Overall, a nice drama

Overall, this was a nice drama. I liked some things and disliked others (your mileage may vary, some fringe takes I consider absolutely crazy, but I am more or less aligned with the general sentiment).

I think that most other reviews nail down the strengths pretty well. In terms of the pet peeves, one thing I didn't like was the treatment of the topic of betrayal. In My Mister there was a great line that talked about how in kdramas betrayal is treated flippantly or romanticized, and you don't see the true effects, or they are swept under the rug when you need to move the story forward, and My Mister was a perfect example of a show that didn't do that at all, not shying away from the pain and long term consequences of the affair, with flashbacks and DH's imagining his wife being intimate with her lover.

I feel that My Wife Is Having An Affair This Week was an example of the above mentioned flippancy, in that there are some scenes where the anguish is shown, but for the sake of the plot they move past it when convenient, and someone who couldn't even touch her without thinking of her with her lover suddenly has his trauma healed because of what, a decision? The power of love? If one could simply chose to get past that trauma and rebuild trust that manner, they wouldn't have needed to divorce and people wouldn't need therapy and counselling. Healing and rebuilding trust are not easy, they don't happen on command, and some times they don't happen at all (and some time, it's appropriate for them not to happen: if somebody was factually speaking disloyal and betrayed your trust, they have shown themselves to be unworthy of your trust, and if you didn't believe them capable of that, you should realize that the object of your affection didn't exist outside your head and the real person is quite different).

In a review of Crazy, Stupid Love, a commentator had written that it was fundamentally fake, phony, dishonest, in that it does not show the true pain one goes through, the trauma, the broken trust, there is no effect on surrounding relationships and no therapy and marriage counsellor, and trying to move past the pain and failing to do so, etc. My Wife Is Having An Affair This Week used the flashback/image with the lover only when he embraced his wife, not before, which was unrealistic, and even that was shown only once and in a tame manner.

Coffee Prince is that way: for some reason, despite having lived through the hell of YJ having an affair with DK for more than a year and lying to his face about working while she was with him, and leaving him for two years despite him begging not to, he continues to pine after her and remembers only the good times. No flashbacks to the pain and anguish of discovering her betrayal and choosing to forgive her day after day for more than a year, no imagining her with her lover, etc. Some times at the beginning and the time where he confessed to have known of the affair at the side of the road were the only two times where his anguish was manifested, then it was brushed aside and we saw someone who didn't act as if he was carrying trauma commesurate with the hell he was put through. No comparable trust issue, him joking and playing along when she makes light of the betrayal and him being the victim that took her back, and feeling his pride hurt by mentions of DK, who he hates. After the scene in the car and all the pain that showed up? After she used a man she cheated on him with for more than a year and abandoned him, and recently used to make him jealous, threatening to leave him to DK? When he felt he couldn't even open up to her about not feeling comfortable with DK's presence when she phoned the guy and met/had lunch with him one on one?

Frankly, I wonder if the writer's intentions was to make it appear as if she had merely dumped him, because what I saw, him being uncomfortable with DK but pretending he was cool with it with YJ, even shaking the guy's hand as if he didn't know she had been seeing him behind his back for more than a year while they were together, or him appearing uncomfortable with her indulging/flirting with his cousin (when he saw him with his head in her lap)... I thought he was insecure because of the abandonment, but that she knew the line and wouldn't betray his trust, and would talk and be honest with him, but her having carried on a full blown affair for more than a year puts every of these actions in a quite different light.

Frankly, I don't understand how anyone could consider her not self entitled and self centered, selfish and manipulative. She uses DK, who has feelings for her, to make her bf jealous, teasing him about the fact they lived together, knowing the immense pain she had caused him, that he had tolerated her more than year long affair and lies, and begged her to stay, while she abandoned him, only to come back when the relationship with DK didn't pan out (maybe because of the underwear model she mentions?), and picking him up like a pair of old shoes, fully expecting him to be there waiting for her -you cannot take one any more for granted than that-. He takes her back almost immediately, with barely an apology, and she doesn't do anything at all to regain his trust -on the contrary, she still keeps in contact with DK and meets up with him (both with him and his cousin the touchy/feeling part was rather ambiguous, because while his cousin might never come between them, with DK she did have a more than year long affair and lived for two years, so him caressing her, and her letting him, has a whole other meaning). She doesn't set any boundary, either physical or otherwise, despite being aware of it potentially upsetting someone she betrayed for more than a year and abandoned for two, and whose trust she is supposed to rebuild: she asks him whether he is okay with his cousin's flirting and DK, which means she is aware enough to understand that it's something she should probably stop indulging, even if he pretends he is. Just minimal care and consideration for his point of view. For that matter, she herself admits that she is the selfish one, and even just using her ex bf to hurt/make jealous the man she had cheated on with said ex bf means manipulating both.

