MBC Royal Romance K-drama Perfect Crown with IU and Byun Woo Seok Heads into Finale Weekend Carrying the Weight of Too Many Tropes

I so wanted to love Perfect Crown, and I did for the first two episodes even. Alas the excitement and interest faded quickly as the drama got going, a combination of not enough character or plot development due to the truncated 12-episode length and the lack of chemistry between leads IU and Byun Woo Seok. They were together very good looking onscreen but the narrative and their lack of sexual or romantic tension sunk the chance of this drama being the next big thing. This weekend is the finale and the drama for me is limping into the last arc on the back of now so many tropes it’s almost comical. There has been three (3!) fires at the palace already in just ten episodes (don’t even get me started with trying to put it out with buckets), both leads have been in the hospital (IU for poisoning and Byun Woo Seok for a car accident), and the female lead also had a car accident with her brakes cut in an murder attempt, there is a high school crush arc for three out of the four leads, and so on so forth. If this script won an award I’m scratching my head wondering just how bad the competition for that award was from the other contenders lol. Who knows, maybe the final two episodes will tie this baby together and make it work.