[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Family Outing" Episode 3

There's less comedy here as "Family Outing" moves into mostly straight-faced drama. Given the general absurdity of the situations involved I'm surprised no one was even really hamming it up for the camera. We're pretty clearly expected to take, at face value, the tragic circumstances of Kkeut-soon's departure from Korea, as well as the general reactions of other characters to discovering this information.

Advertisement

Even the defined protagonists and villains are rather oddly defined here. While Joon-hee and Joon-ah are still obviously trying to deliver on some sort of scam, as portrayed here the two actually come off as fairly sympathetic. Joon-hee, like Dong-seok, has actual dreams and frustrations that have been exacerbated by life. Their kendo dual represents the fact that these two are battling over access to Kkeut-soon's resources for fairly similar reasons.

I'm assuming the purpose of all this is to set up a loveline between the two, although as of yet their behavior can't really be construed as sexual tension except in the sense that Dong-seok is a man and Joon-hee is a woman. It would not at all surprise me to find out that at some point other characters will try to force these two together as part of some weird scheme and that they'll go along with it for the sake of the money. That's still the kind of zany drama "Family Outing" is, even if the drama's trying to hide this fact with tragic flashbacks right now.

In terms of the immediate plot, though, the conflict deals with an actual existing past relationship. And the ability of this story thread to hold much interest is substantially limited by the fact that we know very little about the older members of the cast aside from Kkeut-soon herself. Truthfully, we know very little about any characters aside from Kkheut-soon, Dong-seok, Joon-hee, and Joon-ah. This is a problem when we're dealing with an ensemble of about a dozen people.

So, another all-around average episode of "Family Outing". Truthfully, the main intriguing mystery right now is where the casting department managed to find foreigners who can both speak Korean and act competently. Nobody watches Korean dramas because they're looking for good foreign actors, but it's unusual enough to be noteworthy. All the same, "Family Outing" really needs a more exciting hook than that to stay interesting- even the occasional visually arresting setpiece can't do that much without some decent context.

Review by William Schwartz

"Family Outing" is directed by Joo Dong-min, written by Kim Sin-hye and features Lee Jung-hyun, Jin Yi-han, Oh Sang-jin, Park Won-sook, Jung Han-hun and Park Jun-gyu.

 

Watch on Viki