HS being painted as selfish and manipulative is ludicrous by comparison, which, again, the drama acknowledges. I mean, he put up with her betrayal for more than a year, and took her back basically immediately, and didn't even feel able to be open enough to talk about DK, pretending he was okay while she, being completely inconsiderate, didn't do a single thing to gain back his trust. Him inviting a female friend at the show, in part because she wanted to go, in part as a maybe partially subconscious desire to make YJ not even "jealous", but aware of the fact that she is taking him very much for granted, in response to the DK thing, while not knowing of FL's feelings for him, or his subsequent little one sided mini-crush and small kiss, in no way can be placed on the same plane as her lying to his face for more than a year while seeing DK while she was telling him she was working, and running off with the guy for other two. He was more reactive (meaning that he responded to YJ's actions) and aphazard than calculative or intentionally manipulative. She was very much not: she intentionally deceived him for a year, and used the feelings of the guy she cheated on him with to make his jealous, manipulating both of them (well, for DK I feel little pity, given he was willing to have a more than year long affair with her and then shakes the guy's hands and proposes a project as if nothing had happened). He sleeps with her because he loves her, and then tries to "take it back" because he feels that he has no self respect and self dignity (and yes, he was a chump). He is baffled, rightly, by the fact that his subsequent rejection doesn't phase her, while he was utterly destroyed when she left him. Theirs is not an equal relationship, either in terms of what they did to each other, and in terms of commitment, and he keenly feels that.

To "two wrongs don't make one right", I would reply banality with banality with "turnabout is fair play" or "you reap what you sow", and then challenge the notion that him seeing someone else would be "wrong". In my eyes, you don't owe respect, honesty and loyalty to someone that didn't show you any, and I was 100% in approval of the wives and gfs in shows such as A Good Lawyer's Wife and The Magicians sleeping with other man -their cheating spouses had no right to complain-.

Again, some empaty with someone that was put through unbearable emotional abuse by the traumatic experience of his girlfriend of nine years lying to his face for more than one year, having to beg her and her then picking up and leaving him for two years, and expecting she had any right to come back in his life and get back together with him since she and DK had broken up... self entitlement and taking him for granted to the n-th power. Also some sense of proportions. We are talking about a one sided mini-crush and an unreciprocated small kiss, versus deceiving someone for more than a year and spitting on nine years together, then ignoring his begging to run away with her lover and showing up after two years with barely an apology, while continuing to flirt and continuing to talk and meet up with the man she cheated with in a creepily ambiguous atmosphere, knowing he still had feelings for her.

I saw someone claim that YJ was "mature" and used her femininity to choose her sexual partner and her career. This is hogwash: in terms of the career, she advanced through her talent, not by sleeping with DK, and suggesting the contrary seems to me to be more insulting than an example of female empowerment (on the contrary, it mirrors the sexist trope of the actress sleeping with the guy financing her work to advance her career), as for choosing sexual partners, that's simply factually hogwash as well: in the modern world people freely choose their sexual partners -nobody in the show was in an arranged marriage, afaik- with or without femininity, case in point FL doing so while pretending to be a man. Bottom line, she made her way in the world (male dominated or not -frankly, as a solo artist one struggles to understand why the artistic circle would be more horrible in that respect than a lot of other places, and she just needs to produce good art, not to convince anyone to hire her or not suppress her on the job... and the implication that she would have slept with DK to get ahead makes this take insulting, not an example of female empowerment, so I am baffled at the idea of it being presented in that light, when it would have been the exact opposite: surely, the correct take and the most respectful one of her as a person and a female artist, is to believe that she used her talent and rather than bank on her femininity and sexuality to get ahead) through her talent.

