Snow White's Revenge/Scandal (2024)

 

It is difficult to write about Snow White’s Revenge without bringing up the ending, so readers beware, this review will contain spoilers. Without mincing words, the ending is awful and even manages to negate the entire series, but I will get to that later.

Snow White’s Revenge is your standard revenge melodrama – a young woman, Baek Seol-ah, seeks revenge on two people responsible for her father’s death, Moon Gyeong-sook and her husband, Min Tae-chang. It should be noted the very episode begins with the death of Gyeong-sook. The cast and crew are holding the wrap party for the hit TV show, Poker Face, and throughout the course of the episode, Gyeon-sook has all sorts of unpleasant encounters with various characters (Seol-ah, Min Tae-chang, Joo-ryun, and a women she fired) and she goes up to the rooftop to get some air. She decides to reenact Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the King of the World” moment from Titanic and stands on the ledge of the building. It seems someone has followed her up the rooftop, because she looks behind her and then falls to her death. This shocking opening has the audience asking all sorts of questions: Who killed this woman? What was the motive? What are the relationships between the characters? It’s an interesting way to begin a series, but it so gives the series an anti-climactic feel, because we already know Gyeon-sook’s fate before the story begins.  

When Seol-ah was eight years-old, Gyeong-sook married Seol-ah’s father, a kindly doctor named Baek Dong-ho. At first, the young Seol-ah was elated to have a stepmother – she has no memories of her biological mother, who died when she was a toddler. As the series’ title suggests, Gyeong-sook turned out to be a wicked stepmother.  Her marriage to Dong-ho was a sham, arranged by Min Tae-chang (who was then a police office) to fleece the good doctor out of his fortune. When Dong-ho spotted the two of them walking out of a hotel together, it led to a confrontation. Gyeong-sook drugged the doctor with a sleeping pill and he was then suffocated to death in his sleep (the show is ambiguous as to who carried out the murder).  They then threatened Dong-ho’s colleague, Kwon Young-seok, to write that Dong-ho died of heart failure on the death certificate. Unbeknownst to them, Seol-ah witnessed her father’s murder. Fearing for her own life, Seol-ah ran away from home and wound up at an orphanage, where she befriended Seo Jin-ho (who would become her lover) and Go Eun-byeol. She eventually contacted her father’s maid, Choi Mi-sun, who would take in Seol-ah and raise her as her own daughter. This is a simple set up (most K-dramas are very convoluted in their set ups) and the early episodes are effective in establishing tone and character relationships.

Flash forward to twenty-two years later – Seol-ah and Jin-ho are still in love. Seol-ah is pregnant with his child and two of them become engaged. Seol-ah is an aspiring screenwriter (who writes under the pen name, Park Jin-gyung) who just submitted her script called Poker Face to a screenwriting competition.  Jin-ho is an aspiring actor, who can’t catch his break (his short temper often prevents him from getting gigs). Meanwhile, with the money she stole from Dong-ho (including Seol-ah’s inheritance), Gyeon-sook (who now uses the name Moon Jeong-in) has started Jeongin Entertainment, and hopes to become a major player in the industry. Her husband, Min Tae-chang, is the chairman of Jeongin’s parent company, Mind Trading Company. Their daughter, Min Joo-ryun, is the head of Jeongin Entertainment. Gyeon-sook scores a major coup when she signs well-renowned filmmaker, Na Hyun-woo, to direct her first TV drama. Hyun-woo has read Seol-ah’s script and decides he wants to direct it. Meanwhile, Min Joo-ryun takes an interest in Jin-ho and wants to groom him into a famous actor. It turns out that Jin-ho greatly resembles Gyeon-sook’s first love, Woo-jin, and she wonders if he could potentially be her long-lost son (who she believed died during childbirth). Despite the strong resemblance, Gyeon-sook doesn’t like Jin-ho and initially rejects her daughter’s plan to groom him into a star. 

