Like an unpredictable weather condition, Queen of Tears takes us on a rollercoaster of emotions this week. But what else were we expecting when we signed up for this pain? Romance and tears accompany our lead couple from Yongdu-ri to Seoul to Germany, and the evil quartet successfully takes their first big step towards the actualization of Operation Take Over Queens Group.
EPISODES 5-6
Resuming from where we ended last week with BaekHong’s hug, the ice between the couple thaws a bit as they wait out the rain and have a friendly chat about Daddy Baek’s reelection. Hyun-woo and Hae-in have to spend the night at Yongdu-ri, and once again, it’s time to share a room. Heh. The tension begins to rise when Hyun-woo helps Hae-in dry her hair and dress her wound, and it escalates when she jokes about her lifeline (one of the lines on her palm) being too short. But Hyun-woo doesn’t find the joke funny. After all, didn’t she say that there is a research lab with an optimistic prognosis for her treatment? Hae-in asks if he’ll come with her to Germany for the treatment, and without missing a beat, he replies, “That’s a given.”
The current in the room sizzles as Hyun-woo leans in, and Hae-in closes her eyes (and I hold my breath). Then Hyun-woo abruptly leaves the room, and the collective WTF gasp from the Queen of Tears viewers reverberates throughout the world and outer space. Hae-in immediately goes into denial mode. There are 1,001 reasons for Hyun-woo to have left her hanging. He could have gone to answer a phone call, or the call of nature. Perhaps, even gone to save the world. But when she comes out to look for her runaway husband, she overhears him tell his brother that he’ll go in once she’s asleep.
It’s not disinterest on Hyun-woo’s part, though. He’s very much interested in his wife up to the point that he’s scared he might “make a mistake” if he’s alone with her. “I was sure that I’d be unfazed no matter what happened to her. Because I didn’t like her. I’ve been doing it all along. But strangely enough, I can’t do it anymore,” Hyun-woo whispers to himself as he loses the battle with tears. But does Hae-in hear the rest of his speech? Nope. Because she already stormed off after listening to the first part.
BaekHong’s problem has always been the communication barrier between them. It’s either they’re jumping to conclusions without getting the full information, or what they intend to say and what eventually comes out of their mouth are not in sync. In a flashback to the period following their child loss, we see that Hae-in had the nursery cleared out despite Hyun-woo’s objection. During the ensuing confrontation, she mentioned that they didn’t need the place anymore and it was getting on her nerves, and he interpreted her words as indifference. Hyun-woo did not wait outside to see his wife struggling with her tears beside the moving truck. He moved into the nursery to mourn alone, and Hae-in was left in their room to grieve with the sonogram and chide herself because she felt like she had no right to cry. This really was the genesis of their marital crisis.
Back to the present, the Baeks had managed to keep Hyun-woo’s divorce intention away from Hae-in and the other villagers — with the small exception of the village’s unlicensed marriage counselor who swore not to tell a soul. But of all people for Daddy Baek to trust with a secret, it had to be the actor who played Man-bok “the rat” from Crash Landing on You! Ha! I had a really good laugh at this. Of course Mr. Marriage Counselor snitched to his mom with dementia — who recovers her senses in time to tell Hyun-woo the following morning that divorce means nothing. In front of Hae-in! The family plays it off as demented ramblings and Hae-in doesn’t read much meaning into it. But I get this eerie sense of foreshadowing…
After BaekHong leaves for Seoul, Mi-seon takes us down another flashback lane as she wonders how the great love between them died. Four years ago, she offered Hae-in money to break up with Hyun-woo, but Hae-in refused to break up. My girl was decked in designer brands, but they still assumed she was poor. Lol. Hyun-woo stormed the café to scold his sister and wrist-grab Hae-in out after declaring his love for her, and Mi-seon was actually impressed. (PS: Hae-in took the money envelope before she left, and I was impressed. Dramaland candy heroines can never relate to this.)
Meanwhile, Ms. Girlfriend’s villain colors begin to show after she hurls a hammer at the CCTV and twists Beom-ja’s arm before flinging her across the kitchen worktop and punching her in the gut. Whoa! This incident leads to two plot-driving events: 1) Beom-ja orders a private investigation into Ms. Girlfriend; 2) she visits the hospital to get a cast on her twisted arm, and overhears a hallway conversation where Hae-in’s doctor advises her to postpone her Germany trip because her white blood cell count is too low.
