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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Woman who Married Three Times" Episode 16

The focus here is on dinnertime, as all four of the households we've seen prepare, then eat, and then clean up after having had their supper. In other words, it's an episode for baselines and comparisons. The most immediate obvious one is that the only household to strictly follow rules of etiquette and make a point of eating together no matter what...is Hyeon-soo's. This is the only home with no children or parents. Although it does have a love interest.

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The sense of intimacy and cheer, and particularly its absence anywhere else, is striking. Granted, a lot of this is due to the presence of Joo-ha, who is constantly upbeat and even does goofy stuff like speak in emoticons. But even beyond that, there's a sense of respectful restraint coupled with caring among these three unrelated people. All the more family-like families show restraint, less out of respect for other people than because they feel being too blunt about emotions in this context would be socially rude.

The immediate result of this is that the conflict between Eun-soo and Joon-goo becomes far more compelling. It is very, very easy to just dismiss Joon-goo out of hand as a villain because of what he's done until now, and to accuse Eun-soo of being foolish for even considering the prospect of giving him another chance. But what "The Woman who Married Three Times" realizes is that when genuine emotional sentiment is involved, these situations just aren't that simple.

Eun-soo might not realize it, for example, but Joon-goo really does feel pretty awful about the whole situation. Not just in the sense that it has bad consequences to him- he needs quiet time to just sit down and realize that the lying really is a huge deal for Eun-soo. That her previous relationship was, as she states explicitly, a total hell, and that he might have just started that cycle again. There's nothing especially sad about the flashbacks we get here, about when Eun-soo and Joon-goo first met, except that in the present context there's this overwhelming sense of regret.

The characters really are learning and growing from their experiences here- the dramatic questions right now are will that be enough to solve the current crisis, and if so, will they be able to step back and recover that same sense of empathy the next time a major problem comes up? Neither of these problems can be resolved in the near term, so that only makes the smaller more immediate victories that much more important. The fact that Seul-gi is, for once, consistently happy and has her needs taken into account, really goes a long to maintaining a sense of hope and optimism.

Review by William Schwartz

"The Woman who Married Three Times" is directed by Son Jeong-hyeon and written by Kim Su-hyun and features Lee Ji-ah, Uhm Ji-won, Song Chang-eui and Ha Seok-jin.

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