Marry My Husband EP 1 (A SqueeCap)
Shuk: Hey everyone! Loooooooooooooooong time no see. In fact, it's been several years since I've felt the urge to squeecap a series. However, after recently finishing the manhwa "Marry My Husband", I couldn't resist dusting off my squeecapping skills for this cute little gem. And asking an old friend to tag along.
Trotwood: I'm back, too. I stopped writing here in in the summer of 2021 I think. I said I would comment, and I haven't. SOOO busy. But the invite from Shuk to talk about the drama adaption of one of my favorite revenge webcomics (and revenge webcomics have become my favorite genre--so you know where my mind is) has called me back.
Be prepared though. The show makes you suffer a bit before we get to anything like revenge. I'm a little concerned how they are going to fit a webcomic that has 55 packed episodes plus 10 spin-off episodes into a 16 ep drama. I saw what they did to Perfect Marriage Revenge, which was an enjoyable but a bit bland drama adapted from another one of my fav webcomics, so I can't help but worry.
EPISODE 1
Cancer patient Kang Ji-won (PARK MIN-YOUNG) is listlessly staring out an open window at flowering trees and chirping birds. Clearly, though, she in some type of hospice or hospital room based on the equipment.
Someone comes into the room and shuts the window and the fresh air. (Clearly the first sign that she is terrible. WHo doesn't want and need fresh air if you can get it in a hospital?!?) It’s Jung Soo-min (SONG HA-YOON), her best friend. They chat, and her bestie pledges eternal friendship. Ji-won confides that her husband is most likely cheating on him. Bestie says no, it’s all in her head.
It’s time for Ji-won’s chemotherapy, so Bestie leaves in her bright red shoes. It’s worthy to note that the hospital setting is pretty accurate for an Oncology ward.
Now alone in her corner, Ji-won thinks back to her wedding. It’s a small wedding, with only her bestie to throw the bouquet to. It’s not long before the dark reality shows, though. Mother-In-Law is clearly the overbearing and controlling type, who apparently designed the wedding, chose the dress, and got someone to slather the worst makeup job since season 4 of Drag Race. MIL is all set and ready to “teach” her new daughter-in-law. Two empty chairs drive home that Ji-won’s parents are no more.
Now we have a series of rather horrible scenes: MIL throwing tantrums in the kitchen, her Momma’s Boy spouse Park Min-hwan (LEE YI-KYUNG) blowing money they don’t have on speculative stocks and acting spoiled to the dragon lady. She is overworking as the sole breadwinner but still comes home to a disgusting house and lazy bum on the couch.
Soon enough, we get the diagnosis: Stage 4 stomach cancer.
Of course, because this poor woman's life has to get worse than it already. It was actually this extra stank on her life that made me think this should and would be made into a kdrama. Kdramas will really believe in making people have a multi-layered sandwich of suffering before they are allowed any joy.
Exactly.
The layering on the horrible. As I have said elsewhere, I would have quit this show at this point if I hadn't read the webcomic because i would have been too angry to continue.
Kang Ji-won wakes up from her horrible flashback and decides to take a walk around the ward. She thinks about her bestie, who works in the same company as she does, happy they are close with each other and her husband. A happy trio!
Or…perhaps too close. Bestie arrives at a building in her zippy red shoes-matching Mini Cooper, fluffs her hair, and then throws herself into the arms of her dying friend’s husband. Ugh. (excuse me while I throw up)
So basically, while Ji-won is being destroyed from the inside, Soo-min is knocking boots with Min-hwan. What a lovely pair! Maximum sarcasm mode engaged.
In the midst of all this, they haven’t even paid her hospital bills, and they stole the deposit she had arranged. So now she’s going to be kicked out of the hospital. (The layering of trifling is unbelievable) Ji-won heads outside for some Sakura-blossom-thinking and decides to take a taxi home.
The taxi driver is friendly, but she already knows how miserable her life is and her ending will be. The driver decides to take her on a quick tour through a small stone tunnel. Is this “Spirited Away”? There’s no bathhouse for gods, but there is a lovely trip through falling pink petals.
It really was gorgeous, and I was thankful that Ji-won was getting something beautiful in her life when everything was so terrible.
The cabbie refuses to take her fare, stating that it’s his last day in a taxi, and she should view the money as an allowance from her father.
Bemused she slowly makes her way up the stairs to her apartment, where the predictable is rolling like a bad movie. Red shoes in the doorway, Bestie and Weasel Hubby in bed. Even worse, we overhear he’s paid for a life insurance policy that will make the two adulterers super rich when she dies. Ji-won sees her photo of her father on the floor and covered in trash and loses it.
