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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Road to the Airport" Episode 5

Once more we're left to stark contrasts about how Soo-ah and Hye-won react to grief. Well, really, we don't actually know if Hye-won is reacting to grief, something else, or just a combination of all these factors. What we do know is that Hye-won is legitimately acting really weird, and Do-woo is increasingly bothered by her attempts to straight-up expunge Annie's existence from all living memory. Observe how her attempt at seduction is just...very awkward.

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Soo-ah, meanwhile, has this huge big dramatic confession about something so incredibly minor that Do-woo has trouble figuring out why Soo-ah thinks it's such a big deal. Ironically, it's not learning about Annie's behavior before the accident that sets off Do-woo's suspicion toward Hye-won. The bigger issue is Do-woo seeing another person react to Annie's death with genuine grief, and realizing that very little about Hye-won's behavior adds up.

Hye-won has also made a bad enemy in the form of Min-seok. What's funny about Min-seok is he doesn't especially like Do-woo that much, and was relatively indifferent to Annie's death. But Hye-won was rude to him, and that's all Min-seok really needs to take Do-woo's side simply out of spite. This is especially unnerving considering that even with his less than above board motivation, Min-seok does genuinely seem to empathize with Do-woo over Annie's death. If Hye-won had been willing to do that bare minimum, it's unlikely that Do-woo would have become so obsessed with unraveling the mystery.

Beyond that though there really isn't very much to "Road to the Airport" right now. Soo-ah reacts emotionally to Do-woo a lot, but all we're ever really left with is scenes of Kim Ha-neul emoting because Soo-ah has an internal conflict more than anything directly related to Do-woo. The man's still grieving, and it genuinely does not seem to have occurred to him that he could have an affair with Soo-ah. To him, she's just Hyo-eun's mom.

Which does add yet another interesting element to Hye-won's generally suspicious behavior. It becomes clear that Hye-won and Soo-ah have never had contact with each other, even though their daughters were roommates overseas. So far as we can tell Hye-won had very little interest in Annie's life aside from this strange compulsion to make sure the young girl never met her biological father. It's hard to imagine what could possibly be motivating Hye-won- although as is usually the case, it is precisely that factor which makes the mystery so enigmatic.

Review by William Schwartz

"Road to the Airport" is directed by Kim Cheol-gyoo, written by Lee Sook-yeon, and features Kim Ha-neul, Lee Sang-yoon, Shin Sung-rok, Choi Yeo-jin, Jang Hee-jin, and Lee Young-ran.

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