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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The Woman who Married Three Times" Episode 32

And it looks like the drama is right back to moving at a crawl. On one end it's nice that these marriages are slowly disintegrating, as opposed to just remaining stagnant. And given the personalities of the characters involved, it's not like any of them would just give up altogether anyway. But still. There's only so much slow storyline movement a viewer can take. The pacing is consistent, genuine, and terribly frustrating.

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There's a bit more to chew on outside of the married couples. There's some fun times with Hyeon-soo and her prospective in-law. I wonder what happened to Gwang-mo's father. That's a serious question actually- I have no idea where Gwang-mo got his comically optimistic, cheerful, and dogged personality from, but it's hard to imagine any of that came from his mom. I do like the way that she clearly expresses disdain for Gwang-mo without ever seriously breaking his spirit.

Another mother also makes a surprise appearance. Much crying is involved. It's worth noting that the beta couples in "The Woman who Married Three Times" have markedly different temperments. Gwang-mo and Joo-ha have found romantic opposites, not in happy-go-lucky people like themselves, but people who superficially appear to be the antithesis of everything they stand for. Joo-ha in particular seems awfully broad-minded about a guy who, on a fundamental level, doesn't seem like he's much fun to be around.

That's part of what I like about this drama's approach to love. The feeling of being in love is not one that seems at all conducive to healthy romantic relationships here. We saw this telegraphed right from the beginning. It retrospect it's obvious, but Gwang-mo jumped the altar because he realized that the lovey-dovey relationship he had with Joo-ha was unsustainable. And for the most part both of them have recovered from the shock of that incident and been able to find better fulfillment elsewhere with people who don't offer that.

By contrast, the actual married couples in this drama still don't have a clue what they're doing wrong. Chae Rin's visits to the fortune tellers would be funny if it wasn't all so pathetic. Her only failure has been that she keeps striking Seul-gi and otherwise terrorizing the little girl- all because Chae Rin cares more about image than she does actually doing things that would make her a likable admirable stepmother. Joon-goo may or may not ever figure out that the reason Eun-soo finally broke things off is because she doesn't believe he cares. I sure don't know, and maybe even he doesn't- so why should she?

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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