After an almost two-year period between its announcement and premiere, the drama of the year is upon us! Queen of Tears hits us with tropes, meta, humor, and wistfulness, as its lead couple begins an uncertain journey toward reigniting their burnt out romance.
EPISODES 1-2
I apologize in advance for the person I’m going to be throughout this drama’s run. My oppa is back in dramaland, he’s in his suit era, and his forehead appears a lot more times than it did in his last few roles. I’m living in my answered prayers, y’all! There’s no way I can be normal about this.
For a drama about what happens after happily ever after, it’s only fitting that we begin at the beginning of happily ever after: the wedding of the century between our salaryman hero, BAEK HYUN-WOO (the amazing Kim Soo-hyun), and chaebol heiress, HONG HAE-IN (Kim Ji-won). *Wipes happy tears from my seat in the audience — and then swoons and almost dies from the sweetness of their honeymoon montage.* Seriously, we had a dozen different kisses in less than six seconds! And as for the dreamy “how they met” story, we got a full rom-com plot within a few minutes.
They met back when Hae-in was an intern at her family-owned Queens department store — as in the usual chaebol rite of passage before ascending the throne. She had a problem with the copier and Hyun-woo appeared as a knight in rolled-up sleeves to fix it. A series of weaponized copier incompetence later, and Hyun-woo fell for Hae-in. Things were good between them until Hyun-woo found out that Hae-in is not just the queen of his heart — she’s the queen of Queens! Noble idiocy followed with him resigning and ghosting her, and they eventually had a last minute reunion after she went to fetch him from his hometown with a helicopter. Cue: their marriage, and the end credits of our trope reversal rom-com.
When we meet Mr. and Mrs. Hong Hae-in three years later (our current timeline), their relationship has soured. I mean, constant digs at each other and sleeping in different rooms kinda sour. But to quell Hyun-woo’s gold-digging rumors, Hyun-woo and Hae-in keep up the happily married act with tell-all interviews — where Hae-in chops apples like she’s chopping gossipy netizens’ fingers. Our ice queen is so unnerving! Then again, oppa likes his women a little feisty.
Starting from the “how we met” story to their current soured romance, it has always been a he-said-she-said retelling when it comes to Hyun-woo and Hae-in’s relationship. From Hyun-woo’s point of view, he might have become the legal director of Queens’ Group, but his opinion does not count at work. It’s the same story at home with his in-laws. He has the thankless job of cleaning up after the Hong family’s mess, they dictate every aspect of his life — and worse, he feels that Hae-in doesn’t care about how her family treats him.
Hyun-woo has always been the expressive one in the relationship, so he’s vocal about his pain and frustration with Hae-in. You can almost see the “save me” plea written with neon lights on his forehead. Frustration leads to drinking, and drinking leads to Hyun-woo doing what Kim Soo-hyun does best: crying. He is really the funniest and most adorable drunk ever! This entire drunken sequence was funny, and the appearance of the actors who played Yoon Se-ri’s assistant and insurance agent in Crash Landing on You as Queens Group’s scandal prevention team made it all the more hilarious. (Random fun reminder: Se-ri’s father’s company was also named Queens Group.)
Hae-in’s father lives by the mantra: “Never bid farewell to those who abandon you. You should stab them in the back,” and this is the singular reason Hyun-woo hasn’t filed for a divorce. He is not ready to get stabbed in the back by his father-in-law, and I just about died of laughter when he shuffled out of Daddy Hong’s office backwards. Three suffocating years of living with three generations of the Hongs and their other extended family members eventually makes Hyun-woo seek out a psychiatrist (cameo by Oh Jung-sae for a Tae brothers’ reunion). Hyun-woo is diagnosed with extreme stress levels, and the only solution is for him to get a divorce. (I’d have recommended the Queen of Divorce team to him, but those guys are terrible at their job.)
