[Drama Recap] Make The Woman Cry : Episode 5

This episode is the one where the title really hits an accurate mark. While Deok-in might be a hard-boiled ex-detective who's good in a fight, ultimately, we constantly see that all she really wants to do is cry. It's not something Deok-in can do with her husband's family, because to a large extent they expect Deok-in to just be a pillar of support. It is something that she can do with Jin-woo, mostly because he happens to be there when she breaks down.

And Jin-woo means well, too, even if he's still a bit of a dork. That's one of the subtler themes here, is how characters act kind of dumb for the sake of emotional payoffs that oftentimes don't really even go anywhere. A rather arbitrary romantic storyline manages to come off as reasonably cute mostly because the young characters genuinely believe their own nonsense- even if it's obvious that we're not supposed to.

By contrast, the middle-aged characters act, well, like they've actually had life experiences. Deok-in and Jin-woo both have loads of backstory that we've really only touched the surface of. There's a lot going on with their emotional decisions- a lot of looking back to past events that they regret. But most of all these two lack naivete. They know that simply talking out their problems won't magically solve them, because they've had a lifetime of ambiguous experiences.

It's from this context that Jin-woo's favor this week takes on a darker context. Initial appearances notwithstanding, this isn't a probably Deok-in can solve by just punching people. It's easy to see in Deok-in's expressions and facial gestures that she knows exactly what kind of attitude resulted in this problem coming up in the first place. And it enrages her because Deok-in understands both ends all too well- the person who tries to be optimistic because they're too dumb to know otherwise, and the other person who's just an unrepentant jerk.

This is all strong emotional stuff. So it's inevitably sort of a let down that the rich family has to buy in again and create a big dumb fight out of nothing. Although admittedly it's interesting to see how these two very different families react to the issue of the handbag. For the people who can afford a luxury object like that like it's nothing, this is a big deal. For the people with less financial resources, the situation is much more flippant. So, credit earned on that front for sure.

Review by William Schwartz