Episodes 3-4 » Dramabeans Kdrama MGG

Perfect Marriage Revenge: Episodes 3-4

by missvictrix

Wheeee what a ride! As new complications and antagonists (who are we kidding, they’re villains) appear on stage, our heroine must exercise all of her gumption. But can she trust her contract soon-to-be-husband? And can she win over some crucial allies? Yes. Yes she can.

 
EPISODES 3-4

Wow, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a cracktastic time like this since the Taiwanese drama Behind Your Smile — we’ve got the same levels of cheesiness, drama, villainy, romance, and wacky plot here, all prettied up in the gift wrap of pure enjoyment. Seriously, I wish all dramas were this fun.

We open with a replay of our OTP’s dramatic first kiss, and when the photos are leaked online via a portal that’s impossible to squash (unlike the earlier reports), Yi-joo realizes that the ultra-romantic moment was for the press. But really, it was also just epic and I firmly believe Do-gook was 100% on board. After all, in his own words, he’s “a man who produces outcomes,” and we get to see him take the lead with his engagement, his family issues, and his company. Do-gook is a great character because while he’s a businessman through and through, he’s also enjoying this “romance” with Yi-joo to no end. Case in point: their base camp.

Do-gook’s right-hand man and brother-in-law BYUN JAE-HO (Lee Myung-hoon) delivers Yi-joo by request to a cozy townhouse doorstep. And who’s inside but Do-gook, looking exceptionally handsome in the kitchen, delivering Yi-joo high-protein coffee PPL, and cooking them dinner. It’s not until they sit down to eat together that they put their marriage contract to paper, and the fact that they’re doing this all smiley over abalone risotto definitely makes it the most fun contract marriage I have ever encountered. Usually, there’s reluctance and antagonism. Here, it’s all co-strategizing and camaraderie. It’s also important to note that Yi-joo comes to trust him enough to eat the food he’s made — and he’s cognizant enough to always taste test for her.

They’ll need a base camp, says Do-gook – and what do you know, that’s exactly where they are. He says it’ll be a place for them to discuss strategies, as well as a place to rest after battle, and the dialogue in this scene has me grinning from ear to ear.

Do-gook leads Yi-joo around by her hand and gives her a tour. The place is all decked out with “safe” food wrapped in plastic, arcade games, a PPL massage chair, and two separate bedrooms. Hers is more beautiful than the “prison” she knew at home, and his? Well, he says, she shouldn’t go in there if she misses him because he’ll be staying at the hotel. LOL, his flirting kills me. Then Do-gook goes a step further and gives her a key fob to the house. They semi-joke about how they’ve graduated from a hotel key card to a house key, and Do-gook says he decided to bet his life on her when she used that hotel key. Mama mia!

But it can’t be all prince charming and damsel in distress desperately attempting to turn over her new villain leaf. So, we’ve got loads of bureaucratic conflict by way of their families. Yi-joo is endlessly mocked by her mother (still), but she has a plan. First, she figures out how to get her weird grandfather’s approval. Her father’s support is easy, since he’s seeing dollar signs in his sleep. Then, she finds a way to insert herself into the inner circle of Do-gook’s mom, CHA YEON-HWA (Lee Mi-sook with a beehive to die for) by way of cooking classes.

This leads to a rather unpleasant confrontation between Yeon-hwa, Yoo-ra, and Yi-joo, where Yeon-hwa thinks it’s only right for Yi-joo to give up Do-gook to her younger sister since she knew him first (talk about treating someone like personal property!). But in the end, the man himself shows up by coincidence, whisks Yi-joo away, and Yeon-hwa ends up charmed by the entire thing. In fact, all it takes is one family meeting for her to be firmly Team Yi-joo, and this battle is way more fun than it should be.

Behind the scenes, Yeon-hwa tells Yi-joo she’ll approve of their marriage if she can get Do-gook back working at Taeja Group, so Yi-joo has a new task on her hands that’s going to prove more difficult than she imagines. But before she can get to that and figure out what’s going on with Do-gook and his hyung, she’s got to expose Mom’s fraudulent painting scheme and prevent that whole thing from blowing up in her face down the road. This is done with graceful efficacy during… the first meeting of both families.

Said meeting is delightfully awkward, and it made me appreciate even more the family ensemble nature of this drama. During the meeting, Mom’s dislike of her own adopted daughter is wide out for all to see. To their credit (and my delight), Do-gook’s family is aghast at how they are seeing Yi-joo being demeaned, and every time the power shifts in Yi-joo’s direction, Mom only gets more awful.

It also turns out to be the perfect opportunity for Yi-joo to offhandedly mention the copies of masterpieces she paints, which her mother is so kind as to “donate” so needy people can enjoy the replica art. Then, one on one, she exposes her knowledge of the whole scheme to Mom. This was a satisfying standoff, but perhaps a tad anticlimactic? If that’s all it takes to destroy that scheme (and it seems like it is, since Mom returns all the funds and buries all traces), I guess there’s more mayhem to come with those two because it was not enough to feel like our undead heroine was properly vindicated.