Beom-ja might be the craziest Hong, but she’s genuinely concerned about her niece’s condition. Unfortunately, the rest of the family is so used to her antics that they don’t take her seriously when she tries to alert them that something is wrong with Hae-in. And it’s not like she can outrightly tell them that Hae-in is dying because she has been sworn to secrecy. Beom-ja offers to come along when she learns that Hae-in is forging ahead with the Germany trip, and when Hae-in refuses, she waits outside the house for Hyun-woo to return home so she can inform him that his wife has traveled. But what does that foolish man do? He goes camping instead of going after his wife. Tsk.
Hyun-woo can run away from his nagging conscience all he likes, but he cannot hide from the feelings he has for his wife. His body is present at the camping site, but his soul is in Germany. After watching an interview where Hae-in talked about her dream of taking a break from work to travel with her husband, tears pool in Hyun-woo’s eyes, and it’s straight to the airport to reunite his body with his soul.
Meanwhile, Hae-in hits a stumbling block in Germany when she learns from the doctor at the research lab (cameo by Sebastian Roché) that her low white blood cell count makes it difficult to isolate the immune cells from her blood for the treatment. The doctor suggests giving it some time before trying again, but time is the one luxury our chaebol heiress cannot afford. Coincidentally, BaekHong honeymooned in Germany, so Hae-in uses the rest of the day to revisit one of their honeymoon sites, which is where Hyun-woo comes to find her. Hae-in used to like the meaning of the location “A place of no worries and tears,” but now she scoffs at it as a lie to lure tourists.
Hyun-woo calls her out as the liar who promised not to make him cry when she proposed to him. “But guess what?” he says, “I cried a lot during our marriage… I liked sleeping alone since I could cry myself to sleep.” Whoa! Hae-in hems and haws about saying whatever back then just so she could marry him. And now that they’re married, Hyun-woo insists that he should be by her side at times like this. “Did I ever tell you not to?” Hae-in retorts in a rare case of brain and mouth synchronization. “I wanted you to be by my side. I didn’t want to be alone.” Oof! They’re hitting me right in the feels with all this communication.
An emotional Hyun-woo apologizes to Hae-in, and she holds out her hand. “Let’s go home,” she says. Hyun-woo pulls his wife into a hug, and they infect me with their tears. But I go from crying to swooning like an idiot when BaekHong finally delivers on their long-awaited kiss! Hyun-woo is thirsty, Hae-in is a fountain, and I’m the satisfied fangirl. The honeymoon montage and now this? There has to be something in the air in Germany, because that’s where these two give us their best kisses. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to divorce her problematic family and move to Germany permanently. Just saying.
Still high on the fragrance of communication, Hae-in tells Hyun-woo about her will. Grace was right. Hyun-woo is not getting a cent. Hae-in says her mom made her do it in exchange for allowing them to get married, but she plans to revise the will. Hyun-woo feels terrible about his recent gold-digging adventures, and while he’s thankful for the planned revision, he insists that she waits until she’s fully recovered. There’s nothing more refreshing than the self-awareness and character development that comes from honest communication. But now that Hyun-woo is a hundred percent devoted to Hae-in outside of her will, if only he could be fully honest by bringing up his divorce plans…
Anyway, BaekHong end up in a suite, and despite not having to share a room, Hyun-woo jumps to follow Hae-in into her room. He almost misinterprets Hae-in’s pause as reluctance to share the room with him, but Hae-in refuses to allow him jump into his usual conclusion. Thus, BaekHong begins their moving back into the same room era, the “yeobo” era… heck, Hyun-woo even enters his SNU lawyer era when he goes behind Hae-in’s back to threaten the research lab with a lawsuit if they don’t treat his wife. I can’t believe the lab had an alternative treatment plan to raise Hae-in’s white blood cell count but they didn’t suggest it to her until Hyun-woo stepped in. Tsk.
Unlike her depressing first round of tests, Hae-in is noticeably perkier during the second round due to Hyun-woo’s presence. Hae-in disappears for a bit in a hallucinatory daze, but she snaps out of it in time to find Hyun-woo who has been searching for her. She reveals that she followed the illusion of her late elder brother, and she tells Hyun-woo that her brother died after saving her from drowning. For some reason, I assumed that Hae-in was a teenager when her brother died, but she was just nine! Hae-in knows that it’s not her fault, but she can’t shake off the guilt because it feels like she stole his life. And now I dislike her mom even more because how can you hold a nine-year-old child responsible for such an incident!?
