Son Ye Jin and Ji Chang Wook’s ‘The Scandal’ Returns After 23 Years, but Leaves One Big Question
Son Ye Jin and Ji Chang Wook deliver strong performances in Netflix’s The Scandal, but the eight-episode remake struggles to justify its return after 23 years.
The French literary classic Dangerous Liaisons, which was previously adapted into the 2003 Korean film Untold Scandal, has now returned as a Netflix series. Led by Son Ye Jin, Ji Chang Wook, and Nana, the new adaptation once again explores a world of love, betrayal, and desire. Yet despite expectations surrounding its reinterpretation 23 years later, the series struggles to provide a compelling reason why this story needed to be told again today.
Released on September 18, The Scandal is set during the Joseon era and follows Lady Cho (Son Ye Jin), a woman whose extraordinary intelligence and abilities are constrained by the limitations imposed on women of her time; Cho Won (Ji Chang Wook), Joseon’s most notorious womanizer; and Hui Yeon (Nana), a widowed woman who becomes caught up in a dangerous wager between them.
Lady Cho and Cho Won are cousins who have also been each other’s closest confidants since childhood. They once dreamed of running away together and building a different future, but Lady Cho ultimately could not escape the reality that bound her. Their feelings for each other, born from wanting someone they could never truly have, gradually become distorted into something darker as the years pass.
Lady Cho asks Cho Won to impregnate her husband’s concubine, So Ok (Shin Youn Ha), while Cho Won proposes a wager of his own: he will seduce and sleep with the widowed Hui Yeon. What begins as a twisted game between two former lovers soon escalates as they deliberately reopen each other’s deepest wounds.
The problem lies in stretching this relatively simple yet provocative wager into an eight-episode series rather than a roughly two-hour film. Lady Cho and Cho Won’s bet is established at a fairly brisk pace within the first two episodes, but Cho Won’s increasingly complicated relationship with Hui Yeon unfolds across roughly five episodes, causing the story to lose momentum.
Even the intimate scenes, which should serve as moments when the characters’ suppressed desires finally erupt, rarely feel particularly daring. This is not simply an issue of nudity or explicitness. More importantly, the scenes lack the kind of palpable tension needed to make the characters’ attraction feel truly dangerous.
Part of the problem is that the psychological development is not detailed enough to justify the series’ slow pace. The revelation that Hui Yeon, despite repeatedly pushing Cho Won away, had secretly been writing replies to his love letters—and her eventual decision to abandon everything and take his hand—never feels entirely convincing.
Of course, the characters’ destructive wager originates from the premise of the original story. But if that story is going to be expanded into eight episodes, the series needs to examine more carefully why its characters feel compelled to make such choices and how their desires for one another gradually transform into hatred and obsession. Instead of using its longer runtime to explore those emotions in greater depth, The Scandal too often fills the additional space with trivial humor.
What helps compensate for these shortcomings is the cast’s performances. Son Ye Jin, in particular, brings considerable depth to Lady Cho’s complicated emotions. At first, the character appears simply to be an intelligent and composed noblewoman, but as the story progresses, the inner life of a woman who has spent years suppressing herself gradually emerges. Because Lady Cho understands all too well the limitations placed upon her simply for being a woman, she is forced to pretend not to understand them at all. Son Ye Jin conveys that buried sorrow with striking weight.
Lady Cho’s line, “I wanted to be Ahn Hui Yeon,” is especially important to understanding the series. On the surface, it sounds like a confession that she wished she could freely love Cho Won. Beneath that, however, lies a deeper desire to exist as her true self, “Cho Yun,” rather than being confined by the name and social identity of “Lady Cho.” What she truly envies is Hui Yeon’s ability to make a decision based on her own feelings.
Ji Chang Wook also makes Cho Won’s contradictions believable, moving between his longing for Lady Cho and the sly charm of a notorious playboy. The despair concealed behind his casual jokes and his obsessive attachment to love come alive through Ji Chang Wook’s flexible performance. Nana, meanwhile, initially makes a fresh impression as Hui Yeon, portraying the isolated life of a widow through her pale expression and withdrawn body language, but the character ultimately does not develop much beyond that early impression.
At its core, The Scandal is driven by a doomed love story born from the collision between the restrictions of its era and the desires of its characters. That compelling foundation still has power. But if the same story is being revisited after 23 years, simply recreating what made the earlier version appealing is not enough; the adaptation needed to find new questions to ask contemporary viewers. Despite its talented cast and provocative premise, The Scandal ultimately fails to deliver the added depth, entertainment, or persuasiveness that an expanded series adaptation should have offered.
Sources: Naver