She changes her mind after she accidentally hits Jin-ho with her car and he loses his memories – realizing she has a blank slate to work with, she decides to help Joo-ryun groom Jin-ho into a star. She gives him the name of her first love, Joo Woo-jin, and then shops him around the industry. Her persistence pays off when Jin-ho/Woo-jin lands a gig for an ice cream company. His ad is a huge success and Gyeon-sook uses this momentum to get him the lead role in Poker Face, the same drama that is written by his fiancée, Baek Seol-ah. Joo-ryun, who is infatuated with Jin-ho, lies by telling him that before he lost his memory, they were engaged to one another. Jin-ho can only take her word for it.

 

Meanwhile, after Jin-ho failed to show up for their wedding, Seol-ah begins to assume the worse.  She becomes so distraught that she suffers a miscarriage. After not hearing from Jin-ho for weeks, she is shocked to see him on television shilling for an ice cream company. She initially believes Jin-ho has betrayed her but after she meets him in person, she realizes that he is suffering from amnesia and decides she will support him through this ordeal. Her script for Poker Face has become a hot property, with various studios interested in producing. When she meets with Director Na to discuss her contract, she makes three demands: it must be produced by Jeongin Entertainment; Jin-ho/Woo-jin must be the lead actor; and she is to have complete control over the script. Director Na is so eager to direct Poker Face that he agrees to the demands. Gyeon-sook can’t believe that Director Na would give so much leverage to a rookie writer but also can’t argue with the hype surrounding the series. She is also oblivious to the true identity of the writer, because of Seol-ah’s pen name, Park Jin-gyung.

In one of Snow White’s Revenge more interesting twists, Jin-ho, the lead male, does a full heal turn. He regains his memory, but decides to abandon Seol-ah, and stay with Joo-ryun and Jeong-in/Gyeong-sook. In most K-dramas when the lead male pushes away the lead female, it is usually for selfless reasons; he is either trying to protect her, or he believes that he is a burden on her life and that she would be better off without him. Jin-ho, on the other hand, is motivated by pure selfishness. This is his chance to achieve his dream at stardom, and he straight up tells Seol-ah that she is a hindrance to his success, and that he wants to forget about his past.  When she throws an insult his way, he gets enraged and slaps her. I want you to remember this part, because it makes the ending even more baffling. It is established that Jin-ho has a short temper and it is one of the reasons why he has struggled to find a job. The entire second half completely forgets about this character trait and he turns into Gyeon-sook’s bitch. It also wasn’t a particularly smart move to insult the writer of the drama he stars in, because he later finds out that Seol-ah is free to do whatever she wants with his character.

When I say that Jin-ho becomes Gyeon-sook’s bitch, I’m not exaggerating – to court potential investors, Gyeon-sook pimps Jin-ho out to wealthy, older women. The show tries to downplay this by having Jin-ho work as “an escort,” but he is essentially a male prostitute. Jin-ho begins to realize that he was happier when he was a “nobody” than when he was the star of a soap opera, because Gyeon-sook and Joo-ryun control every aspect of his life. When he is offered a role in a soft-core porn, Gyeon-sook tries to sell it as an “art film.” It is, ironically, Seol-ah who points out that him appearing in a soft-core would ruin whatever credibility he as an actor. This is one of the few times Gyeon-sook relents. When Jin-ho becomes engaged to Joo-ryun, it is purely for publicity purposes (though, Joo-ryun does legitimately love him).  There is even point that Gyeon-sook endangers Jin-ho’s life to get headlines: she devises a scheme where a stage light above Jin-ho comes loose and Joo-ryun pushes him out of the way at the last second to make it look like she saved his life.  Joo-ryun is on the scheme, and it is reluctant to do it, but she also doesn’t want to disobey her mother. Even though neither are killed, they both get injured thanks to this reckless stunt. 

