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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Scholar Who Walks the Night" Episode 16

After the usual requisite moping about regarding whether Seong-yeol is terrible for being a vampire or whether he should be allowed to love or blah blah blah we finally get to some exciting action. Remember the plan that everyone has been talking about for forever, the one that we never actually get to see? Well we get to see part of it here. And goodness, is it ever relieving to finally find our good-aligned characters on the same page even if strictly speaking they don't actually know what's going on.

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The way the villains get bamboozled here is especially appropriate. Cheol-joong is the lynchpin to Gwi's entire royal operation. Without Cheol-joong, Gwi doesn't even have much of a royal liason, short of just showing up and bossing people around in person. And of course Cheol-joong isn't aware of everything that happens. He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who has a very good rapport with his subordinates, given the way Gwi keeps arbitrarily deciding to eat them.

The one somewhat frustrating part about having so many of the good-aligned characters act so competent all of a sudden is that this all pretty much comes out of nowhere. Now obviously their actions are much more surprising and shocking now, given that they've been sniveling for so long, but I'm mainly just relieved that victory at this point looks to be a function more of the competence of the good guys then Gwi suddenly deciding to act stupid for no reason.

To the contrary Gwi is surprisingly smart at the end here. I don't think that's much of a spoiler- we all knew that the whole "sacrifice Yang-seon to save the world" plan was never going to go anywhere, because there are still four episodes left. The main question is where to go from the cliffhanger. I do hope the final stretch of "Scholar Who Walks the Night" isn't just going to be Yang-seon being the damsel in distress again- although admittedly, ever since they found the book there hasn't been any obvious intrinsic use for a book expert.

Well, I suppose there is that one scene. You'll know it when you see it- with all the women in gorgeous hanboks sitting around in a circle and then Yang-seon tells a story. Well, really, that bit was so brief it was easy to miss but even so. It was cute watching Lee Yu-bi play dress-up for awhile. Visually "Scholar Who Walks the Night" has always looked pretty good, whatever its other flaws might be.

Review by William Schwartz

"Scholar Who Walks the Night" is directed by Lee Seong-joon, written by Jang Hyeon-joo and features Lee Joon-gi, Lee Yu-bi, Changmin, Lee Soo-hyuk, Kim So-eun, Lee Hyun-woo and more.

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