With our setup out of the way, the drama begins to peel back the layers on our lead couple’s relationship. Between flashbacks and reveals of some of the memories they hold dear, we are starting to understand where they’re both coming from. The drama also adds intrigue to its humorous and emotional angles, as some of our characters unravel to be surprisingly worse villains than we might have expected.
EPISODES 3-4
The week opens with a flashback to four years ago when Hae-in visited Hyun-woo’s hometown for the first time. Hyun-woo might not have had a black card to purchase brand name items for his girl, but he sure impressed her with unlimited ice pop options from his mom’s supermarket. “Did your mom never buy you [an ice pop]?” he asked, shocked to hear that it was Hae-in’s first time eating one. This man was actually feeling sorry that her poverty stricken family couldn’t afford something as common as an ice pop, and I almost died of second-hand embarrassment watching him insist that he was okay with Hae-in’s poor background. Now I know why he quit his job and ran away after learning that her family was filthy rich. I’d have been mortified too!
Back then, Hyun-woo was ready to marry Hae-in even if her family was in debt. He sincerely promised to always be by her side, and if Hae-in wasn’t already madly in love with Hyun-woo, she sure fell for him at that moment. Perhaps, it’s why that specific memory is the last thing that came to Hae-in’s mind when she thought she was going to die in the wild boar attack. Thankfully, her husband came to save the day with a precise shot at the boar — and then swooped her away in the princess carry style after she twisted her ankle. I will always love this swoon-worthy trope!
I loved that afterwards, Hae-in got to brag about Hyun-woo’s shooting skills to her family, and rub it in their faces like the famous Korean 7-step skincare routine. This woman will “my husband” all of us to death, and I love it for her. But what I loved the most about this hunting trip was BaekHong eventually falling victim to the “sharing one room” trope. Because unlike Queensville where they slept apart, the Hong family’s hunting villa doesn’t have that many rooms. How scandalous!
While Hyun-woo is nervous/terrified at the thought of sharing a room with his wife, Hae-in is flustered at the memory of how insanely attractive her husband was when he saved her life. Then Hyun-woo exits the shower in nothing but a white towel (reminding me of this scene in You From Another Star), and Hae-in temporarily forgets how to breathe. Not gonna lie, I did, too. “What in the world happened to his body?” Hae-in wonders. “Was he trying to seduce me?” He wasn’t trying, sis, he already did! Suddenly, a king-sized bed is too small for BaekHong to share when they did just fine cuddling in a single bed back when she visited Yongdu-ri. Tsk.
The good news is that Hae-in’s heart has started fluttering again at the sight of the “walking sexy dynamite” that is her husband. She thinks about all the things she’ll lose when she dies — the biggest of all, being Hyun-woo — and she refuses to entertain the morbid thought. Hae-in has been on the brink of death several times and she has miraculously survived each time. “Another miracle will save me,” she declares, and amen to that.
In the meantime, Hyun-woo’s siblings, BAEK HYUN-TAE (Kim Do-hyun) and BAEK MI-SEON (Jang Yoon-ju), visit Seoul to persuade Hae-in not to go through with the divorce, but she has a meeting so they can’t chat for long. The Baek siblings belatedly learn that Hyun-woo hasn’t brought up the divorce with her yet, and Hyun-woo enters panic mode when Mi-seon says she already texted Hae-in about it. Hae-in gets home drunk after her meeting, and Hyun-woo tries to delete the text from her phone before she reads it. His first deletion attempt earns him a kiss — because Hae-in has decided to try doing new things before she dies — and he is so shocked that all he can do is stand there wide-eyed like K-drama female leads of yore. Lol.
Undeterred, Hyun-woo sneaks into Hae-in’s room for attempt #2, and he succeeds in deleting Mi-seon’s text after overcoming the passcode hurdle. Phew! But to wipe off every trace of relief we feel, the drama hits us with an emotional bomb: Hyun-woo and Hae-in lost a baby in the early days of their marriage, and Hae-in’s passcode is the baby’s due date! OMG! I need a minute to process this. Hae-in thinks about her baby every single time she unlocks her phone, and Hyun-woo’s room used to be the nursery. Is this what pain feels like? Why don’t you twist the knife further into my heart, Show.
Now I see why Hyun-woo was upset and Hae-in was just numb when MOMMY and DADDY HONG (Na Young-hee and Jung Jin-young) ordered them to have a baby last week. The loss of their child has to be one of the reasons for the breakdown of their marriage, right? Knowing BaekHong, they probably grieved differently and assumed the other person didn’t care as much. Oh God, these two pitiful souls!
Since BaekHong thrives on miscommunication, Hae-in interprets Hyun-woo’s following-her-around-to-delete-the-text gestures to mean that he really cares about her, and she becomes more relaxed around him. Lol. Erroneously or not, this is what happens when your partner believes that you’re interested in them. Meanwhile, Hyun-woo begins to see Hae-in in a different light following her surprise kiss and the passcode reveal — but he gaslights himself into believing that his heart is racing because he’s scared of her.