Snow White’s Revenge is a heavily flawed series, but its biggest flaw is that its two female villains, Gyeon-sook and Joo-ryun, are more interesting and, unintentionally, more sympathetic than the female lead. The is largely because the actresses who play the female antagonists, Han Chae-young and Kim Gyu-seon, are superior to performers to Han Bo-reum, and the fact that Seol-ah is one of the weakest heroines in all of K-dramas. The biggest problem is that, despite being the title character, she plays very little role in bringing down Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang. Most of the heavy lifting is down by Lee Sun-ae, a wealthy stockholder and investor, who also happens to be the adopted mother of director Na and the ex-wife of Tae-chang. The saying “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” applies to her – Tae-chang left Sun-ae to be with Gyeon-sook and allowed their sick son to die in the process. When Sun-ae begged him for money to pay for a potential lifesaving operation, he brushed her off. She was also pregnant with their second child at the time and the trauma of losing her older son resulted in her having a miscarriage. She later remarried a wealthy businessman and after he passed away, he left his business to her, and she grew it into a huge cash cow. She has a close relationship with her two adopted sons, Na Hyun-woo and his younger brother, Na Seung-woo. When she learns about Seol-ah’s revenge, Sun-ae offers her assistance.

Seol-ah’s revenge is more of the petty kind – when the cast is doing script reading, she constantly interrupts Jin-ho and nitpicks every aspect of his performance (granted, he is a crappy actor). She later tells Jin-ho that she wants to get back together with him and even convinces him to move out of Gyeon-sook’s house and get an apartment, but when he tells her he is ready to start over, she laughs at him and tells him that she has changed her mind. The irony is that Tae-chang and Gyeon-sook leave behind so much incriminating evidence, but she never uses any of it to her advantage.  Her rationale is that she will wait until Poker Face is over to bring down Tae-chang and Gyeon-sook. She is so short-sighted that even after Tae-chang threatens her life and the lives of her family, she still stubbornly sticks to her plan. The dirt that she has on Gyeon-sook includes: a video of Gyeon-sook and her goon forcing themselves into Seol-ah’s apartment and assaulting her; a video that Tae-chang sent to Seol-ah’s adopted father of her being bound and gagged, and him threatening kill her if he contacts the police; a video of Jin-ho “escorting” a wealthy female investor, and a folder of NDAs that she snatched from Gyeon-sook’s office. Not only does she have video evidence of her kidnapping, but a few eyes witnesses who could validate her story; Director Na, Kim Seok-ki (director of planning and Jeongin Entertainment), and even Joo-ryun, who intervenes on Seol-ah’s behalf.  Yet, she doesn’t do anything with any of this evidence (I also suspect the scriptwriter forgot about the incriminating videos). In fact, it is Sun-ae who leaks the video of Jin-ho escorting the older woman to the press.

Her short sightedness also extends to her handling of Joo-ryun. Initially her grudge towards Joo-ryun makes sense; when Woo-jin lost his memory, Joo-ryun fed him all sorts of lies that prevented him from learning the truth. She blames Joo-ryun for “stealing her man,” but also conveniently forgets that after Woo-jin regained his memories, he still (of his own free will) opted to stay with Joo-ryun and Gyeon-sook. More importantly, after Joo-ryun learns that her parents murdered Seol-ah’s father, she feels genuine remorse. She even tells Seol-ah that she understands why Seol-ah wants revenge.  However, instead of viewing Joo-ryun as a potentially ally, Seol-ah continues to antagonize her. She ignores the multiple times Joo-ryun intervened on her behalf: first, was the kidnapping. Later, Seol-ah’s adopted mother and her annoying aunt-in-law barge into Tae-chang’s house and demand compensation. He responds by beating them with a golf club, tying them up, and putting them in the laundry room. It is Joo-ryun who sneaks into the laundry room and releases them after talking to Seol-ah on the phone. It is apparent that Joo-ryun wants to bury the hatchet, but Seol-ah refuses to let go of her petty grudge.

