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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Woman who Married Three Times" Episode 7

It turns out that in addition to all her other flaws the matriarch of the wealthy family is also an astonishingly bad mother. I don't mean that in terms of general abusiveness (that's already been well established) but how this woman manages to infatilize even the people she's supposed to like. It is, as is often the case with this drama, depressing to watch because it's hard to imagine this scenario could go anywhere good.

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Fortunately, we're able to spend some time with the parents of our lead characters, and it's quite clear that they have much more sensible heads on their shoulders. When Eun-soo comes to them with a problem, they listen and offer some form of moral support. It's nice to know that someone in this drama is capable of slowing down and just being calm long enough to get somewhere decent.

And yet none of this is quite as satisfying as when Hyeon-soo just loses her patience altogether and just starts snapping at people who annoy her. Before I thought these were character flaws that she was going to overcome, but now that the drama is in common stride I find that she's quite possibly the most relatable person here. There are so many schemes and so many signs of abuse that it just seems smarter to cuddle at home with the dogs. Those adorable dogs. They'll never use social pressure to force you to do unejoyable things. That's because they're just dogs.

In between "The Woman who Married Three Times" and "Let's Eat" I'm holding out hope for a new trend of depicting mean, misanthropic, somewhat mentally unbalanced women in a positive light. Call it a personal desire for wish fulfillment. I know the mature, sensible thing to do is want everyone to get along well and live happily ever after, but really, look at all the trouble the in-laws here are causing even though they're ex in-laws. It's not clear how or whether that particular conflict can even be resolved at all.

Really, about the best we can seem to hope for at this point is that Seul-gi is able to have more relatively happy, undramatic days spent with members of her family and she slowly grows up to be a coherent articulate young woman. We get a clear portrait this episode of what good parenting looks like compared to bad parenting, so that's likely to remain the emotional focus of this drama for the near future. Whether that actually means anything, considered how Eun-soo and Hyeon-soo turned out...well, again, we'll just have to wait and see.

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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