No surprise here since all the viewers were about to lose it a long time ago.
She shoves the bedroom door open and screams at the pair. She throws things at them and promises to report them to the Insurance Fraud Bureau. Weasel doesn’t care and sneers that she is helpless and can’t do anything. Bestie looks a little guilty, but she is still a skank.
Ji-won falls to the floor in tears; Bestie plays the gaslighting scumsucking slut and blames the dying woman. They get into a hair pulling contest. Weasel shoves Ji-won, who falls into a glass table and has a moment of regret lying in a pool of blood. She can still hear those two figuring out how to make it look like an accident as she closes her eyes for the final time. It’s April 12, 2023…
Ji-won opens her tearful eyes. She is now in full office regalia, with great looking makeup and shiny hair. (I wouldn't say she looks that great. She looks like a regular office worker in a regular office worker outfit. She just doesn't look like she is dying because she isn't any longer. She looks like, like all of us at work, like she needs a good vacation and a better boss). She is stunned at what she sees. Weasel (who apparently worked there before he became a slimy salted fish after their marriage) chides her behavior and grabs a waist squeeze.
That’s all it took for her to snap out of it. With a primal scream that startles everyone, she begins to beat him up in the middle of the office. Just when Weasel is fisting up for a retaliatory swing, it’s all stopped by a hottie in glasses.
“Snap out of it," he says, since they are at work. She looks around and realizes that somehow she’s not an avenging spirit sent to rip Weasel’s hair into hell.
Yes, because no one but us viewers knows that he is (was?) a murderer.
Ji-won looks at her arm, which was previously scarred, then looks at a mirror, which shows a healthy visage. She promptly falls backwards and nearly gets scalded by hot water. She saved by the hottie, who Kung-Fu-Enters-The-Fist it out of mid-air.
When she sits up, both Weasel and Bestie are there. Ji-won has a flashback of her final moments and freaks out even worse than before. She bolts for the stairs, losing her shoes in the process and tripping into the arms of Hottie Glasses.
Thank goodness this man moonlights as a ninja. She would have seriously injured herself multiple times on this day. Even though this part isn't realistic, I did appreciate how freaked out she is. Too often in comics and dramas, the characters do not act freaked out enough when they go back in time or their bodies change or some other seemly other world;y thing happens. Also, they often "wake up" alone somewhere, so they can have their freak out in public. But think about it, regular people are rarely alone in the middle of the day, so why does this happen so much in the fictional world?
He gently sets her upright outside the building. She looks around envisions many taller buildings dissolving away into a different earlier skyline. The billboards and signs shift to ones from 2013, chock full of little bits and pieces of way-back-when. There’s a news screen that SoKor’s national baseball lost in the World Tournament, and a lot of snow on Gangnam Mountain. One touting Psy’s first Billboard Number 1 song “Gentleman” on the Billboard charts. And let’s not forget the award-winning movie “New World” starring Lee Jung-jae, Choi Min-sik, and Hwang Jung-min.
While she stands there, Hottie Glasses brings her shoes and helps her to put them on.
“Where are we? What happened?” She sincerely asks him. He also wants to know, as she had sprinted quite a distance from the office. The 4th Wall Clock unwinds to April 12, 2013.
Hot Glasses escorts Ji-won home. She’s still a little rattled, having left all her stuff at work. He gives her some money, and cryptically says that everyone needs help at some time.
Alone in her place, she looks around at things she hasn’t seen in a decade. Just to confirm everything, she checks the expiry dates on the pitiful few items in her refrigerator. The doorbell rings; it’s Hot Glasses with a small bag of assorted groceries. She gleefully dives into the instant ramyun; I guess she hasn’t had real food in a long time thanks to the stomach cancer.
She gradually comes to term with her reversal of time; for whatever reason she is back to her 31-year-old self with her 41-year-old memories.
We also find more about Hot Glasses. He is Manager Yoo Ji-hyuk (NA IN-WOO) at her office, but he has a secret identity. He is the grandson of her company’s founder, soon to be CEO and full owner of the U&K Food Company in the future.
But no one else knows that yet, right?
Ji-won pulls out the bills from both Hot Glasses and the cabbie. On one of them is a small drawn heart, which was something her dad liked to do on her allowance. So out of the afterlife, Dad came to set things right! She cries.
I cry. We all cry.