The most childish example is when Seol-ah obtains Joo-ryun’s expensive engagement ring from Kwon Young-seok. This was a ring that Gyeon-sook bought for Joo-yru, so she could flaunt it to the press whenever she out in public with Jin-ho. Young-seok was Dong-ho’s medical peer and after he was murdered by Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang, they approached Young-seok and forced him to lie about the cause of Dong-ho’s death – he wrote that it was due to heart failure. He then fled to the United States. Years later, he comes back to South Korea and blackmails Tae-chang, or at least tries do, but Tae-chang has no intention of paying up. Joo-ryun, being the dutiful daughter (a virtue that our heroine lacks), learns about the blackmail and offers to buy Young-seok’s silence by offering up her engagement ring. He accepts, but due to the overwhelming guilt he feels about covering up Dong-ho’s murder, he gives it to Seol-ah. She then rubs it in Joo-ryun’s face by wearing it to work; instead of, I don’t know, selling it and using the money to help her struggling surrogate family. Even worse is that this childish behavior ends up putting her family in danger; Gyeon-sook learns that Seol-ah has the ring and wants it back. After her search of Seol-ah’s apartment comes up empty, she deduces that it must be at the home of Seol-ah’s family and sends a couple of goons to find it. It just so happens that Seol-ah’s adopted father, Park Il-Joong, happens to home and gets attacked while trying to stop the burglary and gets badly injured. The fact that this possibility never occurred to Seol-ah goes to show how short sighted she is. Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang have showed multiple times that they have zero regard for human life, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they would be willing to kill over a ring.

Seol-ah’s most obnoxious trait is her tendency to sulk for a long period of time. She nearly derails her plan for revenge before it even it gets off the ground; after Jin-ho leaves her for Joo-ryun, she spends the next few days just sulking in her apartment. She fails to meet her deadline and Gyeon-sook threatens to replace her with another writer (an assistant writer who is desperate for the opportunity to be given a chance to make her mark). The only reason Seol-ah doesn’t lose her job is because Director Na has her back. Sure, she is holding up the production by failing to meet deadlines, but we’re supposed to sympathize with unfortunate circumstances. We’re supposed to view Gyeon-sook as evil for wanting to bring in a different writer, even though her position is a reasonable one. Even though Seol-ah acts coldly towards Jin-ho, she still has feelings for him.  This results in Seol-ah consistently second guessing herself and many scenes of the characters talking in circles (Seol-ah and Jin-ho have the same conversation multiple times throughout the series). There have been criticisms of Choi Woong’s wooden acting as Jinho, but I think his bland acting perfectly suits an empty suit like Jin-ho. He is a character devoid of any principles and he constantly shifts loyalty, depending on which side is more beneficial to him in the moment (Joo-ryun calls him out on this and it is impossible to disagree with her). She is so infatuated with that loser Jin-ho that she fails to notice that Director Na (a self-made man) has feelings for her. He always has her back, despite being under constant pressure by Gyeon-sook to have Seol-ah replaced. 

Seol-ah’s goal isn’t to just take down Gyeon-seok and Tae-chang but to dissolve Jeongin Entertainment; it doesn’t occur to her that by dissolving Jeongin Entertainment she will be throwing hundreds, if not thousands of people out of work. When the various scandals surrounding Jin-ho and Gyeon-sook get leaked to the press, this results in investors in pulling their funds and creating panic among the employees. The irony is Seol-ah could have done nothing, and the result would have been the same: Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang are horrible at business and are in constant debt. They are so in the red that they can’t pay back their investors, which means they would have inevitably been forced to sell their companies. It is a weird decision to have such an inconsequential heroine.