For a breather, Hyun-woo dips out of an appointment with Hae-in to visit his hometown. The Queens may rule Seoul, but in Yongdu-ri, Hyun-woo’s family and their 35 cows are kings. In contrast to the cold and gloomy atmosphere at Queensville, there’s so much warmth and vibrancy in the Baek family house — and I’m not just talking about the difference in color palettes between both locations. Hyun-woo is in the most relaxed state we’ve seen him in, and with the way he wolfs down his lunch, you’ll think he was starving at the Hongs’.
Hyun-woo’s family scolds him for being absent at Daddy Baek’s 60th birthday — because he and the other male in-laws were on kitchen duty at Grandpa Hong’s late wife’s memorial service on that same day. But the scolding ends when Hyun-woo drops the divorce bomb on them. His mom is all for her son’s happiness, but his dad and siblings try to talk him out of it — especially his siblings because of the financial benefits they get from his marriage. And at this point, I am thoroughly exhausted on Hyun-woo’s behalf. Let this man breathe!
Hyun-woo returns home to serve Hae-in with the divorce papers, but she beats him to the surprise punch. She’s dying! What? Apparently, Hae-in has been experiencing headaches and memory lapses for a while, and a visit to the doctor — the appointment Hyun-woo brushed off — confirmed her condition: Cloud Cytoma, a rare form of brain tumor. Progressed symptoms of the condition include hallucinations or personality disorders, and to top it all, there’s no cure. Hae-in already experiences hallucinations, and the doctor estimates that she has three months left. Just like that! Oh, Park Ji-eun writer-nim, I did not sign up for terminal illness.
We’re dipping into Hae-in’s point of view now, and things are beginning to make sense. At an earlier appointment, Hyun-woo thought Hae-in stood him up on purpose. But it turns out that she had one of her memory lapses and she forgot! When she eventually showed up, he had already left. Hae-in might put up an icy exterior, but underneath all of that is a woman who still cares about her husband. She is not as warm and as expressive as Hyun-woo is, so she may not stand up for him — in his presence — in front of her family. But she’ll go behind his back to beat up her younger brother, HONG SOO-CHEOL (Kwak Dong-yeon), for disrespecting her husband. She will stop her mom from barging into Hyun-woo’s office to scold him, and she sure as hell won’t sit back and listen to her business rival chatting shit about her man.
Hyun-woo feels isolated — and rightly so — in the midst of the Hongs, but in a way, Hae-in feels the same way. She’s just better at hiding her emotions because she grew up in the family and she’s used to them. From bits and pieces of the conversations at home, it seems like Hae-in lost a sibling, and her mom blames her for it. This incident is probably tied up in the trauma that manifests in Hae-in’s hallucinations. Hae-in is dealing with so much internally, and it’s quite depressing that she can’t confide in her family because they have a business relationship. She’s dying, but all she can think about is hiding her diagnosis from her family because she’s convinced that they will kick her out and fight over her assets while she’s still alive. Sigh. Like her husband, my good sis also has the “save me” plea written on her forehead — but with a pencil.
Hyun-woo is shocked to hear that Hae-in is dying, but his primary emotion is joy because he just needs to hold out for three months, and then he can be free from the marriage without the hassle of a divorce. Oh no! Unfortunately, you can never make me hate this man, so I find Hyun-woo’s attempts to fake sadness and concern for Hae-in amusing — even though he’s so wrong for this. But I can most definitely give his best friend and drinking buddy, KIM YANG-GI (Moon Tae-yoo), the side eye for advising Hyun-woo to use the three months to win Hae-in over so that she can include him in her will. This is emotional manipulation at its finest! What is Hyun-woo even thinking? Shouldn’t he know better than to divulge Hae-in’s diagnosis to someone else after she specifically warned him to keep it to himself? Tsk.
