Episode Five Transcript - The Butterflies On The Concrete Podcast: What Got Me Through The Week?

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Welcome to the Butterflies On The Concrete Podcast: What Got Me Through The Week? This week I’ll be discussing the Netflix drama, Remarriage & Desires!

The premise of this drama is pretty simple. The synopsis mentions a wife who takes revenge on her husband’s mistress, and that is the heart of the plot, but this show is not at all what I expected. It’s short but written so intricately, that it keeps you wanting more. We’re given just enough, never too much information, and though a few aspects of the subplots are left unraveled in the end - with regard to some of the side characters, the main threads of the plot are tightly woven into a fantastic story. I watched it on a whim, not expecting anything at all, and then I ended up rewatching it, and now I’m hoping that there will be a second season. I usually enjoy watching lighthearted romantic comedies, or romance shows, revenge shows aren’t my typical go-to programming, but on occasion I come across a show like this that’s just so wild, it captivates my attention regardless of genre and I can’t help but want to talk about it!

The story begins with a man standing on top of a skyscraper and the female lead driving while being unable to reach the person she’s calling. The man stands there and then we see someone push him off of the building and suddenly the female lead wakes up in bed. It turns out that what we saw was a nightmare. Next, we see people arrive to seize her property and confiscate all of the items in her home. She asks them to at least leave her car, but it looks like they spare nothing inside of it. In the trunk, she notices some sort of scoresheet, where golf scores are written down, and we see her husband’s name and another name, Jin Yoo-Hui. In a flashback, her husband says that he has to go golfing even though it’s his birthday, and then the female lead realizes that there are golf balls with her husband’s initials and his mistress’s initials on them as well. In voiceover, the female lead, tells the audience essentially that her life was tough, but she thought the worst of it was behind her. As the show goes on, we learn that she has many more challenges that need to be overcome.

Eventually we see that the female lead’s husband asks her for a divorce and admits that he has another lover. At first, she’s reluctant to give him what he wants, but ultimately she agrees because she doesn’t want to stay in a relationship with someone who doesn’t truly love her. This show usurps all expectations though, so it turns out that the woman he has an affair with actually doesn’t want him. Instead, the woman he had an affair with ultimately betrays him, slandering his name and pinning the blame on him for embezzlement to save herself. In a short amount of time, he loses his mistress, his job, and, ultimately, his wife and daughter because of the divorce. As a result of this, he decides to take his own life.

This story is unlike any show I’ve watched before. The female lead’s mom sells her wedding ring to pay the ten million won cost for her daughter’s membership to an elite matchmaking service called, Rex. The female lead insists on getting a refund, because she has no thoughts of getting remarried, but then she sees her husband’s mistress at the matchmaking company and changes her mind. She wants to know why the mistress is there, and who the mistress wants to be set up with. And at this point I thought the plot would be about the female lead chasing after the man that her husband’s mistress wants so that she can obstruct and ruin her efforts to achieve her dream of marrying rich and living happily ever after. Instead, the female lead’s only real desire throughout the show is to reveal the truth about what happened to her husband because of the mistress’s actions, and thwart the mistress’s marriage goals that way. It’s more palatable in a way, and I think it’s a more satisfying approach for the screenwriter to take. The female lead resists wanting to get remarried and she resists the advances from the male lead and the second male lead, her first love, for most of the show. And so they pine over her and clearly want her, but she’s super uninterested and that builds a lot of the tension between them.

The female lead character is Seo Hye-seung, and she’s an adjunct professor at a Korean university, played by actress Kim Hee-sun. I think I first watched Kim Hee-sun in the drama, Wonderful Days. The male lead, Lee Hyung-ju, is the CEO of a mobile game company, and the actor Lee Hyun-wook plays his character. The actress Jung Yoo-jin does a masterful job playing the mistress, Jin Yoo-Hui. I truly was frustrated and upset with her character as a viewer, and since her character was the villain, that means that she did a fantastic job. Luckily, I’ve seen her in other shows before like Romance is a Bonus Book and Snowdrop, so it isn’t to the extent where I won’t be able to watch her in other shows because of it.