Joo-ryun is a more interesting character; to the point where she often takes center stage while Seol-ah gets pushed to the sidelines. The writing for the character is frustrating; the writers want to give her redemption arc, but they also want to keep her in an antagonistic role, as a result she spends most of the second half stuck in limbo. Every time, it feels like her character might turn the corner, she will immediately revert to her old self in the next scene. When she learns that her parents murdered Seol-ah’s father, she is genuinely mortified by their behavior and tells her parents (and Seol-ah) that she can understand why Seol-ah wants revenge.  As mentioned before, she twice intervenes on Seol-ah’s behalf, but she can’t over her obsession with Jin-ho and frequently allows her jealously to get the better of her. She is torn over her parents; she is horrified by their behavior but at the same time they did raise her in a loving home and helped make her the success she is today. Seol-ah, out of pity, returns Joo-ryun’s engagement ring to her; when she learns that her father is in debt, she sells the ring (and her car) and gives the money to Tae-chang. Again, Tae-chang is a horrible person but he did raise Joo-ryun in a loving manner. This is also what makes Joo-ryun more interesting than Seol-ah; she often behaves in an appalling manner, but she is also capable of expressing warmth and loyalty to the people around her. A trait that is curiously lacking in our heroine. I almost admit that I found myself crushing big time on Joo-ryun’s actress, Kim Gyu-seon, despite her sporting one of the most unfortunate bangs in television history. I suspect someone in the hair department recently watched the drama, Doona (starring the angelic Bae Suzy) and decided they want to give Kim Gyu-seon the same Betty Page haircut that Suzy had in that drama. Suzy pulled it off, but it looks all wrong on Gyu-seon (though, she is still incredibly cute. Sorry, ladies).  While watching Snow White’s Revenge, I began to have delusions of grandeur, “I’m going to meet Kim Gyu-seon and marry her. She would have taken one look at my pasty, overweight, middle-aged ass and proclaimed, ‘SWOON! You are the man for me!’” I crashed down to harsh reality when I learned she is married. DAMN!!! If not for that, we would totally have ended up together. Right?

Joo-ryun is so infatuated with Jin-ho that she brushes off the feelings Kim Seok-ki has for her (even though he is a way better catch than Jin-ho). When Kim Seok-ki announces that he is resigning from the company, Joo-ryun realizes just how important he is to her and begs him to stay. I initially believed this would be start of Joo-ryun’s long overdue romance with Seok-ki; she would finally realize that he genuinely loves her and makes her happy (the only time she seems comfortable is when she is with him) that she would kick the no-good bum to Jin-ho to the curb.  Instead, her obsession with Jin-ho goes on for another forty plus episodes. The writers really do a huge disservice to both the character and actor (Kim Gyu-seon). My personal theory is that the showrunners were worried that Kim Gyu-seon was threatening to upstage Han Bo-reum’s performance, so they did everything that could to sabotage her character.  “We can’t have our secondary villain be more sympathetic than the heroine. Quick, write a scene where Joo-ryun kidnaps Seol-ah.” I am no feminist, but it is depressing to see a drama produced in 2024 where two successful, attractive females spend an entire series pining for a total sponge of a man; especially when they both have better options standing right in front of them. Hell, it might have made for an interesting twist to have them fall in love with each other and then go full scorched earth on everybody. Anything would have been better than the ending we were given.

The highlight of the series is Han Chae-young as the bitchy CEO, Moon Gyeon-sook/ Moon Jeong-in. Han Chae-young has been in the industry for nearly three decades and is no stranger to K-drama and gives an appropriate scene chewing performance. One of her first acting credits, at the age of twenty, was the tragic melodrama Autumn in my Heart, where she played the bitchy younger sister of the male protagonist. Her characterization of Moon Gyeon-sook is less villain and more of a flawed protagonist. There is a hint that if she never met Min Tae-chang, she might have led a happy life. When she was a teenager, she got pregnant by her first love, Joo Woo-jin, who died under tragic circumstances and was determined to have his child. Tragically, she lost the child while giving birth. It was shorty after this she met Min Tae-chang, who was a police officer at the time and significantly older than her. Tae-chang took her under his wing, groomed her into being a gold digger, and then used her to scam wealthy men out of their men. It was Tae-chang that set up Seol-ah’s father, Baek Dong-ho, with Gyeon-sook. The tragic of losses of her first love and child made her numb to the world and she rarely shows any remorse for any of her actions. Tae-chang also had her raise his daughter, Joo-ryun. He told Gyeon-sook that he found Joo-ryun resting on their footstep with a note but, in truth, she was the result of an affair he had with a tea house waitress. Even though Joo-ryun wasn’t her biological daughter, she still raises Joo-ryun as her own.

