[Drama Recap] Make A Woman Cry: Episode 23

It's all well and good for Jin-woo to say that he'll love and support Deok-in no matter what- but at this point "Let the Girl Cry" is forcing the issue of how they have very different perspectives on relationships and trauma.

Jin-woo is unwilling to acknowledge that his previous marriage was a failure, on account of the fact that it didn't end in divorce. Whereas Deok-in takes death much more seriously, and realizes that even the best intent can't salvage an awful overall situation. Deok-in's chat with Kyeong-cheol is very illuminating in this regard.

For the first time we get a clear idea of why they got married in the first place- as expected, it wasn't because their relationship was especially passionate, but rather because of the way Deok-in was very well-matched with Kyeong-cheol's family. Deok-in finally has to admit that without their child as a connecting thread, she needs to let go of that. And Kyeong-cheol too needs to go back and take his rightful place. With all this emotional sincerity flying around it's somewhat awkward seeing that home life right now is in fact mostly comic relief. Deok-in's birth mother and Bok-rye are generally just hanging out and doing whatever, while Deok-in tries to figure out a way to put an end to this bad idea by at least getting her mother out of the in-laws' house. The charged emotional context doesn't make matters any easier here- it's easy to see why Kyeong-cheol felt the need to break the big news to his mother at a public restaurant, to minimize the outburst. As for the rich family...there's relatively little of them this episode. That's nice, except that by the end Eun-soo has decided she's not satisfying with starting stupid fights in her own family and decides to provoke them on Deok-in's end too.

Eun-soo is at her usual vindictiveness here but a couple of factors work to her favor. First, Jin-woo really should have come clean to her already. And second, well, Eun-soo's frustrated pretty easily. It's not always easy to blame her. Eun-soo tries to make peace with Hyo-jeong but this attempt at reconciliation is foiled mostly by her son very stupidly failing to realize that Eun-soo is lashing out mostly out of the fear that she'll be replaced. Although this isn't really that sympathetic a situation.

That's the problem with "Let the Girl Cry" in general right now- the characters are slowly but surely losing their relatability.

Review by William Schwartz