Back in Seoul, Hyun-woo’s investigation into the wild boar incident yields fruit when the damaged dashcam from a passing vehicle near the hunting grounds is restored, and the footage reveals Da-hye sprinkling bait for the boar. But Eun-seong buys off the data recovery technician before the footage is sent to Hyun-woo. That’s right, Da-hye has officially been unveiled as a member of Team Eun-seong! Ivy league professor’s daughter my foot. Da-hye and Eun-seong grew up in the same orphanage, and after a charity visit from Grandpa Hong and his grandchildren, Eun-squid targeted his tentacles at the feisty Hae-in, and Da-hye grew up to become dumb Soo-cheol’s wife and mother of his son.
To be honest, I’m not sure about that last part. Not with the suspicious exchange of glances between Da-hye and Grace when Grandpa Hong mentioned the DNA test. They totally faked the results, didn’t they? Soo-cheol is annoying, and he’s the worst businessman in the world. But he’s very defensive of his wife and son, and it’s going to suck so bad for him if the boy isn’t his. While Ms. Girlfriend hasn’t been officially linked to Eun-seong, she conveniently finds a bug in Grandpa Hong’s study. Grandpa is already on edge because he’s being targeted by the prosecution for embezzlement, and he orders an investigation into the bugging.
Everything is traced back to Hyun-woo’s home office, and a further search reveals the divorce document in Hyun-woo’s safe — exactly the way Eun-snitch intended! Team Eun-seong took advantage of BaekHong’s absence to snoop around their house, find the divorce document, and plant the evidence against Hyun-woo. Now Eun-spy gleefully watches the Hongs spiral in disbelief through a hidden camera that he planted in a painting he gifted Grandpa Hong. To worsen the case, Grace informs Grandpa that Hyun-woo has been meeting a divorce lawyer (Yang-gi) who works at a rival’s law firm, and Grandpa becomes convinced that Hyun-woo is the whistleblower behind the embezzlement charges. Okay, Grace Go needs to go away!
Our SNU lawyer is a step ahead of the evil quartet, though, because he left his car in front of the data recovery center with his dashcam up and running. But at the moment, he is blissfully unaware that there’s fire on the mountain in Seoul, and he continues to enjoy honeymoon 2.0 with his wife. The fire soon spreads to Germany after Mommy Hong sends a picture of the divorce settlement document to Hae-in, and BaekHong falls into a crisis again. Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Show! Hae-in is crushed, Hyun-woo can’t meet her eyes, and I’m cussing at Eun-sicko and his team in 10 different languages. Ugh! Angst season, is that you I see ahead?
Hae-in trusted her husband to the max. It wasn’t even worth bringing up the bugging issue to Hyun-woo when her mom mentioned it because she was confident that he was innocent. Even with this divorce settlement, she waited for his confirmation before reacting. Now she’s going to start doubting all his actions post her diagnosis — and be totally justified for it! Karma waited patiently for Hyun-woo to circle back to his place of genuine affection for Hae-in before coming to bite his ass for his previous dishonest intentions towards her.
By the way, if there’s one thing this drama knows how to do well, it’s driving our emotions to various extremes without a warning. Because how can we go from the “OMG! How devastating” feels of Hae-in’s discovery of the divorce settlement straight into the cute epilogue that confirms that Hyun-woo is Hae-in’s first love? Aigoo.
The evil quartet might have won this round, but not for long. Remember that private investigation that Beom-ja ordered? Well, the report is out and Ms. Girlfriend is not who she claims to be. She has officially been dead for thirty years — but she’s not a ghost, she just changed her identity. But that’s not the juicy part. Ms. Girlfriend served time for adultery three years before she “died,” and she gave birth behind bars! The plot has thickened and boiled over, guys. How makjang would it be if Eun-seong ends up being Ms. Girlfriend’s son? I mean, she accompanied Grandpa Hong on the orphanage visit that sparked Eun-seong’s interest in Queens Group. I wouldn’t put it past her to have engineered the whole thing from the start. Meanwhile, Eun-spider has roped Hyun-woo’s secretary into his web, and now I have trust issues. How far does this man’s reach go?
I’ve never seen a chaebol family more gullible than the Hongs. And now they’re about to kick the smartest man in their family to the curb no thanks to Eun-sociopath’s manipulations. Smh. I honestly don’t care about the Hongs (aside from aunt Beom-ja), but I need Hyun-woo to fight back not just for Hae-in’s sake but for his. That evil quartet cannot besmirch my SNU lawyer’s reputation and get away with it!