The irony is that if Gyeon-sook hadn’t been so blinded by her greed, she could have lived a happy life with Dong-ho. He was a kind, and successful, man who probably would have supported her endeavors. Not to mention that Seol-ah was initially elated that Gyeon-sook was going to be her stepmother. One of the main reason Dong-ho agreed to meet Gyeon-sook as to find a potential mother for Seol-ah. This would have been an ideal time for her to kick Tae-chang to the curb and move onto someone much better, but she could only see dollar signs. The show is ambiguous as to who murdered Dong-ho in his sleep, but it was Gyeon-sook who drugged him with sleeping powdered, and she did go along with cover up; meaning in the best-case scenario she is an accessory to murder. 

After the murder of Dong-ho and the disappearance of Seol-ah, Tae-chang and Gyeon-sook used Dong-ho’s money to start up their businesses. It is Gyeon-sook’s goal to turn Jeongin Entertainment into one of the top television producers in not just South Korea, but the world.  She generates buzz by signing well respected film director, Na Hyun-woo, to a hefty contract. He reads Seol-ah’s script to Poker Face and chooses it as the first project he will work on for Jeongin. Initially, Gyeon-sook is excited by the buzz surrounding Poker Face in the press. The public is curious about Seol-ah/Jin-gyung, who is a first-time writer; the fresh-faced young actor Woo-jin (Jin-ho); and what Director Na can do with this raw talent. Then Gyeon-sook reads the script and realizes that it hits too close to home. The result is a battle of wills between Gyeon-sook and Seol-ah, with Director Na trapped in the middle. He usually sides with Seol-ah, but there are even a few times where she tries his patience; most notably when she fails to meet the deadlines because she is too busy sulking over Jin-ho and when she makes the controversial decision to kill of Jin-ho’s character midway through the show. Director Na wants to help Seol-ah get her revenge, but he also wants to finish Poker Face, and such a hasty decision on Seol-ah’s part, done for pure petty reasons, threatens to upend the entire show. He manages to talk her out of the decision, but this petty act does result in Gyeon-sook framing Seol-ah for plagiarism. She bribes an assistant writer (whose desperately needs to pay for her mother’s hospital bills) to the claim that Seol-ah stole her idea and then leaks the story to press (even though it is bad press for Jeongin Entertainment). Though, Seol-ah can easily disprove this plagiarism charge and threatens to counter sue. Director Na convinces the staff writer to come clean and is even sympathetic to the woman’s story. In short, Director Na is the voice of reason throughout the series – he doesn’t like Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang, but he also can’t allow Seol-ah’s emotions get the better of her.  Jin-ho, meanwhile, main job is to do Gyeon-sook’s bidding and make stupid faces.  Yet, Seol-ah decides that he is the better option of the two.

This is when I’ll get into spoilers, because it is nearly impossible to write about Snow White’s Revenge without talking about the terrible ending. Was the show originally supposed to be 102 episodes long? It feels like the show was initially supposed to be longer but then was shortened due to poor ratings. It would explain why the ending feels so rushed. There are episodes worth of character development that are shoehorned into the show’s final minutes. It relies on the annoying K-drama trope of the time jump to resolve all its plot threads.