I want to talk about my favorite parts of the show and what I’d like to see explored if there’s a second season, so I’m letting you know now that there might be spoilers ahead.

No surprise that since I like romance shows, what stood out to me the most in this drama was the relationship between the female lead and the male lead. He picks her out of everyone after they meet at a masquerade party arranged by Rex, and if the CEO of the matchmaking company hadn’t diverted his attention to two other women, including the mistress, I think they would’ve gotten together much faster. I wasn’t sure if there was a male lead in the show at first, and I definitely wasn’t sure if she’d find love at all, but then their relationship starts to become more of a possibility after she becomes a tutor for the male lead’s son. Hye-seung becomes a mother-like figure to Hyung-ju’s son, and someone Hyung-ju’s mother appreciates because of her academic background and the stellar results from her tutoring. In Episode Five, when she realizes Hye-seung is in close proximity to the male lead, Yoo-hui tells him lies about Hye-seung, slandering her character, and Hyung-ju confronts Hye-seung because of it - asking if she approached him on purpose. This prompts Hye-seung to say that she’ll quit after Hyung-ju’s son takes his exams, and his mother and son are furious with him because of this. They demand that he get her to return to work immediately. This makes him think twice about the bad rumors he’s heard. We also see him discuss Hye-seung with the second male lead, her first love and ex-boyfriend, Professor Cha Seok-jin, who works at the same university Hye-seung teaches at. He’s also a reluctant member of the Rex matchmaking service. Seok-jin tells Hyung-ju that he knew her in college, and explains that the masquerade party wasn’t her scene, and that she went there only to say something, she wasn’t there to find a man, and because of this Hyung-ju realizes that he misunderstood Hye-seung. He invites Hye-seung out for a meal and then apologizes and asks her to return. She says she’ll think about it and then tells him a story – about how her entire life was ruined because of one of the women at the masquerade party - but she leaves out who the woman was…  She tells him that she wants to, and I quote, “destroy her at her happiest moment.” Hyung-ju mentions that his loneliness after his divorce and his wife  betraying him, lessens when he’s out in nature, and Hye-seung is surprised that someone wealthy like him feels lonely at all. He answers that while it appears as though he has everything, ultimately he has no one to share it with. He then offers her a car, like he bought a car for her, but she refuses to accept the gift. Overall, it feels sort of like a first date.

My favorite episode is probably Episode Six because there are quite a few memorable moments between the leads. The first notable moment is when Hye-seung goes to Hyung-ju’s yacht with her daughter and his son to celebrate his son’s test scores. They look like a happy family celebrating together and Hye-seung and Hyung-ju seem like a perfect fit. We never get any romantic or intimate scenes between Hye-seung and Hyung-ju, the closest we ever get are Hyung-ju helping Hye-seung stay upright when she almost falls when they’re on the boat. Still, you can tell by his actions that he cares for her. For example, he seems jealous when he sees her on a date with Seok-jin later in the episode. And then, at another part, he asks her why she and Seok-jin broke up and then wonders aloud if she’d be willing to consider him as a potential suitor instead. When he sees her response, or lack of one, rather, he acts as if he’s joking, but we all know that he wasn’t. And then he helps her to reveal what Yoo-hui did in hopes that she won’t be able to ruin anyone else’s life in the same way that she ruined Hye-seung’s. There are more moments between them, but I’ll hold off on mentioning the rest of them so that I don’t spoil it.

All I can say is that if there’s a season two, I would really like to see their relationship be developed more. We’re given just enough interactions to fulfill a romance component to this drama, but it’d be nice to see them happy and living well together. If they’re happy, you may be wondering what sort of conflict would there be in a second season then, right? But, there are some other aspects of the show that could be expanded, those unraveled threads that weren’t properly tied up in season one. In regard to their relationship though, it would be nice to see how the mother in law truly feels about them as a couple. She liked Hye-seung up until she realized Hyung-ju wanted her. Once she saw Hyung-ju’s interest in her, and that she might cause people to gossip over their relationship, the mother expressed her disapproval and asked Hye-seung to stop tutoring her grandson. That’s the only conflict regarding their relationship that I would be open to seeing in a season two. Otherwise, I just want more romantic moments to be honest.

