Strangers Again: Episodes 11-12 (Final)

by missvictrix

In our drama’s final week it does lots of things — healing past wounds, making big changes, giving room to be comfortable with being uncomfortable — but then doesn’t know exactly what to do with those things. Oh, the drama that could have been.

EPISODES 11-12

Well, that happened. Our drama’s conclusion leaves much to be desired — and that’s coming from a person who normally appreciates an open ending. But rather than pick this drama’s failures apart, I’d like to focus first on what it did well: showing us how much Ha-ra and Eun-bum truly cared about each other.

From the start of the drama to the close, no matter how lacking the plot might have been, our actors never for a second let us forget that Ha-ra and Eun-bum were two people who were deeply connected. At the start of the drama we saw the rage of Ha-ra when she thought the man she’d trusted cheated on her. Then, as the story progressed, we saw the bond that still lingered between them, first amidst the sparring, then amidst the amicable reconciliation, then amidst the re-coupling. The fondness and affection between this couple is what I’ll keep of the drama, because even though it left me scratching my head many a time — or wanting to take to the script with a giant red Sharpie — at its core the story cared most about the closeness between these two characters.

All that being said, there’s never been a couple in dramaland that I actually wanted to end up apart quite as much as these two. The drama has been having fun since the beginning teasing whether they would get back together, or end up together in the end. But, in some strange feat of scriptwriting, they were so fixated on teasing out this question, that they forgot to actually make it fun.

In fact, the only time I felt an actual meaningful tension between our characters that made me lean in for more was the second to last scene of the drama. Our law firm crew is celebrating Bi-chwi and Shi-wook’s marriage, and Eun-bum and Ha-ra are there, stealing glances at each other. The drama was so good in this brief scene that I became embittered all over again about the drama that wasn’t. The things the drama wanted to do, but didn’t do. The things it seemed to care about, but then passed over in favor of random side stories and cases-of-the-week that took up far too much of the screen time that should have been spent on developing our characters.

Perhaps the drama’s greatest pitfall, though, was that it didn’t make this couple appealing. Despite believing in their closeness and comfortability, the story did nothing to make me root for them, and everything to make me think they were better off becoming strangers in the end. How’s that for the driving feeling while watching a rom-com? This is why — in another sentence I thought I’d never say while watching a rom-com — I was so relieved when they broke up in our penultimate episode.

Here, Eun-bum takes the path of noble idiocy (ish), breaking up with Ha-ra partly because of her mother, partly because of the child issue, and partly because of him. Ha-ra takes it quite hard, but is ultimately determined to use this to make an actual clean break this time. This is a relief.

If there is anything we have learned from hanging around these characters for so many hours, it’s that they haven’t dealt with their stuff. Ha-ra needs space to be herself and dial back her intensity — previously she was just living off her hatred of Eun-bum, or dating to escape it. And Eun-bum, well, he’s got even more issues than we thought? All of a sudden?

In some of the most incongruous character development ever, we have Eun-bum dealing with all sorts of crazy things in this finale week: his mother threatening to break ties with him, confronting the guilt over his little sister’s death, the nightmarishly bad headaches that scream Terminal Illness Trope — and then, for the cherry on top, a self-diagnosed emotional disorder. Huh? (This is either the worst possible explanation for why he couldn’t express himself to Ha-ra over the past decade, or it’s a genius one. I mean, is the fact that the drama never let us see inside Eun-bum until the final episode a self-referential expression of his inability to open up? Or am I giving the drama too much credit.)

We might know that Ha-ra and Eun-bum are better off apart, but the problem is that the drama itself can’t seem to decide. While watching, it feels like it wants to convince us that they belong together, but all it can do is throw up reasons why it’s a terrible idea. This is why I spent all of Episode 12 terrified that the drama would throw our pair together again in a last-minute romantic running-to-you scene or airport scene. Thankfully, they spared us that.

But, if the drama isn’t about them getting together again, is it about giving them proper closure? Because I could have gotten behind that as a story. Sadly, the drama didn’t seem ready to commit to any possible outcome — even in its final minutes — and instead rested too long on teasing out its actual premise (and its literal title): can we be strangers?

This question is left lingering as the drama ends. What it wants to do is ask probing questions about the marriage bond, emotional connection, commitment, and love, and if they can really disappear when a person leaves your life. Unfortunately, the drama can’t pull all of this off, and ends unable to pack the punch it desired.

However, as the story concludes, we do see good things have happened: Ha-ra has spread her wings and moved on to a bigger firm and bigger stage. She’s expressed herself to her mother and they’re on the same page about her figuring out her life. She hasn’t given up what she wants (love and motherhood), but she’s also navigating the space a bit more gently now.

I want to be okay with this as Ha-ra’s arc, but I’m also confused, because what did we see in her in terms of growth? Her character only ever reacted to Eun-bum, and was never treated as anything other than a powerhouse personality that deserved more/better than she got.

Eun-bum himself is also given positive motion in his concluding arc. He and his mother repair their relationship (ignore: ridiculous deus ex machina accident that makes this possible), and Eun-bum goes for counseling. THIS IS GOOD! But it’s also bad. Because all the growth and maturation that we would have enjoyed seeing play out in the actual drama — and might have made us actually root for this couple — was instead doled out as an ending montage of sorts to show us that they were both trying.

And so, we get all the storytelling beats without any of the satisfaction. Indeed, that might be a good way to sum up how I’m feeling about the show overall. There were so many directions to go — the amicable reconciliation, the healing breakup, the feeling that they’d both fixed their sh!t and were able to love each other wholeheartedly. But no. We didn’t actually get to see their intentions at play.

Ha-ra and Eun-bum’s relationship was The Plot of the drama, for certain, but it somehow ran cold for me. It was as if the drama was talking about their relationship without actually letting us see or experience it as a part of the story. And where’s the fun in that?

Instead, the ups and downs of Ha-ra and Eun-bum’s relationship — along with the weekly legal cases — just fed the plot chaos. Which way will this story go? What will it say? What is it getting at? The drama pulled too many threads, and teased too many outcomes, instead of committing to a message that it could have built up to. Then, though we might not have agreed on the ending, at least we could have witnessed our characters finding their way there.

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Strangers Again: Episodes 11-12 (Final)