First, there is the unsatisfying conclusion to the mystery surrounding Gyeon-sook’s death. Her death was already revealed in the first episode, so the question becomes who murdered? There is a whole gallery of suspects who had their own reasons for wanting Gyeon-sook dead; including Joo-ryun. In a twist that is surprising to no one, it turns out that Jin-ho is Gyeon-sook’s long-lost son (who she believed died during childbirth). After this reveal, Gyeon-sook’s attitude toward Jin-ho changes; she decides she is going to manage every aspect of his career. She sits in on the table reads and objects to dialogue that she finds offensive; she doesn’t want Jin-ho’s character to speak any vulgar lines or be shown in a bad light. She proves to be a huge disruption that Director Na (with the blessings of the cast) kicks her out of the table read. Her micromanaging of Jin-ho’s career leads to everyone suspecting that the two of them are having an affair, despite the huge age gap between the two of them. The funny thing is in the context of the show there is supposed to be a twenty plus age gape between Gyeon-sook and Jin-ho while in real-life Han Chae-young is Choi Woong’s senior by six years. Even Joo-ryun believes these rumors and is appalled by her mother “lusting” after a much younger man (who also happens to be her fiancé). 

The big question surrounding the series is: Who murdered Gyeon-sook? Practically every character had a reason to kill her. The answer: NO ONE! She slipped on a patch of ice and fell to her death. The mystery that opened the series turned out not to be a mystery at all, but sheer carelessness on Gyeon-sook’s part. Again, was this the original plan? Or was it just a convenient way to end the series? Surprisingly, this is the least annoying part of the episode.

 Shortly after, Gyeon-sook’s death, Tae-chang’s crimes have been exposed to the world and he is apprehended by the police. However, he manages to escape from the police and is determined to get revenge.  How did he manage to escape custody? It’s never explained. The point is he is on the loose and has sights sets on Seol-ah and Jin-ho. He also has the amazing foresight to predict that Seol-ah and Jin-ho will be doing volunteer work at the orphanage they grew up in. It is also annoying how throughout the series Seol-ah will whine about how she was raised in an orphanage after her father’s murder, when she was only there for a few months. Jin-ho and her best friend, Go Eun-byeol, were there significantly longer and rarely do they bring it up. While Seol-ah and Jin-ho are sitting on a bench, attempting to bury the hatchet, Tae-chang emerges from the pushes, clutching a rifle in his hands. He has Seol-ah in his sight but just as he pulls the trigger, Seol-ah bends over and Jin-ho gets shot instead. Tae-chang then fires another bullet into Jin-ho and then runs away. Seol-ah cries over Jin-ho’s unconscious body; the screen fades to black and then fades into an exterior shot of a penitentiary and the caption “a few years later” flashes across the screen. Yes, it’s the good old time jump gimmick that desperate K-drama writers resort to when they have written themselves into a corner. 

Joo-ryun and Kim Seok-ki are visiting Tae-chang in prison, and we learn the following things: Joo-ryun and Kim Seok-ki are engaged and that Seol-ah has forgiven Tae-chang (to the point where she sends him money every month). The time in prison has transformed Tae-chang for the better and he spends most of his time begging forgiveness from all the people he has wronged. We then cut to Director Na visiting Seol-ah and Jin-ho at the orphanage; Jin-ho has survived the assassination attempt, but it has put him in a wheelchair. Seol-ah has forgiven Jin-ho and taken him back. The two of them have retired from the television industry and work full-time at the orphanage. We also learn that Joo-ryun and Seol-ah are now on friendly terms; they have finally buried the hatchet (something that should have happened like thirty episodes earlier). Joo-ryun also looked after her biological mother for the last few years until cancer claimed her life. Director Na is disappointed that Seol-ah has given up writing, but he is happy that she has found peace. We also are given a shoehorned message: Seol-ah tells Director Na that should could never write Poker Face 2 because, when she was writing the first one, she only had revenge on her mind, but she has since learned that “the best revenge is forgiveness.” UGH!

