[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Family Outing" Episode 15

The difference between this episode of "Family Outing" and every other episode that's dangled the threat of exposing Joon-hee's true identity is that this time the drama actually goes through with it. There's not even much of an intermediate period of hand-wringing. Joon-hee just goes, you know what, forget it. I'm sick of acting like this. I'm going to say my apologies and just leave. It's a much easier thing for her to do now that there's other things in life that Joon-hee can enjoy aside from the con.

Advertisement

It's a welcome moment of maturity from a drama that's frequently had trouble balancing tones. I can actually see why Dong-seok is kind of broken up about the situation. While we see plenty of flashbacks indicating all the hints that something funny was going on with Joon-hee and Joon-ah, there's also the moments where Joon-hee genuinely comes off as a good person. Dong-seok actually realizes that Joon-hee was in fact planning on coming clean to everyone even before her hand was forced. It's a nice reversal of the endless misunderstandings frequent in these kinds of dramas.

The huge con scheme is continuing to collapse under its own weight. It's not totally clear to me why the non-central characters thought they could get much mileage out of exposing Joon-hee's identity. I'm guessing the purpose of this was to create some actual villains for this drama. I suppose that's as good a reason as any. "Family Outing" is so consistently blech that any kind of flavoring tends to be an improvement.

...That much, in part, does put me in a kind of awkward position. While I liked what was done with Joon-hee's character here, I'm having trouble remembering whether anyone outside of the lead characters actually did anything this episode. The supporting cast frequently comes off as a kind of peanut gallery- always there for a couple of colorful comments, but not really having any kind of serious character arc of their own.

Still, this episode does give me some hope that writer Kim Sin-hye at least knows how to properly advance character arcs, even if she's not very good at giving them actual exposition. Or maybe that's just been a problem with the pacing and repetition, I'm really not sure. It's bizarre thinking about what little has actually happened in this drama, considering this is the fifteenth episode. In any case improvement is improvement, and the preview does give some pretty good evidence that "Family Outing" is going to continue along the same lines.

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.

Watch on Viki