Okay, so before I finished watching this show I'd heard that the ending of the series was somewhat controversial but thought to myself, 'how bad can it be?' and didn't actually read any of the reviews - the answer? Very. However, things started going wrong with the storyline long before that, in my opinion...

Let's talk about what I liked about this drama first and then I'll go on to giving certain aspects of it a good kicking. First off, the overall acting performances all round - top of the pile, of course, with all the heavy lifting duties was Shin Hye Sun who effectively ended up playing multiple characters (So Yong as an individual and the Bong Hwan-So Yong mixture at its various stages of existence). I was pretty much equally impressed with the acting by everyone involved, from the various members of the royal family through the household staff and on to the ministers. Excellent work all round. Secondly, the initial set-up for the storyline worked really well, with a real 'fish out of water' aspect to it and I particularly liked the fact that the queen's internal monologue was (for a while, at least) in Bong Hwan's voice.

Now the problems - it's all about internal logic for me. When we first hit Joseon, we've got the consciousness of a male modern day individual in the body of a woman of that time, with a male internal voice that works with that, and then suddenly that internal voice changed to a woman's. Was this meant to signify that the queen was now a mixture of both individuals, rather than a (male) consciousness with added memories? If so, that doesn't really come across in the way the scenes are written.

Likewise, in the final episode after Bong Hwan's consciousness leaves the queen's body, it's pretty clear that this is So Yong again, just with a wider vocabulary and a few less shits to give. Poor king, he might have reclaimed his throne but the woman he's come to love over the past 19 episodes doesn't actually exist any more and we don't get any on-screen recognition of this. Meanwhile, what does poor Bong Hwan get out of this? Dude has been through a sexual identity crisis and risked his life, but for what? A warm and fuzzy feeling and that's it.

The only one who's got what they wanted out of this situation is So Yong, with zero recognition of the impact of these story decisions on anyone else. Where was the 'soul' of So Yong all this time? We know Bong Hwan's body was in the hospital, his consciousness was in So Yong's body, so where was she? The story would have been much stronger (and probably less contentious) if more thought was put into how to show her 'return' and also some recognition on her part of what she (and the king) have lost by Bong Hwan's departure, as well as how they were both going to adjust to that going forward.