Where do I even begin with this ending? Once I start the “A few years later” caption flash across the screen, I knew it was going to be bad but, HOLY CRAP, I didn’t think it would be this awful. I would normally say that Seol-ah getting back together with Jin-ho is the worst thing but since neither character was especially interesting, I think the most egregious error is that Joo-ryun’s character arc happens entirely offscreen.  It would been nice to include the scene where she reciprocates Seok-ki’s feelings, or her reaching out to her biological mother (after having coldly rejected her before), or, at the very least, gives us the scene where Seol-ah and her finally make peace with one another. At least the writers set up the Joo-ryun/Seok-ki romance early on, but there the entire second half of the series should have been Joo-ryun’s gradual realization that she loves Seok-ki and not that bore, Jin-ho. The writers are so hell bent to keep her in a “villain” role that they stunt her character growth.

The amount of screentime that is wasted on comedy relief (provided by Seol-ah’s adopted family) could have easily been given to Joo-ryun and Seok-ki. The comedy relief is especially annoying in this drama and often creates a tonal whiplash: one moment, Seol-ah’s life will be in danger, and it is immediately followed by her family mugging for the camera and stumbling through the scenery. Plus, her adopted family continually makes the dumbest decisions ever¸ like Min-sun and her aunt charging into Tae-chang’s house and demanding compensation. They know what Tae-chang is capable of, yet they decide to kick the hornet’s nest anyway. He then proceeds to beat them with a golf club, ties them up, and throws them in the laundry room.

It feels like the writers were oblivious to the shooting schedule and thought they would be given more time to develop the character. “Well, we will eventually get to her character arc. This show is slated for 140 episodes and we’re only on episode 98, we have got plenty of time. Wait, what do you mean it is only 102 episodes long? We still haven’t figured out who murdered Gyeon-sook. SHIT!” It is also hard to figure out what Seol-ah is after; she wants Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang to pay for their crimes, but it is also insistent to wait until Poker Face has ended to make her move. Her plan should have changed once she realized how dangerous Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang are, and once she got her hands on incriminating evidence that would easily put them away. Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang are so incompetent that they consistently leave behind a trail of evidence, but Seol-ah just sits on it, because it is important she finishes her script. Her hesitancy puts many people at risk, and it is ultimately Lee Sun-ae who is responsible for the downfalls of Gyeon-sook and Tae-chang.

What is even more incredible is that Jin-ho is deprived of a “hero moment” – in most K-dramas the male lead would sacrifice himself to save the female lead, and this would lead to their reconciliation. In normal a K-drama, Jin-ho would see Tae-chang in the bushes, pointing his rifle at Seol-ah, and then at the last moment, take the bullet for Seol-ah.  Instead, he gets shot multiple times, and, out of pity, Seol-ah decides to she is going to spend the rest of her life looking after him. The is my main issue with Snow White’s Revenge, neither its female lead nor male lead have any real agency.  They react to the events around them, but they rarely dictate them. The show’s alternate title, Scandal, is more fitting because the Snow White in this tale is putz.

 

Credits:

Cast: Han Chae-young (Moon Jeong-in/Moon Gyeong-sook), Han Bo-reum (Baek Seol-ah/Park Jin-gyung), Choi Woong (Seo Jin-ho/Joo Woo-jin), Kim Gyu-seon (Min Joo-ryun), Lee Byung-joon (Min Tae-chang), Jeon Seung-bin (Na Hyun-woo), Jin Ju-hyung (Kim Seok-ki), Oh Young-joo (Go Eun-byeol), Jo Hyang-gi (Choi Mi-sun), Hwang Dong-joo (Park Il-joong), Lee Si-eun (Lee Sun-ae), Kim Yui (Park Ji-yeon), Kim Jin-woo (Na Seung-woo), Lee Sook (Nanda Park), Lee Ha-rang (Jung Joon-kyeong), Kim  Hong-pyo (Kwon Young-seok), Choi Ryung (Baek Dong-ho).

Director: Choi Ji-young
Writer: Hwang Soon-young.

102 episodes ~ 35 minutes