That doesn’t include company issues though. In a second season I’d really like to find out what exactly happened with Hyung-ju’s company after Yoo-hui tried to sabotage him by aligning herself with his friend. This friend wasn’t truly a friend because he seemed eager to want to gain control of Hyung-ju’s company, but we never fully get a resolution about what happened between them, and how or if he managed to stabilize and maintain control of his company after the fact.

I’d also like to know more about the congressman’s close confidant, Go Ae-ran. She mentions wanting revenge but we don’t get much of a backstory about that, and so I think a season two could explore that storyline more in depth.

Another aspect of the plot that I’m curious about is if Seok-jin, who was given an opportunity to marry Hye-seung if he agreed to give up his inheritance, truly did agree to give up his inheritance. Although he doesn’t marry her, he said he was going to, so does that mean that he can still keep his inheritance, or did he forfeit it and then still not get married to the woman he loved? It looks like his stepmother, the CEO of the matchmaking company, did gain control of her husband’s company because she seemed to be closing her matchmaking company in the end. However, it’s unclear if that is actually the case. After all, her husband could recover from his illness, and there was the mysterious person who arrived at the very end of the show asking her not to close her matchmaking service. Her background is also something that we could learn more about, because the CEO of the matchmaking company was difficult to read. I could never tell if she was on Hye-seung’s side, or Yoo-Hui’s side. She seemed like a complex character who would have a fascinating backstory. With so many questions left unanswered, I’d love to have these issues addressed in a second season.

One last thing I wanted to discuss was how unpredictable this show is at times. I watched in awe each episode as Jin Yoo-Hui became greedier and greedier until ultimately she lost everything. She was a successful attorney. Her life could’ve turned out quite differently if she’d made different choices. Her character appears to be a manifestation of the phrase, “Hurt people, hurt people.” Her father, the congressman, never really acknowledged her existence, because she was born out of wedlock and for a politician - image is everything. And while none of that excuses anything that happens, her story remains one of the aspects of the plot that could be explored in a second season.

Let me highlight just a few of the outrageous and scary things Yoo-Hui did in the name of greed – while trying and failing to win Hyung-ju’s affection: Telling rumors to Hyung-ju’s ex-wife, causing the ex-wife to demand the female lead be fired as a tutor, having the man who confessed the truth about what she’d done to Hye-seung’s husband kidnapped and thrown into the ocean causing his untimely demise, arranging a car accident for Hye-seung’s daughter on her daughter’s birthday, and then threatening her father, the congressman, so that he’ll arrange for an impromptu tax audit for Hyung-ju’s company, which she’d already put into peril by convincing Hyung-ju’s friend to try and take over Hyung-ju’s company.

Do you think there could be a redemption arc for her character somehow? If so, what would that look like? Do you think she’ll ever feel even a hint of remorse for anything that happened during this show? Part of me highly doubts it based on the way the screenwriter wrote the last scene that we’re given with her character, but still, I’m curious what the screenwriter would do with that sort of story arc. It doesn’t seem like the story that the writer is trying to tell, but I do think that with a show like this anything is possible.

Personally, I’d prefer having more happy moments with the lead couple shown in a second season instead, paired maybe with a battle for Hyung-ju’s company, and details about Go Ae-ran’s revenge, or learning more about the matchmaking CEO’s next steps. But, we don’t even know if a second season is a possibility yet, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. I hope that you’ll watch Remarriage & Desires if you haven’t yet because it’s probably the wildest show I’ve seen in years. I haven’t asked myself, “What did I just watch?” repeatedly throughout an entire show since I saw the drama Last Empress. I don’t know if it’s technically a makjang drama, but there are definitely some aspects of it that come pretty darn close. If you have watched this drama, please let me know what moments you enjoyed, and what you would like to see happen in a second season.  Also, if anyone is listening to this and would like to share what got them through the week, please comment on this episode’s post on our Instagram page WhatGotMeThroughTheWeek, or by email at whatgotmethroughpodcast@gmail.com.  The transcript and audio for this episode will be posted on HyssopandEbony.com.

Until next time!