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Perfect Marriage Revenge: Episode 2
by missvictrix
And so we welcome our heroine to her villain era. With a second chance at life and her eyes now wide open, our heroine is back a year in her past, ready to make sure that what happened doesn’t happen again. She has a plan — kinda — but mostly it’s just fun to watch her freak out everyone around her and do all sorts of unseemly things like stick up for herself.
Editor’s note: Change of plans! Perfect Marriage Revenge proved a little too much fun to let it go by with just an Episode 1 review, so we’re now here for the duration with weekly coverage.
EPISODE 2
We open with a replay of our wonderful ASMR moment, as Yi-joo slashes her beautiful satin gown thigh-high. Then she breaks off her engagement, leaves everyone shocked, and goes… home? Her mother doesn’t bat an eyelash over the dress or the called-off engagement, and we watch Yi-joo react to her life with the veil now removed — which is basically the pleasure of this entire drama.
Se-hyuk is in desperation mode, but our scorned heroine chucks every past insult (or is that future insult?) right back at him even as he’s kneeling in penitence. She challenges him again on being in love with her sister, and the entire thing devolves into Yi-joo realizing she never loved him at all. She sees in him the thing she now recognizes in herself: a desperate desire to please in order to be loved.
With her disastrous future marriage to milksop Se-hyuk officially off her docket, Yi-joo’s next plan is… *drumroll please* getting married the man her sister wants: Do-gook. In the original story line from a year in the future, Yoo-ra and Do-gook were dating, with Yoo-ra expecting a proposal. But, as we saw, Do-gook mainly spent his time looking through the fakery of the Han family and pointing it out to a then-traumatized Yi-joo.
But a year in the past, things are a little different. Do-gook isn’t dating Yoo-ra yet — rather, Mom and Yoo-ra have recently finagled a way for a first blind date between them, and Yoo-ra has been pursuing him ever since. But Do-gook doesn’t seem much interested when we hear from him later on.
But first: hotel mayhem! Yi-joo has a delightful reporter friend who just so happens to be the cousin of Do-gook . She gives Yi-joo insight on the wackadoo chaebol family dynamics, and helps her set up a meeting with him in a very public location where some very public photos will be taken of her with Do-gook.
Their first meeting is very interesting. Do-gook greets Yi-joo by name – perhaps giving himself a way a bit? Yi-joo tries to remember back in time to see if they’d met privately at that point, and she doesn’t think they have — and it’s Do-gook who blows it off as knowing Yoo-ra’s family blah blah whatever, we know something ~else~ is going on here. Yi-joo is quick to inform him that she’s not really Yoo-ra’s sister, and also, she’s broken off her engagement to Se-hyuk (his Chief of Staff). His interest is piqued.
In a very direct and un-Yi-joo-like fashion, she tells Do-gook she’ll cut to the chase: let’s get married. Since it’s just a business marriage anyway, why doesn’t he marry her instead of Yoo-ra? Thus, in the space of about two seconds, Do-gook switches from his “I heard you were boring” (ouch) to placing a hotel key card on the table in front of her. Not exactly with an eyebrow waggle, but kinda. She says she doesn’t want a man who tests her on the first meeting, but he says she might be worth his time since he made her want to use the key card at their first meeting. LOL!
Yoo-ra, indignant, sweeps in on the scene but the two are fully in whatever game is at hand (I don’t even think they know at this point), and they walk off to the elevator arm in arm, making quite the show. The elevator ride is awkward, and Do-gook seems to enjoy teasing her, which he does amply with some suggestively phrased comments. But the hotel suite is actually his part-time office — hah, I knew it — and they’re there to talk business. Well, with some heavy flirting thrown in, too. Yi-joo pours them some wine and goes into the business efficacy of their potential marriage of convenience, and we can tell from Do-gook’s face he’s already made up his mind.
Like any K-drama heroine worth her salt, Yi-joo winds up red-cheeked and adorably drunk after their extended conversation. Her true self is out in the open, and even though Do-gook keeps saying how he likes an assertive woman, he actually just seems to like this woman, in all her many forms. He listens to her. He ties her hair back for her. Then, when she passes out drunk in his arms (because what else is there to do in such a situation), he stares at her longingly. I’m so curious to know how much he knows about her, since he’s clearly already in love.
Though it was an innocent night of bonding, the hotel visit does the damage Yi-joo hoped for and her family is a wreck. Mom is furious, Yoo-ra is bratty and heartbroken simultaneously, and Yi-joo winds up locked in her room with no phone. It’s here we also learn that this is a common occurrence, that her room is kinda pathetic for the wealth of the family, and also that she’s been given daily “medication” that she now only pretends to take.
Again defying his own words, Do-gook flies to Yi-joo’s rescue and like flippin’ Prince Charming in an oversized suit jacket, sees first-hand how Yi-joo has been living. He takes charge of the situation, declares to the family that they want to get married ASAP (yeah sure they just met yesterday, but when you know you know, says Do-gook), and then he sweeps Yi-joo out of the house for a date night.
At this point in the drama I’m pretty much as in love as Do-gook is — with him, with our confused heroine, and especially with this story’s overly romanticized webnovel-level dramatics. This is just what I wanted from this show.
And just when you think “Hey, this drama is rather delicious and dramatic!” it goes and outdoes itself. Yi-joo, you see, can’t eat at fancy restaurants. She prefers food wrapped in plastic. And no, it’s not because that’s all she’s been allowed to eat — it’s because she was once poisoned in the house and she’s been terrified of eating food that might not be “safe” ever since. This is a) an amazing bit of high drama and b) a nice tie-in to Do-gook’s earlier comment to her that if they’re going to get married, he wants his wife to eat more and be healthy.
Do-gook brings her food from the convenience store and they have another bonding moment when she confesses her history to him, ending with: “I’m broken, right?” She then says she chose Do-gook for her plan in order to get revenge on Yoo-ra, and in turn Se-hyuk, and in turn her mother.
Do-gook is strangely elated to hear all this, and runs off to a nearby flower patch (as one does) and makes her a temporary flower ring and proposes to her officially. Then he stands and puts out his arms, and instead of jumping right into them like he expected, Yi-joo grabs his face and gives him a peck. That, he says with a smirk, was not enough. He swoops her in for a real kiss, replete with manhwa-level choreography as they’re wrapped in each other’s arms, which is just too fun for words.
“Too fun for words” is actually how I feel about this entire drama. The premise is upside down, the characters are archetypal, and the whole thing is silly, but I daresay that’s what is making it amazing. And while I love watching Do-gook say he wants an assertive woman but then fall for her a little more every time she’s fragile, I think I love Yi-joo’s stance even more.
All this episode we’ve watched her step into her villain era, and use her mocking smile and knowledge from the future to talk back, confront her family, and stand up for herself. But — beautifully — at the same time we see she’s not entirely confident in that role, and I love watching her kind of flub her way around. She knows she’s supposed to be cold-hearted and after revenge, but being locked in her room reminds her of all her past suffering, and even in the midst of her biggest triumph with Do-gook, she can’t even bring herself to eat at a fancy restaurant with him. Yi-joo is hopelessly Yi-joo, and I hope the drama keeps this dynamic going because the church-mouse heroine who’s trying to be fierce but also needs hugs might be my favorite thing ever.
With a super fun start to this drama — kisses, confessions, and so much mayhem already — what do we have in store for the next 14 episodes? Can the tensions stay as high, and the fun factor stay permanently at Level 11? Come on, Show, I believe in you!
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