[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Family Outing" Episode 11

So much for the strong points...this episode dips right back into the convolutions that typically have made "Family Outing" tiring to watch- a scam that doesn't make sense, an emphasis on debt collection, and jokes that just aren't funny. There really isn't anything amusing about a man bemoaning financial woes on top of a high rise building when many people do in fact make those kinds of frightening decisions on short impulsive notice.

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The only somewhat interesting plot point right now regards the pregnancy, and this is partially because it demonstrates the poor financial acumen that's gotten this family so bogged down. Dal-soo's phrasing is just embarassing. Yes, it's perfectly all right to be excited but, you know, babies cost money. And without Kkeut-soon no one in this family would even have a potential cash source. Not that there's much serious talk of the inheritance.

Kkeut-soon ends up dealing with a rather different financial matter, for some reason. I don't know why Joon-hee and Joon-ha are expecting the current plan to work. Even provided they can convince Kkeut-soon that she agreed to this prior to the dementia diagnosis, the very idea of signing the buildings over to Joon-ha would seem to violate the entire spirit of the inheritance challenges. Really it just seems to beg the question of why Kkeut-soon didn't bring along her own lawyer to handle all of this stuff. Or at least have one back in the United States to manage the dispersion of assets.

But the bigger problem with "Family Outing" is that it's just plain boring. There's no consistent narrative thread to hook on to, and the large number of plots are so thinly developed there's no way of knowing how much emphasis any given narrative point will get per episode. While Jong-tae trying to get back together with Kkeut-soon is kind of interesting, a single random interspersed scene isn't really enough to get me to want to pay a whole lot of attention.

A further backslide seems likely as the cliffhanger indicates the conflict will once again just be Dong-seok confronting Joon-hee about her true nefarious motives. The evidence isn't even all that impressive, all we have to go on is that Jin Yi-han is more angry and snarling than usual. I suppose I should jusy be happy that at least there's something going on here that approximates a conflict. All the same an actual consistent theme would be really helpful right about now.

Review by William Schwartz

"Family Outing" is directed by Joo Dong-min, written by Kim Sin-hye and features Lee Jung-hyun, Jin Yi-han, Oh Sang-jin, Park Won-sook, Jung Han-hun and Park Jun-gyu.

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