It’s ironic how Hyun-woo spent his entire marriage having to prove that he is not a golddigger, but now that the end is in sight, he has decided to wear that gold-digging cloak. Hyun-woo enters his loving husband era — and while his actions amuse me, it’s also sad because he’s doing all of this for the wrong reasons. Hae-in is totally uncomfortable with her husband’s sudden attention, and she tells him to just act like he always has. By the way, elevators might just be BaekHong’s special place because that’s where Hae-in reveals the cracks in her walls and subtly conveys her hurt and resentment for Hyun-woo.
Hae-in suspects that Hyun-woo has an ulterior motive for his sudden change in attitude, but when she discovers that he has been secretly looking into how long terminal patients can live past their given date of death — for selfish reasons, of course — she’s touched by his concern. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to die that easily for your sake,” she assures him. This sounds like a threat to Hyun-woo, and it sucks because Hae-in is actually feeling hopeful for the first time since her diagnosis thanks to his faux concern.
To further complicate BaekHong’s romance — or what is left of it — hotshot investor, YOON EUN-SEONG (Park Sung-hoon), returns to Korea. Eun-seong is Hae-in’s ex, and he’s the key to launching the luxury brand that she wants to bring to Queens department store. For someone who supposedly no longer loves his wife, Hyun-woo feels totally uneasy with Eun-seong’s reappearance in Hae-in’s life. It doesn’t even help that Eun-seong is invited to the Hong family’s hunt, and he fits right in with them — in a way that Hyun-woo has never done. If jealousy is one of the tools this drama wants to use to wake Hyun-woo up to the realization that he still loves Hae-in, it seems to be working.
Everyone disperses to their assigned corner of the grounds to secure their prey, and Hyun-woo and Hae-in go their separate ways as well. Unfortunately, Hae-in gets stuck in another hallucination episode — right as a wild boar charges at her in what seems to be a premeditated incident. *Gasp!* Proving that he will never stop being Hae-in’s white knight, Hyun-woo appears at the nick of time to gun down the boar before it attacks his wife — and this marks his first ever kill on a hunting trip with the Hongs! Hae-in’s hallucination fades as she stares at her husband in shock/relief/admiration? And with this, we come to the end of our premiere week.
Wow! This was one long ass set of episodes. I will never say no to extra extra Kim Soo-hyun minutes, but it was a wise choice to not watch both episodes at a stretch. I know this production has cast half the K-drama industry to bring in the drama, but my first thought when I saw the second episode’s runtime was: I hope these guys have enough story to fill up the rest of the episodes. That said, I absolutely loved the Queen of Tears premiere! The premise is interesting, and so far, the execution has been fun — but not too fun that we forget that we’re dealing with a couple in crisis.
I find the show’s use of the point of view storytelling fascinating, and I think it’s one of the things that’ll pull me back when I’m tempted to lean into team Hyun-woo or team Hae-in. The whole point is to not take sides, because both their feelings are valid and they seem to be jointly responsible for the breakdown of their relationship. Watching the epilogues and seeing how confident Hyun-woo and Hae-in were about their love makes me wonder at what point — and why — everything began to go wrong.
In this miscommunication sandwich that the drama has prepared for BaekHong, it feels like they are both operating under assumptions about each other, and being influenced by external forces. Hyun-woo and Hae-in are too wrapped up in their individual struggles that they fail to see that the other person is struggling, too. This is why couples are encouraged to pursue healthy communication and take each other’s feelings into consideration. But K-drama couples would rather convulse and die than do so. Speaking of which, I am a big non-fan of the terminal illness trope. There’s 1001 ways to go about mending a broken relationship without involving terminal illness or impending death. But oh well.
Hyun-woo and Hae-in have pulled me in with the subtlety of their gestures, their vulnerability and emotional turmoil, and those little moments where the feelings they still have for each other resurface. I’m heavily invested in these two, and if the title is anything to go by, we’re in for a hilarious but also emotional ride with BaekHong. Officially, I’ll be tuning in each week to see how the rediscovery of their romance pans out. But unofficially, I’m here for my weekly dose of oppa, Hae-in’s outfits, and the meta of cameos, reunions, and dramaverse crossovers.