Of course, scum had to ruin the moment. Weasel shows up at her front door to take her to a p’macha. Not only that, Slimy Bestie is bombarding her with text messages. To add insult to injuries, Stingy Weasel won’t let her drink. In a p’macha. With just a small plate of kimchi on the table.
Instead, he chides her, like he’s talking to a child, for causing a scene at work and possibly affecting his working environment. Even though they haven’t had sex in a while, he assumes her actions are all pregnancy hormones. After all, she’s been having trouble keeping food down. It doesn’t enter his tiny brain that it might be gastritis or even nausea from the thought of him banging her best friend.
Or the fact that she is probably carrying all the emotional lift in this relationship.
As if she is pregnant, Weasel talks to her about having an abortion, so she doesn’t derail from her career path. We all know it’s to make sure she does all the breadwinning in the future. (asshole 😠)
Ji-won belts back a shot of soju to prove she’s not pregnant, but before Weasel can feel better, she demands they break up and walks out of the tent. 
But she forgot his temper; he runs out the p’macha and slings her against a brick wall. Belatedly she remembers that he hates being crossed, and she flinches when he threatens to thrash her. After sinking to the sidewalk, he continues to manhandle her and threaten. A few screams later, the pair end up in a police station. The officer completely dismisses her concerns as he and Weasel roll eyes over women’s antics and a lover’s quarrel. The only thing she gets out of it is a ride home.
This pissed me off, too. I see this so much in shows and in real life. Why is any of this okay? 
Once she’s home, she quickly discovers that between credit card debt and direct payments to Weasel (Why is she sending him money? He has a job!!), she’s basically moneyless. In fact, she was intimidated enough to send him between $1500 and $3700 to his account every month. All she has left is about $550, mostly from a small severance she received. It’s clearly not enough to escape.
He sends her a gaslighting, narcissistic and dismissive text message that only mentioned his stress over stock market purchases.
Suddenly, the stock he mentions rings a bell, and Ji-won realizes that she can use her knowledge of the future and use that seed money for a better life. Go Rocky! She gets a CT Scan to confirm there is no cancer in her abdomen at this time, then heads over to the local library for some self-help books on job hunting and stocks.
Finally, some agency. She is beginning her comeback. I'm soooo glad she went to the doctor! I'm glad she is in Korea because that appointment in the states would have taken all of that $500 and more.
I aso got the feeling that he wouldn't know how to take her to get street food. When he goes for a quick place to eat, unless it's fried chicken (more on that later) that this is the place he knows.
I would help you, but I'm too busy smiling to myself over what he really looks like under those huge glasses and distractingly terrible fitting suits. There was a whole thread on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) all about why isn't he wearing better fitting suits when he clearly can afford a good tailor.
Ji-won blurts that it’s even better than she thought, but he mistakes her for liking the food even though she hasn’t tasted it yet. She tries to cover up by taking a big gulp of the hot soup, but yet again he has to rescue her with a cup of cold water. Has he always been this considerate; after all, this is the longest time she has spent in his presence. 
She sincerely thanks him for his kind actions the day before and admits she wants to change jobs. One of the books is on interior design, and Ji-hyuk wonders if she’s getting married. Oh snap, she forgot about the upcoming nuptials, which she would rather die than do. She speaks in generalities, and we have our first misunderstanding. Why, Show, why?
Yeah. I know that she is plotting, but I'm not sure why she doesn't say anything here when she knows that he doesn't talk to anyone at work and people don't really talk to him either.
Before either can explain, she gets a phone call from Slimy Bestie, which she ignores. SB then sends a sharp text demanding they talk that night. In her bedroom, Soo-min (SB) looks at all the pics of her and Ji-won, wondering why her only friend isn’t dropping everything to respond back.
At the restaurant, Ji-won stares at Manager Yoo’s beautiful but scarred arm. All of the sudden, she discovers that his scar is the exact same shape as the one on her arm in her previous life. She grabs his hand, intent on examining that handsome appendage further, until the ambiguous action and his startled look brings her back to her senses.
I want to know, too!
Okay, maybe I just want to grab his arm.
Awkward! They quickly finish up and go their separate ways. After a moment, Ji-hyuk earnestly (and boyishly) blurts out that she is a valuable and talented person at work. And as her boss he thinks it would be a shame to quit. A smile blooms on her face.
As she walks away, he stares at her one final time. Was there something else he wanted to say?
