This Week, My Wife Will Have an Affair

This Week, My Wife Will Have an Affair

5.5/10

This Week, My Wife Will Have an Affair

Genre:                                   Episodes: 12                            Year: 2016

Melodrama

Romance

Synopsis:

Do Hyun Woo’s world is turned upside down after he reads a text sent to his wife and he discovers that she is planning an affair. Confused and unsure what to do, Hyun Woo makes an anonymous post online asking for help, and receives advice from many readers. 

Cast:

Lee Sun Kyun (Do Hyun Woo)

Song Ji Hyo (Jung Soo Yeon)

Lee Sang Yeob (Ahn Joon Young)

Kim Hee Won (Choi Yoon Ki)

BoA (Kwon Bo Young)

Ye Ji Won (Eun Ah Ra)

Kim Kang Hoon (Do Joon Soo)

General Thoughts:

It’s not a bad drama, it’s just not my cup of tea. I went in thinking it would focus a lot more on the comedic element than it did, and while it did have some funny moments, I wouldn’t call it a comedy. It was a very interesting drama to watch, but I just didn’t really enjoy watching it that much.

Because apparently all marriages end in disaster

I had a mild curiosity to see how Hyun Woo would respond to his wife’s affair, but I wasn’t exactly invested in their relationship. I think a lot of the disengagement came form how undeveloped Soo Yeon was as a character. Even by the end of the series I didn’t have a feel for who she was as a person besides the fact that she’s extremely overworked in the office and at home.

Lee Sun Kyun did a fab job

While Hyun Woo showed consistent growth throughout the series, Soo Yeon had none, leaving me wondering how they could possibly hope to continue a steady, healthy relationship if Soo Yeon still hadn’t learned how to express her thoughts and feelings. Song Ji Hyo did a wonderful job with the character, and did at times get me to feel sympathy for her character (though never enough to condone the affair). Both Song Ji Hyo and Lee Sun Kyun portrayed a very real, broken marriage and made the situation feel honest and relatable (unlike some characters *coughYoonKi*). The two actors did an excellent job of letting the emotions settle, and I didn’t find either of them to under or overact in simple scenes when it could have been very easy to do so. Unlike his wife, Hyun Woo was an interesting character to watch develop. At the start, we’re completely on his side as he begins to suspect, and then discover his wife’s affair. But as the story continues, he makes some choices and reacts in ways that are understandable, yet not all that acceptable. He’s a very convincing character who’s never perfect, which he discovers as the drama goes on. After a brief time of panic and disorientation (which was acted perfectly), Hyun Woo starts to focus more on himself and how he ended up in the situation, and how he should move forwards. He eventually learns to communicate with his wife (without getting into a one-sided yelling match), and begins to work on how he wants to handle the situation.

Natural human response to stress- drink an exuberant amount of alcohol

It was an enjoyable, fresh twist on the affair situation to have Hyun Woo reaching out to the anonymous internet for advice, as it’s a very modern take on coping with a problem that you’re not experienced in or equiped to deal with. The drama very cleverly showed both the upsides and downsides to communicating with strangers about very personal issues. While Hyun Woo did receive a lot of good advice on how to communicate with his wife, he also received a lot of negative comments that weren’t all that helpful.

Netizen party

I really appreciated the show showing how dangerous sharing personal information over the internet actually is, with one of the readers actually discovering Hyun Woo’s wife’s identity and threatening to reveal it. It was a nice reminder that not everyone on the internet is there to help you, and people can say and do some scary things under the guise of anonymity.

If Writer Kwon won't marry you, I sure as hell will

It was cute how the series went in and showed us some of the readers’ lives in a little more detail, as it made it more believable that there were people out there who would actually read and respond to Hyun Woo’s story. It was enjoyable to watch how Hyun Woo’s story had different impacts on people, and how each reader reacted differently based on their circumstances. One of the characters I enjoyed most was definitely Ahn PD. He was endearing and hilarious, and I adored how over-the-top his reactions were to other peoples’ problems, when he was so reserved about talking about his own issues. His obvious crush on Writer Kwon was pure adorableness, and the two of them together had a really cute, fun dynamic. Ahn PD provided a lot of the laughs that the posters and trailers promised, and was probably the most understandable of all the characters. Writer Kwon was pretty cute herself, but she baffled me a bit towards the end with her running off and pushing away Ahn PD. The other side couple was just rubbish. I didn’t really enjoy watching either of them at any point in time, which is shame because the actors behind the characters are fantastic and are usually very good at providing amusing characters. One of the bigger downsides (for me personally) was probably just the sheer lack of plot. I generally prefer to have a bit more going on in my dramas than just ‘shoot- my wife cheated on me, how do I deal with this?’.

Could really use a woman to clean up around there, couldn't ya?

It’s not that the drama’s boring, because it honestly is an interesting look into how difficult it is to figure out what to do when your partner is unfaithful. It’s very easy to sit back and say that you’d get a divorce, but the show did do a really excellent job at depicting that even though there are feelings of deep betrayal, loving feelings can still remain.

