Recap Korean Drama "Strangers Again (2023)" Episode 3-4

I might have liked Week 2 even more than last week — despite staying zippy and fun, it manages to hit quite deep in moments. I’m impressed how deep they’re able to go, actually, and I think the production deserves a pat on the back. Taking what we learned of Ha-ra last week — fiery, brilliant, wounded — the story takes that foundation and shows us what happens when everything she thinks she knows changes.

We open up where we left off last week. Ha-ra is out with Jae-gyeom and spies Eun-bum with the woman he supposedly destroyed their marriage over: KI SEO-HEE (Park Jung-won). And because she’s Ha-ra, she confronts them right away, only to be left even more furious.

But because jokes about murdering Eun-bum for his betrayal aren’t enough, Ha-ra weasels her way into his next case, as he is representing Seo-hee as she sues for custody rights of her daughter. Ha-ra pulls some strings and thanks to her PD’s dongsaeng’s wife’s friend’s sunbae (or some combination of that — I loved this lol), in about five seconds she’s representing Seo-hee’s ex-husband. Much like last week, this take on lawyering is far-fetched and completely unprofessional, but we’ll just give them a dramaland hall pass, since the entanglement between these two couples reveals a ton of plot that wouldn’t have got out any other way. *Hall pass engaged*

During a court appearance, Ha-ra and Eun-bum are so riled up over the case that the poor presiding judge tells their clients, “Your attorneys are as passionate as if this is their own battle.” And then he has to eat his words because it’s soon revealed that’s exactly what it is.

Later, when the battle gets ugly, each team pulls out their hidden card: Eun-bum says that the reason Seo-hee left her family was because her husband assaulted her. Then, not to be outdone, Ha-ra plays the card they were all dreading: Seo-hee was an adulteress who abandoned her family of her own free will.

Here, Eun-bum can’t sit still. He’s so deeply involved in this case and getting Seo-hee’s daughter back to her, that in the middle of court, in a frantic mess, he admits that there was never an affair. He cooked the whole thing up and Seo-hee agree to go along with it because he simply “wanted a divorce.” Then he turns from the judge to Ha-ra and says: I’m sorry.

Wow! This is the last thing I had in mind for the reason behind their breakup, and it hit in a way I completely didn’t expect. Ha-ra runs after Eun-bum and Seo-hee, stilettos in hand, demanding an explanation, and when she finally gets it from Eun-bum, it’s a very affecting scene. Ha-ra (like all of us!) was busy thinking up all the crazy and dramatic reasons that he would have wanted to divorce her, but the answer isn’t terminal illness or anything else like it. The answer is simply that married life wasn’t for him. He wanted out, and then he found the only way to do it where he knew she would gladly agree to the divorce.

It might just be me, but this is one low blow. Ha-ra is deeply affected by this new reveal, naturally, and we see how the weight of it hits her differently. There’s no more comedic rage of a woman scorned. There’s sadness, humiliation, and an identity crisis.

She shoulders the truth amazingly well — and has such nice support in her boss and co-worker/friend KANG BI-CHWI (Jo Eun-ji) — but we also see a much more mature Ha-ra as a consequence. Her rage is gone, and she even calls off the huge alimony agreement (!). She tells Bi-chwi what she feels the most now is embarrassment, and the humiliation of losing her love. It hurts right through the screen.

It’s very interesting timing the drama’s chosen. I expected to wait a lot longer to find out what was behind Eun-bum’s side of the divorce, and I even expected to like him more after I learned the truth. But I actually like him less — and you go, Show, for making such a gutsy move.

The timing is also interesting because we not only see an adorkable flashback to when Eun-bum first asked Ha-ra out, but Ha-ra herself admits to Jae-gyeom that she’s not over Eun-bum. Gutsy again, I say, because while the drama is making me seriously question Eun-bum as hero material, Jae-gyeom is given a nice gentle role to play.

Jae-gyeom realizes Ha-ra has a ways to go before she can accept him, and he does that wonderful K-drama thing where he’s devoted and supportive and “good at waiting” while the heroine gets herself together. I genuinely like the two of them together so much, and appreciate how Jae-gyeom’s way of seeing right to the heart of things is a good counterbalance to Ha-ra’s fly-off-the-handle personality.

In fact, I like them so much together that there’s a part of me that started to think perhaps this story is better off as one where the original couple doesn’t get together again. Maybe it’s more about them moving on. There’s definitely an argument for this, but in the end I expect Jae-gyeom has that second lead kindness for a reason, and the crux of the story is in Ha-ra and Eun-bum coming to a deeper and more lasting understanding.

Anyway, the drama — and Ha-ra’s arc in particular — continues to really ring true. She’s completely relatable, whether she’s trying to understand how to be happy, or wondering why a simple life of marriage and children is so easy for others yet so hard for her to achieve.

Just like last week, though, the office shenanigans counterbalance the heavier moments of the drama. The whole plot line with CEO Seo wanting them to drop honorifics — and then Bi-chwi going at it full steam ahead calling him super informally — was hilarious. And I also was cringing from behind my laptop.

Bi-chwi also creates more mayhem this week when she and their other co-worker (and Eun-bum’s close friend) KWON SHI-WOOK (Lee Jae-won) have a drunken one-night stand. In their “love to hate you” dynamic, Shi-wook is the pure one who can’t reconcile what happened between them, while Bi-chwi doesn’t give it a second thought. I know this plot line is supposed to counterbalance that of our leads, but I’m finding it a little trite and recycled right now. However, I love Lee Jae-won, and a sputtering Lee Jae-won is even better, so I’ll wait to see how they handle this plot line as we go along.

One more important bit to talk about this week is Eun-bum and what we learn of him. We know from our first episode that he’s still not over Ha-ra, but we also see snippets of what their married life was like. Ha-ra’s strong personality and preferences won out over his, and wore him out in the end… to which I say, yes, but also, weren’t they able to communicate at all after so many years together? Is Eun-bum that passive that he would just let her wear all the pants and call all the shots 24/7?

While we still exist mostly in Ha-ra’s world, we do get a sense of Eun-bum’s closeness with Seo-hee and her family this week, and see it at play in how much effort and emotion he puts into her case. The custody battle case itself might have gone a bit haywire (i.e., Truck of Doom appearance), but I did like the way it played out and exposed the biases and perspectives of our leads.

Whether it was feeling the pangs of a mother who longs for her child, or the pain of being abandoned, all the emotional beats hit quite well. This arc also opened up the important question of children, and we learn how much Ha-ra wants to be a mother, and how much Eun-bum doesn’t want to be a father (but then the way he looked at Seo-hee’s recovering daughter? This is definitely ripe for change).

With the plot zipping along, we’re left with some important questions for next week. Will Eun-bum make it official with Seo-hee, and thus move on from Ha-ra (though one wonders why he didn’t do this earlier)? How will Ha-ra’s relationship with Jae-gyeom be affected by the humiliation and insecurity she’s now shouldering after Eun-bum’s confession? Will she be able to accept the love he’s basically firehosing in her direction, or will she retreat into herself and reassess her life?