[Drama Recap] The Lover: Episode 3

The overall design is slightly tweeked this episode. Gone is the rather goofy English voiceover about couples shacking up before marriage. Instead, the framing device for most of the skits just ends up being the voices of the women in these relationships. The result is a somewhat surprising blend of emotional complexity. Even as "The Lover" looks at times amateurish, with actors seeming to break character in the course of certain jokes, by the end we're left with a rather sweet lingering feeling of why people get together romantically in the first place.

Lest you think this drama has gone completely soft worry not- there's still plenty of dirty humor. It's the subtext that makes these moments funny, because all of these people are having sex on a regular basis. If you're willing to tolerate bodily fluids in that environment, what's so weird about getting them smothered all over you in the course of preparing for work? Well, because people tend to have arbitrary standards.

Let's take Jin-nyeo's dress as an example. Or is it even a dress? I'm not sure in what context she's supposed to wear that thing. It looks like some kind of weird cross between formal wear and a swimsuit. I'm inclined to agree with Yeong-joon's unimpressed reaction, even as he apparently changes his mind once Jin-nyeo finds a sexy way to use it. Then he changes his mind again upon discovering that Jin-nyeo has violated his personal space in a way that really doesn't seem all that important.

As one late conversation puts it, most of the couples in "The Lover" don't really seem like they love each other so much as they just tolerate one another's presence. Which is, in fact, an important element of cohabitating with another human being that's often glossed over. It's not always sexy time. And even when it is sexy time there's a lot of negotiation going on that sometimes takes a weird direction.

If hell is other people, this episode demonstrates that the converse is also true- that heaven is other people. It would be all too easy for these characters to act as a distorted mirror for each other's personality. But they choose not to. It's not the fighting that matters, it's the resolution. And by bedtime, regardless of whether the couple is sleeping alone or together, there's a kind of peace above all of them knowing that when they wake up in the morning, they'll find their other self. It's a sweet sentiment, and the way it dovetails with the jokes makes for a nice shift in narrative direction.

Review by William Schwartz