Familiar Wife (2018)

Beta simp on a mission to find his abusive wife!!

True love is it not. When a 500 won coin liberates you from a thankless existence, so pathetic that even plot writers won't excuse themselves for shaming you for your wife's lack of communication skills, and then fate puts you on a pedestal, what would you do? Of course seek your misery again as your "one true love" in a post wall woman. Cute, is it not. Maybe good for fancies of 30+ age women.

This is the first drama I actually sympathized with "rich bitch" wife. Since such a character is usually abused by writers in KDramas. Here too they did try to show that she was preying on a younger lad, but I guess they found some sense and did turn it into "rich noona" situation. She's very good. Not a career obsessed freak. Totally waits on her husband. Her entitlement is a small compromise against the good stuff.

Misery loves company. That's the drama in a nutshell. Nobody can find fault in marvelous acting skills of Ji Sung and Han-Ji Min. But the characters here are not great. The onus of repairing seems to fall entirely on Ji Sung's character (husband). His wife's character does not realize any of her own mistakes(apparently she was short circuited and oppressed by her overworked husband who took extreme pains to give their family a good life.) In addition, there is the usual propaganda - housewife=depressed oppressed woman. Overworked post wall bank employee = career woman who is totally happy.

Bank employees and their antics provided much needed comic relief since the main lead's romance existed mostly in cringe flashbacks. I mean, Han-ji Min is a proper ajumma now. And Ji Sung is above 40. Not even the best makeup can make them look like high school students. Unfortunately, writers didn't write good comic script. The flyer with spelling mistake was probably the most original comic joke.

Cinematography: American sitcom ultra shake mode was always on. A thousand different cuts in one conversations. I mean, Han-ji Min's character is talking to that restaurant guy's wife. Tone of conversation is very muted. A casual talk. And the camera - cut to Han-ji Min's face, cut to other woman's face, cut to through the window shot, cut to inside the restaurant shot, cut to hair, cut to hands, cut to lips, cut to perspective shift, cut to....ah! Learn to operate a camera. Crafty angles won't make your pathetic dialogue sound like Buddha speaking at Jetavana.

Not worth a rewatch. You can drop it after Ep 12 if you ask me. Nice OST BTW. Ultra cheap drama with no location, costume, sets to feel great about. Most of the money was spent in lassoing expensive leads. I mean, they were running a bank in a hotel lobby. What do you expect.

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I'm currently watching this because I wanted to lighten the mood as I watch Save Me. I chose this genre because I really love Go Back Couple, and Familiar Wife is listed in the recommendations. I think I set a high expectation on Familiar Wife because of the warm feeling GBC gave me. I'm really into family dramas that promote strengthening of family ties. Of course I will always root for Seo Woo Jin as she is the original wife, however I feel uncomfortable in Joo Hyuk's second life. Technically, in his second life, it is Hye Won he must be loyal to. The travelling back in time made everything different. I have nothing against Joo Hyuk, actually I like it when his character develops and realizes his mistakes, but I do not like the situation he is in the second life. The story makes Woo Jin a mistress, in that sense. Some might say that even Hye Won seems to be adulterous because she is falling for the college guy, however, we didn't have a clear background of who Hye Won is in Joo Hyuk's first life.
But let's see, I'm still at episode 7. I'm soo confused right now, like I feel it's not right.
I'll be back editing this if things go smoothly and will give me a major turn of events.

Update 1: I finished until episode 8. I must say, the difference between GBC and Familiar Wife is the time capsule element. In GBC, the main goal is to revisit and rekindle the memories that bonded the couple, that is why both Husband and Wife returned in time with their memories. It aimed to let the couple realize where and when did things go wrong and fix it from there. By the half of GBC, you could sense that the time travelling miracle happened in order for the wife and the husband to get back on their life as a couple.
In Familiar Wife, it is only the husband who retained the memories, while giving the wife little hints to have the familiar feeling towards her husband. By episode 8, I could sense that it is the wife who really loved the husband. The reason maybe that only the husband has his old memories is to teach the husband the importance of his wife. As I observed, never did the 1st wife mention to her husband about divorce, meaning the wife still believes in their marriage. Therefore, the back in time miracle is really for the husband. Sadly, it seems hard for the husband to go back in time again and make everything as it is in the original.

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The time travel is not the most unrealistic part

Spoiler ahead, sorry, but I suggest you read it, as it might save you a bit of time and also it might save you from a lot of angst.

Ok, so I am completely baffled. This is the second drama of its kind that I start watching and having to drop, out of sheer frustration. The other one I am referring to is Go Back Couple, which had the same issue (even though in that one, at least one of the leads, even if momentarily, seems to care about it).

I even looked for the writers of these 2 kdramas, and they're different.

So, the huge problem I am talking about: even while going into these traveling-back-in-time dramas ready to accept all sorts of impossible and illogical storylines (from a scientific perspective), the thing that makes me mad is how they deal with their children, from their original timelines.

The moment the ML decides to change the circumstances around meeting the original wife, knowing it will lead to them having no future together, he also virtually kills his children. I don't even care to know if the ML from this one comes to its senses later on in the drama or not.

Because there is no reasonable human being, that I know, that would behave that way. It's one thing to fantasize about living a life together with someone else, by making a different choice sometimes in your past. It's unthinkable to imagine that scenario knowing that way you are also losing, forever (ie killing), your young children.

Unless you're sick, I guess. As in psychiatric disorder levels of sickness. Which neither this drama, or Go Back Couple, seem to want to imply.

So yeah, watch this if you don't have kids and what I am saying seems just incomprehensible to you.

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