As for "maturity", we are talking about someone that freely admitted to being unfair and selfish but did nothing to change her behavior, that drunk while pregnant, and showed no consideration for the feelings of someone she ghosted for two years after a year long affair, flirting, talking with and having 1-to-1 with her ex she had cheated on her bf with, etc., while doing absolutely nothing to rebuild the trust she had so completely broken. She used her ex, who still had feelings for her, to tease and make jealous, and hurt, the bf she had cheated on with said ex, talking about the house they shared in NY and threatening to leave him for DK and that he loved her and she might start to love him back again. Mature? I think not.

Another person said that artistic circles, particularly public facing ones, make it inevitable YJ cheating and running off while HS was a hermit living outside of town while she was a famous artist in the spotlight. I think that this generalization of artists being unfaithful and untrustworthy, or even particularly promiscuous, doesn't hold water (as any generalization about any group of people, gender, race, religion, etc.). It's in any case not a rockstar with groupies situation, and in SK afaik public figures are expected to be pretty spotless. In addition to that, it's simply false that she was famous when she begun the affair: as her lover said, she was pretty unknown at the time. Plus nobody else in the field seems particularly disloyal or even promiscuous, and if anything it's her bf, not her, that worked with other people (she also does, but she is mainly a solo artist), and he does work in the city -like many rich and famous people who are not hermits, he lives outside of town, a perfectly normal thing to do and not an indication of being socially isolated: he has a car-. And she herself said that she run off with DK because she loved him, not because she was a small girl in a bigger world and thought she could upgrade her bf with a rich fop. HS also had plenty of occasions to cheat -not a hermit-, he simply was in love with her and didn't even drink coffee with any of them-.

Someone said that she was the most self aware and admitted her flaws... that's not really correct, she gaslighted and pressured her bf and gave him no space, leaving and making it seem as if it was to give him freedom, while as she later admitted she just wanted to have her pride hurt if he left her. And in any case, admitting that her bf was selfless and forgave her more than year long cheating, and took her back after she dropped him like a pair of old shoes and then came back demanding to be his gf again, and to be selfish and inconsiderate herself, but doing nothing at all to change or even attempt to rebuild the trust she shattered.

She literally just had to show up and not to abandon him again despite his begging, and only when she was at the airport she realized that she was seeing the mote in one's brother's eye but not the beam in one's own, and that if we were keeping score in terms of the damage she did they were at a billion to one. In general, if you acknowledge you are an a-hole and don't do anything to change, you are still an a-hole. I cannot even say "at least she is not a hypocrite" with confidence. I mean, in one sense she was not, but in another sense, she held her bf to a much, much higher standard than she held herself, and was not willing to extend him the same grace: a blatant double standard. She could take him to task about FL before he even kissed her, but he couldn't be confident to talk to her about DK and had to pretend everything was fine?

She also doesn't get any props for not being jealous of FL, because the latter was not interested in her boyfriend and she was never a threat, while she had a more than year long affair with DK and abandoned her begging bf for him, only to come back two years later when that relationship didn't pan out. The situation with the FL is exactly the same as the bit with his cousin, in that they are not a threat (and the flirting with the cousin and leading him on was something that went on for years).

I found the banter at the end disturbing: the way she minimized and talked flippantly about him being the victim of her betrayal (which lasted more than one year, after which she ran away for two, and came buck asking to be his gf while keeping contact with her ex lover she had cheated on her bf with, talking with him on the phone and meeting up one-on-one while letting some quite creepy/ambiguous touching happen: in some way worse than indulging/flirting with the cousin, given that the latter would never come between them, but DK did come between her and her bf and she cheated on and abandoned the latter with him), and about being self conscious about DK and having his pride hurt (legitimate, among other things... also the broken trust and relationship... let's not forget she threatened to leave him for DK because her pride wouldn't take him leaving her). Considering the fact that he knew of the more than year long affair and she run away from him while he begged her to stay, leaving for two years, and she is still in contact with him, talking and meeting up one-on-one when DK still had feelings for her, and he was not comfortable telling her about it, but had to pretend that he was okay with it... are we sure he should be mocked for opening up about the fact he hates the guy? Particularly considering the pain he expressed just recently when he brought up the cheating at the side of the road to the airport, and the fact that she used DK to make him jealous and threatened to leave with him, saying he had feelings for her and she might also start to reciprocate again. It's clear that this is "joking" like the joking they did about his budding feelings for FL, meaning that it's not really joking, but she treats her past betrayal, and almost-leaving with DK, in a completely flippant manner.

Leia Mais