[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Family Outing" Episode 12

Luckily for Joon-hee, the reason Dong-seok's suspicious about Joon-ha is because of romantic jealousy more than because he genuinely suspects something. Unluckily for Joon-hee, for this same reason Dong-seok doesn't stop being suspicious just because she's able to hurriedly come up with an explanation that's maybe almost believable. As the title card notes- the difference between reality and sincerity is an important one.

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The themes are still obviously present here. Note how throughout the course of the episode, Dong-seok's suspicions are mostly stoked by Joon-ha. He's willing to give Joon-hee more of the benefit of the doubt primarily because she's a pleasant person to be around. Not just with him, either. Joon-hee genuinely enjoys hanging around with the other members of the family. Contrast Joon-ha, who consistently acts in a very antagonistic way for no particularly good reason. His behavior is particularly puzzling, since this doesn't even seem like his real personality. Joon-ha appears to have forgotten that he acts like a jerk for an actual reason, not because he's an actual jerk.

I need to note that while the drama has constancy, it's still not particularly entertaing to watch. There's still a big problem regarding the inability of most of the jokes to really convincingly hit. "Family Outing" has this puzzling tendency to take rather outlandish concepts and ideas and make them bland somehow. Take the next round of challenges. The description of the new rules is pretty methodical, and all we're really watching is a family meeting.

Another point that's getting to be tiresome is the musical design. At the end especially, the drama's just trying way too hard to force emotion into the situation with the hardcore classical strings. That's really something that only works with more explicitly operatic dramas. "Family Outing" is never really goofy enough to ever actually warrant the overly super-serious treatment. Nor, for that matter, is it ever really a convincing comedy.

Without any of these elements, all that's really left is Joon-hee's story. Which again, is interesting on a thematic level. It genuinely has not occurred to the woman that she could probably easily live out her life at this point without the scam by just asking Kkeut-soon to help out of the kindness of her heart. The older woman would almost certainly do it. What Kkeut-soon won't do is enable more of Joon-hee's bad behavior. This is all nice enough, it really is, but "Family Outing" needs some sort of actual hook beyond this base simplicity.

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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