But all it takes is one unprovoked compliment from Hae-in, and Hyun-woo starts skipping his steps and humming to himself at work. “Have I gone crazy?” he wonders. And yes, sir, you are crazy about your wife. Crazy enough to steal glances at her through the glass walls of her office while analyzing her facial expressions and smiling like a loon. Crazy enough to buy her comfortable shoes after she slipped on the escalator, and feel very accomplished after spotting the shoes on her feet. Get a grip, Baek Hyun-woo!
Yang-gi likens the resurgence of Hyun-woo’s attraction to Hae-in to Hyun Bin and Son Ye-jin’s reel to real love story (Park Ji-eun writer-nim, you cheeky woman!). But Hyun-woo, the love-struck idiot, insists that he is only paying this much attention to Hae-in because he wants her to include him in her will. If that’s the case, Mr. Baek Hyun-woo, can you please explain to the class why you find it so annoying that Eun-seong has inserted himself into Hae-in’s life under the guise of Hercyna negotiations? Hyun-woo refuses to accept that he’s jealous because jealousy is an emotion that is reserved for when you actually like someone. But okay. Let him keep denying the feelings that he clearly has for his wife — while grilling lettuce instead of meat. Pfft.
Hae-in surprises Hyun-woo with some much needed good news — and no, she hasn’t written him into her will. But who needs a will when she has found a research lab with a 51% chance of curing her!? That’s a 51% chance that Hyun-woo might end up as a divorcée after all, rather than a widower. (By the way, I’m often thrilled when I spot some scenes in a drama that I saw in its trailer. But I would never have guessed that Hae-in’s “good news” is the reason Hyun-woo was running around and crying like a mad man in one of the Queen of Tears trailers. LMAO!).
In the event that Hae-in is cured, optimistic Yang-gi throws out the possibility that she can fall in love with Eun-seong and request a divorce from Hyun-woo herself. She would have to give him alimony in that case, and it’s a win-win for everyone involved. But if his wife has to fall for someone else, it cannot be Eun-seong because Hyun-woo doesn’t get a good vibe from the guy. And jealousy aside, he’s actually on to something.
You see, Eun-seong seems to have abandonment issues after growing up as an orphan before he was adopted abroad. But most orphans in dramaland grow up to be lonely chaebol heirs who are traumatized by the rain. They don’t go about killing — and threatening to kill — other people’s precious dogs like Eun-seong does in his misguided campaign for abandoned dogs. That is borderline sociopathic behavior, and it’s scary that this kind of human is hanging around Hae-in. Thankfully, Hae-in’s interest in Eun-seong does not exceed business reasons, and she shuts down all of his attempts to make her second guess her husband.
Unfortunately, Eun-seong is not the only villain in this show. There’s GRACE GO (Kim Joo-ryung), the meddling matchmaker who has vowed to tear BaekHong apart because Hae-in ignored her matchmaking efforts and married for love. That’s why Grace fed Hyun-woo the “Hae-in secretly cut you out of her will before your marriage” information — which I think is false. Grace also set up the boar attack at the hunting trip, but we’re yet to find out who instructed her to do so.
Hae-in’s grandfather’s girlfriend (Lee Mi-sook) is my #1 pick as the mastermind because underneath that gentle “I don’t want anything from the chairman other than his love” facade lies a woman who, like Grace, is skilled in the art of manipulation. Unfortunately, Grandpa doesn’t listen to his daughter, HONG BEOM-JA (Kim Jung-nan), who sees past that facade. Ms. Girlfriend has no problem preventing Grandpa’s estranged first son, HONG BEOM-SEOK (Park Yoon-hee) from seeing him — and then lying when she’s asked about it. GRANDPA HONG (Kim Gab-soo) believes that Beom-seok sold him out to the prosecution and schemed to take his place as chairman of Queen’s group. Meanwhile, Beom-seok threw his father under the bus because he heard that his father was trying to pin embezzlement charges on him.
Someone definitely set up this conflict between father and son, and it’s been 20 years since they’ve been estranged — which is coincidentally the same number of years that Ms. Girlfriend has spent in the Hong family. This woman is playing the long con, and I refuse to believe otherwise. Not after that cryptic exchange of glances between her and Eun-seong — who, by the way, knows that Grace is connected to the boar attack, and is also working with her to split the Hong family in his grand plan to topple Queen’s group.
Grace lies that Hae-in is intentionally hogging Eun-seong’s attention to prevent him from investing in Soo-cheol’s resort project, and Soo-cheol’s wife, CHEON DA-HYE (Lee Joo-bin) sits up at this news. Da-hye is another interestingly suspicious character who pretends to be a docile and loving wife, but really, she finds her husband exhausting to be around. It’s almost like she has her own plans for marrying into the Hong family. Coincidentally, Da-hye is the one who informed Soo-cheol about investor Eun-seong’s arrival in Korea. And like Mommy Hong, Da-hye also wants Soo-cheol to be Grandpa’s successor.
