progressed. I thought there were too many flashbacks and the story seemed hurried at times with no real character development. There were a lot of side characters who we learnt little about and often scenes were overly dramatic but having said that the story was interesting enough to see it through.