Strangers Again: Episodes 9-10

by missvictrix

In our penultimate week, we watch as our couple navigates their maybe-we-are-a-couple-again waters, which — as expected — stirs up old issues. Have they addressed any of the things that came between them to begin with before jumping back into this relationship?

EPISODES 9-10 WEECAP

Where has my cheeky and deep-reaching drama from a few weeks ago gone? I started out really enjoying this exploration of a divorced couple forced to work together again and close out all the baggage they left unaddressed. But as the weeks progressed, the thread of this story was lost. While I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, all I know is that this week’s penultimate episodes left me disappointed, and is rendering the whole drama flat.

Last week, we ended with Eun-bum agreeing to see Ha-ra again, and this week we see them immediately jump headfirst into their relationship. Except we kind of don’t? While we see them hanging out and acting like the long-time couple they are, I’m actually left feeling like the drama is skipping over all its interesting questions and moments.

After such a cruel betrayal, why was it so easy for Ha-ra to go back to Eun-bum? Why did Eun-bum go back to her to begin with, after everything he did to get a clean break? Why is none of this dug into at all? I fully expected the drama to show us their slow burn realization that they were still attracted to each other despite it all, with subtle fluttery moments mixed with the gravity of important moments of emotional honesty.

Instead, we got a comedic string of sudden confessions from Ha-ra last week, and this week, we watch the couple ricochet back into their old relationship. It doesn’t feel like a thing has changed between them. On one hand, yay Ha-ra for forgiveness? But also… what about this huge lie of a divorce, and all the issues that tore them apart to begin with? Instead of understanding anything our characters are feeling for each other, we just have Ha-ra go right back to bulldozing her way through their relationship — and wasn’t that kinda the problem to begin with?

The only explanation I can think of here is that the drama wants to show how easy it is to re-enter a relationship without dealing with the original issues — which is fine, and also accurate — but if this was the argument to begin with, this should have been where the meat of the story was. As it stands now, I’m not sure where the meat of our story actually lies anymore.

In what I suppose is Act III of this story, we turn to the question of children and the role they play in marriage (after rolling through infidelity and family/in-laws in our earlier acts). To start, Bi-chwi finally (thankfully) realizes she’s pregnant, and goes through a completely predictable arc with Shi-wook. Denial, eventual discovery, intention to get an abortion, abortion mission aborted, an unwanted marriage proposal, and then an acceptance of said marriage proposal. The drama wants us to believe in this couple, because Bi-chwi gets to have her career and be an adored wife, and Shi-wook gets to be a stay-at-home dad and adore his wife and child. That’s all fine on paper, but I never got the sense that these two truly loved each other. And does Bi-chwi even like him?

Another complicated pregnancy story rears its head with Ha-ra’s case this week — her young cousin is divorcing the wife he loves over the fact that she doesn’t want a child and got an abortion against his knowledge. This whole case/relationship was brimming with so many uncomfortable red flags on both sides; I also wish the drama didn’t feel the need to pull the Child Question into every single plot arc this week. It was already a major heart issue for Ha-ra, and I didn’t require any more convincing.

But that’s what all these supporting pregnancy/childbearing stories are meant to do: push Ha-ra to express her deep desire for a child. Now, this is actually excellent as a growth arc for this character, and as the deep-seated issue that disrupted her marriage… but has she not learned or matured or grown at all? Rather than understand Eun-bum’s position, and how this broke down their marriage in the first place, she proceeds to bully him.

Teaming up with his mother — who we learn is a bit of a cruel woman — Ha-ra is convinced that if she can leverage Eun-bum’s greed, he’ll agree to have a baby. In other words, have his mother give him an expensive building he’s always wanted if he’ll agree to father a child. This is not only insulting to Eun-bum (or any human), but it’s also just off-putting and disrespectful in about every way.

Needless to say, it’s hard to get behind a divorced couple that’s seeing each other again, but still can’t understand their root issues (Ha-ra’s bulldozer mentality, Eun-bum’s unwillingness to be honest). I don’t understand why the drama wants to show us zero growth in these characters when it could have been slowly showing us the maturation of their relationship from the get go. At least then we’d have something to go on. We’d understand why they want to be together again, instead of it just feeling like it’s happening by default.

As we near the end of our episodes this week, though, we finally get somewhere. Eun-bum shares with Ha-ra the truth of his childhood, from the way his mother treated him to the guilt he feels over the accidental death of his young sister. This trauma makes sense for the Eun-bum we have come to know, but why wasn’t the drama interested in showing us his healing process as a part of his own willful growth? Why is it just a byproduct of Ha-ra and his family’s bullying?

And so, I’m left feeling the same way with almost every arc we’ve got going on right now: why does our drama seem to skip over everything that’s interesting in favor of a boring default mode? I was longing to see some of the emotional honesty we got in our first handful of episodes, and see that uncovered and unpacked as our leads debated rekindling their romance. Instead, the drama just made them jump back into their previous MO without much thought (or sense). As a consequence, the drama has given itself the unwieldy task of attempting to do in its final week what it could have unfolded over the course the twelve episodes. Sigh.

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Strangers Again: Episodes 9-10