What Was Great:

PD X Writer:

They were so cute and it was so fun to watch the ways they interacted with each other. Lee Sang Yeob was just spectacular all-round, and he had some beautifully relaxed, but still sparky chemistry with BoA.

Who wouldn't want a house-husband as cute as that? 

The two characters tended to compliment each other well, with Ahn PD having huge reactions to everything, while Writer Kwon was much more subdued and levelheaded. At the beginning of the series, I think the viewers clued in pretty fast that there was something going on with Ahn PD’s ‘wife’ and that she probably wasn’t around. Once this knowledge was confirmed it was much more enjoyable to watch the easy banter between the two, knowing that Ahn PD wasn’t being another cheater. Writer Kwon’s character was mostly consistent throughout the series, as was evident in the completely undramatic way she responded to Ahn PD telling her about his wife leaving- which was exactly the calm response Ahn PD needed. From then on it was really just watching the two of them try and deny the ever growing feelings they were developing for each other. The whole relationship hit a whole new level of adorableness once Ahn PD realised his feelings, and kept nagging at Writer Kwon to admit to hers and just date him already. So cute. So very, very cute. The pregnancy was something I feel this couple could have done without, as I really didn’t understand Writer Kwon running off to be alone and refusing to have anything to do with Ahn PD. It was an unnecessary complication, but at least even that was concluded in the funny and hopelessly sweet way of Ahn PD.

I'd for sure watch a spin-off series about these kids learning to raise a baby. Or doing anything, really.

I think my favourite thing ever was watching him get so excited upon learning the baby was a girl, and rattling off all the things he was going to do with his daughter- like sneak out for ice-cream, and get really jealous when she got a boyfriend.

What Wasn’t:

Lawyer X Wife:

0/10: Not Fun

I despised seeing Yoon Ki on my screen. I think he was supposed to be the character that brought the humour to the show, but I really wasn’t feeling it. There’s just nothing all that funny about watching a man trying to balance aaaaalllll these affairs and keep them secret from his wife. He’s just a slimy, despicable man, and I honestly wonder how he managed to find so many women that would actually want to have affairs with him. Money I suppose. Anyway, there was nothing enjoyable in watching Yoon Ki and his many ridiculous affairs. Similarly, watching Ah Ra take her revenge was not nearly as enjoyable or satisfying as I was expecting it to be. The revenge was handled in the same silly, over-the-top way as the affairs were, with situations that would just never happen. Shooting him with a shotgun. Throwing a brick at him. Making out with a hot French dude. No part of their relationship was fun to watch, and felt a lot like filler and wasted screen-time.

Blame Game:

While it was great that the drama tried taking a look into the wife’s side of the story as well, what that tended to mean is that it was placing blame on Hyun Woo for the affair. Which is completely ridiculous.

Your husband did not force you to shag another man. Repeatedly.

You can be the worst husband on the face of the Earth- but that doesn’t force your wife to cheat on you. The sole person to blame for affairs is the one that was unfaithful. I know the show was trying to lean away from blaming Hyun Woo, but that's still how it felt every time the writers tried to gather up sympathy for Soo Yeon’s situation. Sure, Hyun Woo was a pretty lazy husband and father, and he didn’t do much to help Soo Yeon around the house, and that did contribute to her burning out. However, burning out does not equal affair. That was a choice she made on her own, and there’s no way that can be blamed on Hyun Woo.

All pain, no gain

Hyun Woo didn’t help her when she was struggling, but again it was Soo Yeon’s choice to not speak to her husband, and try and shoulder all the burdens on her own. So while I agree that Hyun Woo had some contribution to the relationship starting to fall apart, that in no way means he shares any of the blame for the affair.

Missing Son:

One of the things that bothered me most about this drama was the way Joon Soo kept getting shipped off to people that weren’t his parents. While it did make for some cute family time between him, Ahn PD and Writer Kwon, I was rather disappointed at how blatantly the show ignored the feelings of the child in this situation.

Complete parenting fail

During the whole aftermath of the affair, I would say that neither Hyun Woo nor Soo Yeon were being good parents. It kind of highlighted just how selfish our two main characters really were, as they always seemed to consider their own feelings and wants above Joon Soo’s- which is not the makings of a fabulous parent. The only times Joon Soo was really brought into the story was when the writers tried to gather up some sympathy for Soo Yeon. Joon Soo’s own feelings on his parents separation and finally divorce was widely ignored. Sure, the series didn’t exactly have time to go into Joon Soo’s emotions as well as his parents', but it was all too obvious that he was being used as a reason to not have Soo Yeon and Hyun Woo divorce immediately after the affair was discovered. It would have been nice if the writers had spared just a little more time on how the fallout of the affair effected Hyun Woo and Soo Yeon’s young child as well as themselves.

Re-watch?

Nah. Interesting as it was, I didn’t love it. I can appreciate what the drama set out to do, and completely understand how peoples’ hearts might be captured by it- but mine wasn’t.

There were no cute moments between our leads. None.