[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Man In My House" Episode 8

My opinion regarding "The Man In My House" has slowly but steadily trended toward lukewarm. The drama is not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, but it's inescapable at this point how the story moves at a glacial pace to little apparent effect. The few clear villains in the property development scheme make spare appearances. And when one does show up at the cliffhanger, it's to deliver a horrifically contrived coincidence that would be laughable except that I do still have some sympathy for these characters.

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Really, it's hard to dislike either Nan-gil or Na-ri all that much. They're cute together, although there is a fine line between cute and obnoxiously lovey-dovey. I liked how we actually get more exposition of them apart than together. The best evidence that this relationship is changing them for the better is that there are still after-effects from their encounters, and that they are not driven to paranoid obsessive behavior. Nan-gil and Na-ri still have their own lives.

By way of contrast, Yeo-joo and Dong-jin are...less than inspiring, precisely because that's all they do is obsess over romantic partners. Even weirder, "The Man In My House" seems to be trying to set these two up as a beta couple. On general principle I like the idea of showing off the positive aspects in all people. But here the sympathy is largely forced by bringing up melodramatic elements in order to weakly justify why they behave in a generally selfish manner.

The worst of it is at this point, there's not even any particularly good reason for them to be in the story at all, since Na-ri doesn't want anything to do with either of them. With Deok-sim at least, there's intentional exploitation of her position vis a vis Deok-bong to clumsily try and get close to Nan-gil. It also helps that the new clothes Deok-sim comes up with this episode are adorable, and serve to mask her genuinely awful personality to some extent. That and puberty make for decent excuses.

Regardless, whether or not any individual character is sympathetic, the lack of prevailing relevant context outside of the most extreme variety is a clear problem. Too many of the story elements in "The Man In My House" simply lack any meaningful relation to one another. Is Deok-bong's increasingly antipathetic reaction to therapy interesting in regards to his character? Sure. But its relevance to anyone else is dubious, considering Deok-bong himself is of increasingly little significance to Na-ri's life.

Review by William Schwartz

"The Man In My House" is directed by Kim Jung-min-XII, written by Kim Eun-jeong, and features Soo Ae, Kim Young-kwang, Lee Soo-hyuk, Jo Bo-ah, Kim Ji-hoon-I and Kim Mi-sook.

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