Relaxing at home, Ji-won is researching food-related stuff for work, but ends up musing about her interaction with her boss over the last two days. In her previous life, he was always frowning, but now she finds him approachable and a good person. Renewed in faith, she digs into her project, determined to do the best she can for the company. 
At the office the next day, Ji-won is forced to climb the stairs due to Weasel staking out the elevators looking for her. Once she catches her breath at her desk, she checks out the stocks she invested in. Up and up! She wonders how high it will go.
HURRAH! And hide that money, honey. Weasel deserves nothing.
Someone slaps her shoulder. Ugh, it’s Scummy Bestie. It’s hard for Ji-won to answer her pushy questions normally, but she tries. She spins a story where she reads about a terminal cancer patient finding her husband in bed with her best friend. Soo-min calls the hypothetical homewrecker “gross”. She crouches down and puts her head on Ji-won’s lap as if to ask for a scratch behind the ears and follows up with a statement.
“You can have everything I own if I die, but if you die, I will have all of yours too.”
Ji-won’s squeamishness at this shameless thigh-holding is broken with a bellow from her boss. He is reviewing her latest proposal, a meal kit for single people, and calls it trash.
Internally expositioning, Ji-won remembers with rancor that Soo-min proposed the exact word-for-word pitch, and that same manager accepted it immediately. And Bestie got fulltime employee status and a promotion with Ji-won’s hard work.
During her inner monologue, the manager gets snarky and loud while insulting different aspects of the proposal. She is still in her head, though, thinking about this useless opportunistic boss Manager Kim, who was rumored to be sleeping with an upper management individual.
He's completely gross. He not only has an unfounded confidence in himself but his only talent seems to be stealing other people's work and degrading women workers in general as if he resents them all doing anything but sleeping with him or wanting to sleep with him.
Manager Kim winds down and sees that Ms Kang isn’t even listening. He starts making sexist statements about dependent women needing direction, and ends with disparaging her attire and the lack of women in military service. Most of the women within earshot flinch, so this is probably a regular thing. Oddly, Miss ScumBestie is spritzing on perfume.
A short time later in the break room, she sees the married woman in their department, Kim Gyeong-uk. She’s a hard worker, and Ji-won remembers that in the past life, she was bullied by Manager Kim until she quit and left the company.
As Ms Kim is called away by another employee, she hastily leaves her coffee cup at the edge of the table. Ji-won remembers it falling to the floor while she hurt her leg lunging for it. This time, though, she ready, and deftly saves the cup and her knee. Yay! She discovers she can change what happened in the past and bursts into giggles!
I did, too. this means that the possibilities are endless, and her hope to change her future actually has a chance.
The laughter stops when she bumps into Weasel, and she tries to hurry away. Turning around a corner, she bumps into a cabinet on a dolly. It strikes the same place on her knee as the past life injury but doesn’t bleed. She is saved by Hot Glasses pulling her back a bit.
After taking a quick breather in the bathroom, she speculates that past events are still shadowing her in the present.
Shit.
She also has a nasty shadow now. Weasel shows up as she leaves the bathroom and, in her haste to escape him, she slams into yet another dolly and this time get a large bleeding bruise on her leg.
So now she must figure out how to avoid such things like, yunno cancer and death. Her burn scar ended up transferred to Manager Yoo, so she really needs to figure out how this alternative reality operates.
She decides to check the stocks again and finds out that Weasel has sold his “Rosenthal” stock. He text-snaps at her for rudely avoiding him and deposits some of the stock money to her. He grandly announces that he has even bigger stocks/fish to fry, so this piddly little money won’t be missed.
The name of the new stock “TKU Technology” intrigues her. In the other reality, overnight this company crashed and wiped all the investors.
So her “R” stock is still going up, but Weasel’s “T” is going to nosedive. (Hurray!! Something good needs to happen to her and something terrible needs to happen to him). As she thinks further, Manager Yoo shows up for a meeting. Ji-won sees the burn injury, and her mind races with possibilities. What will happen will happen, and she needs to be prepared for it. Scummy Bestie follows her to the conference room, and I am secretly hoping that she gets the cancer diagnosis.
Soo-min runs into the meeting room to scootch next to Weasel and share paperwork, while Ji-won looks on the shameless couple and plots.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Wheew, I didn’t know if I still had it. Still, we have a great establishment of the characters, the scums and the hotties. I wonder how the bad luck / good luck fairies are gonna sprinkle their respective plot spots on everyone.
I know how this rolls out in the original, but I'm curious how they will show it here. The show has already made some minute changes that make me intrigued.
