Review – Black Knight : The Man Who Guards Me
This show started off unsteady, but by episode four I was totally hooked and in love. Why? Cause the villains of this show were so mesmerizing!
Without any spoilers , the plot is simple: It’s a super sweet love story between a rich business man and a woman who works for a travel agency. They’re childhood sweethearts who are reunited as adults, and clearly meant to be together. Unfortunately, there’s a beautiful witch who wants to break this couple apart and have the handsome man all to herself.
Our adorable re-incarnated lovers
I admit, I was charmed by the cuteness of the main couple, but it was the devious witch dressmaker with her eerie pale shop and colorful assistant that won me over completely! It’s quite possibly the best, weirdest work environment of all time… it’s like a David Lynch dream of stark interiors and bright, bizarre characters.
If you aren’t sure whether or not this odd little show is for you… let me explain one particular scene. At one point in the show, the fashion designer witch and her colorful assistant perform a modern dance in their studio. There is basically no context for this dance sequence… it just happens. And it’s not short either, it’s a full dance sequence… with no preamble explanation and no dialogue at the end. They just start dancing together… as if this is a normal day at work. If you’re thinking to yourself “How cool! What’s happening?” then you will enjoy this show. If you’re thinking, “That’s too weird for me” then don’t bother with Black Knight.
I used to have a link to the full dance sequence on Youtube, but it was sadly deleted. Instead… here’s just a random gif of the assistant skipping off as if he’s living in a permanent modern ballet show and not reality… which maybe he is…
If the witches and the dancing aren’t enough to entice you, let me point out another cool variation to the norm that Black Knight provides: The jumps through time! We get lots of flashbacks of the two immortal ladies in various decades, fully decked out in the latest fashions. It’s the one thing I am usually disappointed with in other shows that deal with time travel, the lack of “inbetween” years. Not Black Knight, though! We get plenty of glimpses through the two hundred years these ladies have roamed the earth. Between the time jumps, the atmospheric sets, the location shooting, the sickeningly sweet romance, and the calm deviousness of our witch made Black Knight awesome. It’s a surrealist fairy tale for grown ups.
Overall Rating – 8/10. Hell Hath No Fury Like A Witchy Woman Scorned.
More about the actual plot – with SPOILERS galore – follows…
So… spoiler time.
The actual plot, basically, is about some twisted fates due to baby swapping. Back in the day (Joseon era), a handsome young wealthy man marries a beautiful wealthy woman, but he’s desperately in love with her maid and runs off with his lover. Enraged, the wife has her cheating husband and his lover killed. This deed leads to her immortality, a curse for separating the lovers. Seo Ji-Hye plays our witchy wife and she’s amazing… ethereal, beautiful, and dangerous.
She’s not alone, though. Also cursed to be a witch with immortality is the woman who swapped the two girls, thus ruining their fates – played by the gorgeous Jang Mi-Hee. Cause the beautiful wealthy woman was really the daughter of a peasant and the maid was really the daughter of the wealthy folks. So these two women, the baby swapper and the husband-killer, are frenemies for decades as they move through time together.
Meet our witches… fabulous and fashionable in every era.
Years later, in the modern era, the two lovers are reborn and reunited. One witch sees this as a chance to be released from her curse and tries to help them. The other witch, the jilted wife, sees this as a second chance to be with her husband. And though she’s misguided, you can’t really hate her… cause she was screwed over. She loved her husband. And he loved someone else. She sees her own fate as a cruel injustice, which it was, so she feels entitled to ruin the reincarnated relationship. Again. The more she tries to break the lovers apart, the darker her curse gets… turning her into an evil spirit.
How fun, eh?
So, we have our witch-wife dressmaker… and the other witch is now a successful writer and business woman. She helps out our leading male but mainly sticks around keeping our witchy dressmaker in line… occasionally spanking her.
Okay, let’s talk about our main couple. Kim Rae-Won played our reincarnated husband. His life had a shaky start, but he was able to overcome his problems and rise to riches…. even buying himself a castle in a foreign country. His sweetie, played by Shin Se-Kyung, also had a rocky start in life, loosing her family and stability but slowly finding her own two feet in adulthood. She’s insecure and adorable, not sure she deserves love or success. Her black knight comes in and swoops her up into his world, chasing her fears away. It’s mushy romantic and I loved it. They are a smitten, playful, flirtatious couple that you can’t help but adore.
Seriously. They were super cute.
Will their fates be healed this time or will they remain doomed by deadly forces outside of their understanding? Well, friends… find out!
There are some side stories and extraneous plotlines – all of which added to the richness of this odd show. I am a big fan of supernatural shows… especially time-jumping supernatural shows, and am pleased that there seem to be so many of them recently. Keep it up, K-World! And I will keep watching.
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I love the stories thou not satisfied with the happy ending. Hopefully looking forward for season 2 coz of soo hon eternity life. I think he got the punishment of living alone instead of growing old with the woman she love. Hopefully the story comes in season 2 the happy ending they both want.
There will not be a Season 2.
Not really a happy ending as both of them seemed miserable living their lives like that, their one desire was to grow old together. They barely showed any love to each other in the last part of their lives, it was just skipped over, no happy scenes, just her death…
Last part was her actually saying she did not want to live like that, and he sticking with her anyway.
As to the witch, well, she was not really screwed over. she was just a real nasty peace of work. Burnt her servants face, was habitually abusive, just an overall horrible person that he was forced to marry (arranged by family).
Despite all that, he was faithful to her (specifically mentioned in the drama) even though he was in love with the servant girl, who was a lovely person. She also did not pursue him though they had the opportunity and knew how the other person felt.
They only came together after the witch lied about her husband being christian, causing him to flee or be killed and having a decree of banishment against him (while he was still faithful to her, but he did not love her, because she was horrible, though he tried but stopped when she kept on being horrible).
Then she tried to have the servant girl tortured and killed, and even though the servant was loyal to her and did not betray her (why the hell didn’t she betray her?) she still hated the girl.
So she tried to have her husband killed or banished (while he was faithful to her) just for have feeling for someone else that he was not arranged to have married. She saw herself as the victim and not her hideous actions and personality and practically drove them both into exile where they finally decided to express their feelings for each other.
How on earth was she screwed over. All the time she thought that the servant was lower than her and how dare she have asperations, beating her up for learning to read or express a view on someones worth (long before the man came into the picture). Burning her face for trying on her clothing (again before she ever saw the man).
And last but not least, she felt she was entitled to do that because she was the daughter of the lord and the other girl was a servant. But when she discovers that they were actually switched and birth and she was supposed to be a no-body and the servant was actually arranged to marry her true love, she still felt that the other person did not know her place and was beneath her.
How the heck was she screwed over, she deserved to be have forsaken just because of the type of person she was. She tried to kill people and then says that they are being too harsh with her because they dont love her. Jeesh