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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Woman who Married Three Times" Episode 21

This episode establishes beyond all reasonable doubt that the problems in the Eun-Soo / Joon-Goo relationship are still there, and unlikely to leave anytime soon. Even though he's been sick, and even though he's been victimized by Da-Mi, Eun-Soo simply doesn't trust Joon-Goo yet. There's good reason for this- honestly, I'd probably recoil at the sense of his touch, too. He's been lying for a long time and so far the efforts Joon-Goo has been making toward redemption haven't been that convincing.

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Take his entire scene with Da-Mi. Yes, in a technical sense he does make the right decision and act in the correct way. But the man is still hesitating. He's still not totally sure. While Joon-Goo understands on a logical level what he needs to do, on the emotional level he's not acting as definitely as he should be. Granted, it's unfair to chastise him for failing to be perfect. The man's only human. Joon-Soo just doesn't seem to fully appreciate the damaged situation Eun-Soo came from all that well, even if he knows all the particulars.

Speaking of that damaged situation, Chae Rin is finding that acting as the subordinate for Tae-Won's unsavory relatives is a fairly unpleasant task. On a basic logical level I'm not sure Lady Choi even knows what she wants. Submission, obviously, from everyone else in this household. But that's not much of a bedrock to build a family on. It's clear that Tae-Won understands that doing whatever his mother said has, in fact, been the source of most of his problems up until now and that this needs to stop.

And so we move on to more general everyday life, as Tae-Won bends the rules in order to make sure that Seul-Gi can get to a birthday party. I'd just like to note, again, I really like his character development. It's pretty much entirely internal at this point. Goodness knows that Tae-Won has no good influences inside that house. Luckily, this seems to have inspired him to do better. It's a bit of cheer in a drama with tendencies toward depressing material.

While the performances and narrative movements are all strong here, I must confess to getting a little tired watching the later parts. "The Woman who Married Three Times" has a habit of overdoing material sometimes, creating a sort of filler because it doesn't want to do too many storyline developments at once, and this episode is no exception. The obsession with recapping past episodes and providing excessive preview information is getting rather annoying. Some amount of mystery and surprise is necessary for this narrative to keep its viewers at maximum attention, after all.

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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