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Familiar Wife korean drama review
Completed
Familiar Wife
31 people found this review helpful
by mamichu
Sep 20, 2018
16 of 16 episodes seen
Completed
Overall 5.5
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 8.5
Rewatch Value 2.0
I’m going to start this off with the fact that right from the beginning, I wasn’t a huge fan of the story of this drama. All throughout the drama, I’ve been convincing myself that I should keep giving it chances to redeem itself and here we are now, after the very last episode. This drama could have been shortened to at most 10 or 12 episodes, but the writer decided that it was a good idea to extend this up until 16 episodes. There were plenty of scenes that this drama could have had without. Yes, I’m talking about the drama between Joo Hyuk’s bank colleagues. I think that it would have been alright to include those scenes if they would have some sort of impact to the main characters’ story, but there really wasn’t. I suppose that the stories about the other bank workers are a “break” from the main characters’ story or perhaps “comic relief," but there were just too much of it and it did very very little or nothing to progress the plot.

As for the main characters themselves, right off the bat, we are shown that both our male and female leads are flawed. Now that is fine, because we all love to see how their characters would develop and how they could possibly fix their past mistakes. But the writer was so good into turning the viewers’ feelings of “neutral” to “dislike” up until you’re seething with anger and hatred towards the characters that you’re supposed to sympathise with and like. Our precious main characters are quite the selfish people and their fated love prevails everything else to the point that they were cheating on their respective partners. I’ve never quite watched a drama where the writer romanticises cheating to follow one’s heart and not feeling guilt whatsoever for one’s wrongs. Anyway, since the point of the story seemed to be a better relationship between the main characters, the last few episodes would not disappoint you.

But despite such a mess of a drama, the actors did very well to portray the sort of characters that the writer had given them. I especially appreciate the acting from Park Hee Bon (Cha Joo Eun) and Oh Eui Sik (Oh Sang Sik) as I enjoyed their characters’ addition to the drama. Their portrayal of a married couple, I found, was more enjoyable than our main characters’ love story. If you are a fan of Han Jimin or Jisung, I’d say, you’ll appreciate their acting as always, but I hope that their characters here would not make you like them any less.

If there is anything that I loved from this drama, it’s the OST. The songs fit so well with the overall vibe and every time I hear the songs playing, it would sometimes make me forget that the drama has such a messy story. Even if you, who might be reading this now, was planning to watch this drama and decided that maybe you’re not going to watch it after all, at least give the OST a listen. I recommend Roy Kim’s “No Longer Mine.” Likewise, N.Flying’s “Let Me Show You” and SF9’s “Love Me Again” were good songs. Both groups did so well with the OST.

In the end, I wouldn’t recommend this drama and I would not watch it again. The drama has redeeming qualities here and there, but despite that, this story hasn’t completely won me over. I know that there are others who enjoyed this drama so don’t let all the negative things that I’ve mentioned here stop you if you really were keen to watch it. At the end of the day, this is just my opinion amongst many others and perhaps I’ve just failed to see all the positive things about the drama that could possibly outweigh the negatives.
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