Grace seals her lie with some fortune telling nonsense that Hae-in is fated to prey on her siblings all her life, and Mommy Hong is once again reminded about the grudge she nurses against Hae-in. She goes on to confront her daughter for being a “selfish bitch” who doesn’t care if everyone around her dies as long as she can save herself. Hae-in becomes dizzy at the mention of her late brother, and Hyun-woo rushes to steady his wife before giving his mother-in-law the polite “Ma’am, you need to leave” speech. This is not the grief Olympics, but it sucks that Mommy Hong only sees that she lost a son and she doesn’t see that Hae-in also lost a brother.
Hae-in rips my heart out when she reveals that she’s keeping her illness a secret from the family because her parents have already lost one child. This puts in perspective Daddy and Mommy Hong’s panicked reaction and palpable relief when they heard about Hae-in’s near-death experience during the hunting trip. And knowing that Hae-in also has first-hand experience with the pain of child loss makes her decision to shield her parents from her condition hurt even more. Sigh. Hong Hae-in, you poor thing. How are you still standing under the weight of everything you’ve been holding in?
Just as it began, the week ends with Hae-in’s visit to Yongdu-ri. She’s here to support DADDY BAEK’s (Jeon Bae-soo) reelection as the village head, and this is a father-daughter reunion of sorts. Heh. Hae-in recalls fond memories of her first visit as she browses through Hyun-woo’s room, and she stumbles on an old music player in his drawer. But when she goes outside to listen to the music, her hallucination strikes again. By the time Hyun-woo arrives, Hae-in has already wandered off in a daze. Oh no! The frantic village boy and his bicycle go in search of his wife, but he doesn’t find her until nightfall.
Hyun-woo is so relieved to see Hae-in that he can’t jump off his bicycle any faster. He peppers her with questions on her whereabouts, and she insists that she is not a patient. Hae-in might just as well have poured cold water on her husband. A disappointed Hyun-woo turns to leave, and that’s when the streetlights come on and she sees how sweaty he is. Instantly, her walls come crashing down as she stares at the evidence of her husband’s concern and worry about her. Desperately trying to hold back her tears, Hae-in admits to having memory lapses. The last thing she remembers was standing outside Hyun-woo’s house. She has no idea how she ended up in their current location.
Under the lights, Hyun-woo takes a good look at the state his wife is in. Muddy, injured, scared. The severity of her condition finally begins to dawn on him. His quickened pace eats up the distance between them, and he pulls Hae-in into a tight embrace. He’s crying, she’s crying, and I can barely see through my own tears. Stay hydrated, people, this drama is coming for our collective tear ducts.
The epilogue gives us a flashback to Hae-in’s last day in high school before she went abroad. To drown out her classmates’ gossip that she was being admitted into a mental hospital because she went mad after her brother died, Hae-in resorted to her music player. She changes her mind at the last minute and charges back towards the building, probably to give her classmates a piece of her mind, but she trips and scrapes her knees.
A hand reaches out to help her up, and it’s Hyun-woo — who just transferred to the school. He manages to cover her scrapes with a bandaid before she storms off, leaving her music player behind in the sand. Yes, it’s the same music player Hae-in found in Hyun-woo’s room. I’m not sure Hyun-woo knows that Hae-in is the girl he met all those years ago, but isn’t it interesting that he kept the music player with him till now?
Admittedly, BaekHong’s past connection is my least favorite of all the tropes so far, but it drives home Hyun-woo’s status as Hae-in’s destined knight in shining armor. Unfortunately, a tumor isn’t a photocopier that can be fixed by pressing a few buttons; neither is it a boar that can be brought down with a single bullet. Mr. Knight had better buckle up because Hae-in’s condition is going to get worse before it gets better. It will get better, right, Show? Hae-in has lost too much to lose her life, too.
In the midst of dramatic, villainous, and sycophantic characters, Hyun-woo’s mom continues to stand out. MUMMY BAEK (Hwang Young-hee) may not know the genesis of BaekHong’s rift, but she’s the only person outside the marriage who sees that there’s a deeper issue between the couple than meets the eye. From their wedding day till now, Mummy Baek has been invested in their happiness, and it’s nice to know that they have at least one supportive parent on their side. Speaking of support, Hae-in’s secretary is such a fun character. I live for SECRETARY NA’s (Yoon Bomi) one-liners and facial expressions, and her scenes with Hae-in are some of my favorites.
Two weeks in and Queen of Tears remains an addictive watch. How can a show be so fun, and yet so heartbreaking? I’m impressed with the pacing, the strength of the writing and direction, and the marvelous performance of all the actors. These people will break my heart, mend it, and break it again. And I am ready for this, I think. In the meantime, if you’re looking for me, I’ll be trying to get over my tears from Episode 4’s ending scene by replaying oppa’s towel scene and swooning alongside Hae-in.