The Scholar Who Walks the Night

I got the feeling the writer was fired around episode 12 of this mess as suddenly the writing improved so much. Prior to this every episode was nothing but the horrendously bad *dressed as a boy* female lead and her unconvincing romance with Lee Joon Gi. The plot was a mess and I thought I would go mad if they mentioned the 'Lustful Student' one more time. The plot was something to do with finding the way to destroy Gwi, the world's sexiest babe vampire, played by Lee Soo Hyuk.

Lee spends his time in a dank cave wearing sexy open robes and showing his chest. His presence is so mind numbingly sexual I can't really find the words. I think the programme makers knew this and yet decided to make his play second fiddle to Lee Joon Gi's Rudolf Valentino routine as the 'good vampire'.

The last few episodes are a massive improvement so I suggest fast forwarding a lot of the early stuff and getting to the nitty gritty after around episode 11.

Why or why couldn't Lee SH have gone to the US and introduced his extreme appeal onto a western audience? One of life's crimes.

Had I rated before the tenth episode, it would have been a 5, maybe 6. The acting above all felt shallow and lame. The male lead, whose character is supposed to live in hell, perpetually torn between his human heart and his vampire instinct, could not convey those affects. Gwi was so handsome I wanted to die (or get bitten), but his face was still, expressionless, a pity. He could, should, have been sexier, naughtier, mightier. The staging didn't help either. It felt fake and cheap. In a vampire story everything else has to look real so we can believe that vampires exist, at least whilst watching.

Then came the tenth episode. For some reason, almost everything improved. Or I just got used to it? Anyhow, I started to really enjoy the show. There was a scene (can't remember the episode) with a young girl hurrying over to help the fallen scholar. Tears gushed out. After that, I got seriously hooked. It was like a spell, with the beautiful song "Love You Again" highlighting" the romance.

The ending was moving too. I like that Gwi, even though he didn't have a human heart, knew what it meant to be a decent human. And I felt for him. Basically, he is the main reason why I managed to bear until episode 10.

So, if you can see this as a fairytale and not pour too much expectations in it, you may like it, even love it.

This show was about halfway there to a really good show, hence my rating. First what was good: the concept/story was interesting and original. Some of the CGI was decent, like wounds healing and the cool blurry-super fast running. Most of the time the acting was really good. Lee Yoo-Bi as the adorable Jo Yang-Sun was a lovely breath of fresh air, a female lead who was ridiculously cute and pretty and just so easy to like - I felt like I was falling in love with her myself, so I could see why Kim Sung Yul did too. She was also a very good actress! Lee Joon-Gi is great in everything he does, and he really gave it his all in this, but there were certain scenes that just felt super cringy, although I feel like that was more the fault of the directing and writing than his acting.

The star for me was actually Lee Soo-Yuk as the evil vampire Gwi - he was INCREDIBLE and honestly stole the whole show. His character was enigmatic, ruthless, sexy, and cunning, coupled with an incredible look (the hair+wardrobe+makeup was stunning!) combined to create the most interesting character in the show. I actually would have loved to have seen a flashback episode of his character.

Now for the bad: there were a LOT of silly/cheesy scenes in this. The angst was almost too much for even me, and I love me some angst. Also most of the music was terrible - there were a few background music pieces that were good, but most of the time a serious and well acted scene would feel overacted and over-dramatic because of a bad song. There were a few really bad CGI scenes as well. Rounding all this out my rating is a 5. Most of that rating is because of how much I loved Gwi. However, I will say that once I accepted the fact that this show was going to be a bit silly, I found myself enjoying it.

This show does every thing a little better than the normal costume k-drama. The essential revenge-plot while obvious, holds suspense throughout thanks to a truly magical villain and title character. If you like a supernatural drama, it does not get better. This thanks to a production that holds a loving attention to detail that simply does not occur in increasingly vapid western vampire dramas. The melodrama is strong and unabashed and truly gothic, even though dressed as it is in delicious hanbok. The music is very strong and underscores the drama perfectly throughout. A little too weak/innocent/optimistic female lead is perhaps the only tiny scratch in the otherwise perfect show but there are other female characters that are deeper and more interesting so in the end it's all so very satisfying and a true feast for the eyes, ears and feels. A true sign of its quality is that it is equally delectable on second viewing. (Normally one is quite worn out by the slow build and obvious feel-stalling of a k-drama by the time it ends...) When it ended I immediately started over.

The poorly written prologue wasn't a good sign going into this drama. The leads didn't develop their relationship naturally, most of what we got to signify their romance was long dreamy stares. That's pure lazy writing. This what their romance was based off which made it hard to care about their romance, let alone their unmatched chemistry. If we were to ignore the romance, then we are left with the vampires which were equally lacking. The pacing of the storyline seemed uneven, resulting in moments of sluggishness followed by rushed progress. The bad guy barely showed up in the first half. Although I didn't expect much but the ending was just too boring.