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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Pride and Prejudice" Episode 6

Last episode's accident takes on immediate focus here, and for a time "Pride and Prejudice" once again does a great job reminding us what the difference is between TV investigators and real one. I'm genuinely not sure I've ever consumed a piece of fiction where one of the good guys accidentally kills a criminal, and this is actually treated like a bad thing. Usually their buddies bend over backwards to say it wasn't their fault, and anybody so impertinent as to suggest the loss of human life is always tragic regardless of circumstance is branded as a naïve do-gooder.

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This is a tonal choice that typically defines "Pride and Prejudice" at the height of its storytelling- when it's dealing with realistic human emotional decisions that for various reasons are almost never covered in this type of genre fiction. Unfortunately, this plot point is only one of several that are ongoing throughout the episode. And while we do have an effective, sad resolution of this storyline by the end, the others aren't quite so impressive.

The central mystery in particular is repetitive. We're going over the same political conflicts and CCTV investigation that this drama has already covered, quite recently in fact, with little in the way of real variation. It's not bad television so much that it just comes off very weak in light of the fact that we've already seen this stuff. More interesting backstory is mostly just packed away for later reference, with an unknown payoff lurking somewhere in the future.

And then there's the cliffhanger, which seemed to come so out of nowhere that I swear I must have missed an important scene somewhere or something. Wasn't it made clear that this guy had a girlfriend? Well, maybe that was just his sister. I don't think she's actually shown up since then. Even ignoring all that, though, this moment has had pretty much no build-up, and I'm not at all sure what we're supposed to think about it. Technically that's a pretty unethical line to cross.

Given that the main strength of "Pride and Prejudice" is the attention it pays to genuine human emotion, this is a very worrying development, particularly in light of the lack of a preview. The drama has gotten to the point where it's mixing the good and bad in just equal enough measures that I'm not sure what the long term prospects are. Obviously it's good to be surprised, just not with something that's really dumb.

Review by William Schwartz

"Pride and Prejudice" is directed by Kim Jin-min-I, written by Lee Hyeon-joo and features Baek Jin-hee, Choi Jin-hyuk, Choi Min-soo, Son Chang-min, Jang Hang-sun, Lee Tae-hwan and many more.

 

 

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