With the marriage public and approved, Yoo-ra really starts to lose her sh!t. Mom’s schemes aren’t enough for her anymore, so she starts her own — like collaborating with Se-hyuk to stage photos with Yi-joo to plant doubt in Do-gook (#FAIL), or propositioning Do-gook at his favorite bar when he’s enjoying some solo brooding time (#FAIL). But it’s not until Do-gook tells her “I know why you’re so obsessed with me” and calls Yoo-ra out on her superiority complex towards Yi-joo that she resorts to her next plan: a dramatic sleeping pill OD, which I can’t take seriously coming from her. She’s fine, btw.

Now let’s shift the lens to our hero, who I flat-out adore. We get to see him more in action this week, both at work and with his hyung. His entire company is aghast when they realize his fiancée was actually the fiancée of Chief of Staff Se-hyuk about five minutes ago, but Do-gook makes short work of Se-hyuk’s ire and I live for this exchange. There’s literally no contest here.

Do-gook’s facing some repercussions with a recent contract for his interiors business, though, so he does what he’s seemingly quite good at, and takes the bull by the horns. And this particular bull is a stakeholder meeting at the redevelopment project that Taeja Group is in charge of, lead by his hyung SEO JUNG-WOOK (Kang Shin-hyo).

In a very public setting where nothing can be refuted and appearances matter more than anything, Do-gook makes short work of the entire situation and comes out on top. He doesn’t exactly exactly give Jung-wook a dressing down, but it’s enough to bring out the animosity between them. Something to do with a boating accident, and Jung-wook’s limp…

The drama teases us into entertaining the possibility that Do-gook is responsible for his brother’s accident, but we know better. I mean, this is the guy that brought Yi-joo back to “base camp,” and gave her a beer to get her to lighten up before they discussed acting like they were actually in love.

Indeed, Do-gook seems to use every possible opportunity to fluster Yi-joo – and hint at this sincere intentions — and I’m here for it. He even delivers a “pretend” confession to her along the lines of: You don’t know how much I love you or when I first fell for you. And he might laugh it off, but the plot flags are waving dramatically. The slow reveal of this romance’s true genesis is so fun. Wanna bet he knew her from the orphanage somehow?

It gets even better when Do-gook pops over to base camp one night and makes ramyun for them. Do-gook not only uses the good old “let me stand behind you and reach that thing you can’t reach” method, but he also taste tests (or attempts to) the monolithic brownie she made at the cooking class. (Aside: the fact that the camera stuck around long enough for us to watch him spit it into the garbage made me love this drama even more.)

But things get a tad more serious over ramyun when Yi-joo mentions she’s not really moving in all the way since it’s such a temporary situation. This makes Do-gook visibly depressed, and he poses a question to Yi-joo: What if I wanted a real marriage? While the appropriate response here would be “Hell yes, where do I sign for that instead,” Yi-joo draws a boundary between them using shortage of time as an excuse, and asks him to respect it. (This is two-fold for her, referencing their one-year contract, but really meaning the death date stamped on her wrist. This exchange also leads to Do-gook’s sad whiskey brooding, where Yoo-ra turns up with a hotel key card.)

But that line Yi-joo has put between her and Do-gook might not last long. As fate would have it, Jung-wook is now entering his villain era as well. He’s ready to declare war against Do-gook, so he invites Yi-joo out to meet him alone at a fancy restaurant on the water. Then, he calls Do-gook to taunt him about it. It doesn’t take Do-gook long to figure out what’s up, but there’s one major problem here: entry to the restaurant requires walking on a dock across the water… and it just so happens our hero has some serious PTSD around water.

We watch Do-gook have a full-fledged panic attack at the literal dividing line between solid ground and dock, and flashbacks tells us that the accident with his hyung was much more traumatic for him than we realize. Likely, he was the true victim here. Regardless, it’s an epic hero moment, for every hero must have his tragic flaw — and this one comes at the pitch-perfect moment when Do-gook’s brother has just been elevated to fully-activated antagonist. And it also gives Do-gook the perfect impasse, as protecting Yi-joo collides with his own trauma, and he’s stuck (literally and figuratively), unable to advance. Lucky for Do-gook, Yi-joo spots him and sees him struggling to breathe. She runs over to help him just before he passes out on her to the roll of our credits.

Boy, this drama is ridiculously fun, and the low production budget makes me love it even more — almost with a protective sort of love. Don’t mock my show and it’s terrible sound editing, where the glug of beer is outrageously loud and the sound of people walking in high heels is deafening. Don’t mock the convenient cousin-reporter who exists purely to give crucial information to our heroine. Don’t mock the acting, or the slightly pathetic sets. And above all, don’t mock my larger-than-life hero. Because any hero who’s in the middle of a panic attack that drops him to his knees but still takes the opportunity for a flirty quip — well, that’s my kind of hero.

 
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