This serial of 2024 is highly praised in Wikipedia and several reviews and, indeed, won many awards both in Korea and Asia (Asian Academy, Asian TV) as well as Korean drama and Seoul International drama. However, I do wonder at the criteria used in these organisations. It won awards for Best Direction (Jang Young-Woo and Kim Hee-won) and for Best Script (Park Ji-eun). Both protagonists Kim Soo-hyun (as husband Baek Hyun—woo) and Kim Jin-won (as wife Hong Hae-in) also won awards. Certainly, Kim Ji-won deserved her award as best actress since she exhibited very convincingly anger, coldness, contempt, joy, love, pain, tenderness. Kim Soo-hyun is much less versatile, rather stiff, better suited for roles like that in My love from the star (2012-13), Moon Embracing the Sun (2012) and It’s Okey not to be Okey (2020).
Yes, there are tears, but they come not from the queen-wife but from the husband, who at times acts very shrewdly and decisively but at others he seems to lose all intelligence and self-confidence, although a trained boxer in youth, a special forces warrior and a very skilled lawyer!
It is described as a romantic comedy. It certainly has some romance between the protagonists and two other couples, Hae-in’s brother and his wife and her aunt Beom-ju and the peasant in Yongdu-ri countryside, where Hyun-woo’s family live. I saw it twice but found no genuine comedy, except very incidentally and some attempts with the bumpkins of Baek’s countryside.
There is the main plot of the couple’s misunderstandings and estrangement reaching separation and divorce despite many affirmations from both sides at different times that she always loved only him, and he always loved only her. Then the slow and laborious, after many twists and reversals, reproachment and reunion. These twists are mainly due to the villain Yoon Eung-song (played most competently by Park Sung-hoon) and his satanic mother Moh Seul-hee (played again competently by Lee Mi-sook), who both aimed at usurping the position, power and property of the Queen Group belonging to the Hong family – to which Hyun-woo belongs through his marriage with Jae-in and his position as director of the legal section.
Here too the scriptwriter can’t avoid some of cliches met in almost all Korean dramas (and this is a second-rate drama not a rom-com). One and most noxious is the reticence of two people who obviously love intensely each other to admit it to each other. Instead, they just stare, and the camera focuses on their faces staring! Here the two protagonists do not say the truth repeatedly.
The second is some fixed notion of Fate which all unbeknown to the main characters works to bring them together. Thus, in childhood Hae-in is saved from drowning by Hyun-woo as a boat sinks together with her brother. And the culprit who opened a hole was none other than Eung-song who develops into the hateful, vicious character we meet.
Korean film producers will not produce really good serials or films unless they cut the unnecessary length and reduce the episodes to 6 or 8 at most. Some critics give 4 stars out of 5 and others 9 out to 10. I give only 3 out of 5!
