This week in Queen of Divorce, the battle of the exes continues, and we get an insight into some of our characters’ motivations for joining the team of divorce experts.
EPISODES 5-6
The week begins with a comforting hug between Dae-ki and Sara. The show then reveals that Dae-ki had leukemia — not cancer like I assumed last week — and Sara ended up being his stem cell donor after his brother bailed on him. Apparently, Sara registered as a stem cell donor ten years ago, and while she was in prison, she got informed that there was a patient whose DNA matched hers. Agreeing to go ahead with the surgery meant that she could apply for parole, so it was a win-win situation for donor and patient. So that’s why Sara got out of prison early!
In the present, Dae-ki thanks Sara for saving his life, and while she’s surprised to hear that he was the patient, she’s equally grateful to him because the letters she got from the patient helped her through some dark days in prison. As to how Dae-ki obtained his donor’s information, he admits to hacking the system. He also applied to Solution as a way to repay her with said hacking skills, and it’s giving loyal puppy vibes.
While Sara and Dae-ki reminisce, Ki-joon takes to the bottle after witnessing the comforting hug from earlier and mistaking it for something romantic. “I was totally getting ahead of myself when she wasn’t on the same page,” he thinks, as he drowns himself in the Soju of Misunderstanding. Anyway, Ki-joon’s misery doesn’t last because he soon finds out that Dae-ki and Sara are not in a relationship.
Back to Yool-seong and his political ambitions, he uses Ji-in’s sex tape to force her to play a part in his political drama. Her role: to publicly get attacked by one of the protesters questioning Yool-seong’s candidacy since he’s the son-in-law of a disgraced assemblyman. Of course, the attack is staged, and Yool-seong jumps in to “defend” his wife. He gets slashed in the face, but he gains the title of a protective husband in the media. Sex tape aside, Ji-in goes along with the charade because Yool-seong promised to get her father out on bail if she cooperated with him.
Ji-in soon finds out that Yool-seong didn’t submit her father’s bail application, and worse, he makes a promise on live TV that he will stop his father-in-law from getting bail. Way to throw your wife under the bus to uphold your candidacy. Then again, only a fool would trust Yool-seong. Sara launches a campaign against him, and as his ex-wife, the video goes viral. Yool-seong storms Solution to scream himself hoarse, and he also tries to bargain with her using their son. But Sara calls his bluff because thanks to Ji-in, she’s already in contact with their son’s nanny — who agrees to send her pictures of the boy every month.
Yool-seong then calls for a press conference to clear the air on Sara’s allegations against him. Ji-in is also present in the role of supporting wife, but when it’s time for her to corroborate her husband’s statement, she jumps ship to team Sara. The Yool-seong Ex-wives Association is back in business! Ji-in reveals that Yool-seong blackmailed her, and his approval ratings take a nosedive. Consequently, the party nominates someone else for assemblyman, and Yool-seong is back to square one.
It’s ominous enough that Yool-seong declares that he wouldn’t forgive Sara, and it gets worse when he calls for a meeting at a shady location. On a rainy night! Against Ki-joon’s advice to wait for him, Sara goes in alone believing that Yool-seong won’t hurt his child’s mom. Her trust in the goodness of his heart is… astonishing. Then again, she only knows him as a shitty person, and not as someone with two murders on his hands.
Yool-seong makes an offer of half a million dollars in exchange for Ji-in agreeing to be the guilty party in the relationship, but Sara refuses his terms. Furious, Yool-seong attempts to strangle her, but his right-hand man pulls him away before he can do much damage. Nevertheless, he locks Sara up and leaves her alone in the building after vowing that she would never see their son again. Within a few minutes, the building is up in flames. But no, Yool-seong isn’t an arsonist, this is just an unfortunate case of lightning and electrical faults. Dammit! If only Sara watched enough dramas, she’d have known that bad things always happen when it rains in situations like this.
Yool-seong makes a U-turn on noticing the fire from afar off, but by the time he arrives, he sees that Ki-joon has already rescued Sara from the building. For all his fury earlier on, it would seem that Yool-seong still cares about Sara. But who cares about his feelings when Ki-joon exists? From chasing after Sara’s kidnappers to rushing into a burning building to save her, Ki-joon is out there being the hero we all need. Sparks are flying, y’all, and not just the fire or electric kind. Sara is beginning to realize just how much Ki-joon cares about her, and it looks like those feelings she used to have for him are resurfacing.
Solution wraps up the case with Sara’s ex-husband and his ex-wife, and they take on a new client who is none other than… Ki-joon’s ex-girlfriend. Pfft. I swear, if you Google the word “ex,” this drama will come up in the search results. I know dramas like this tend to connect all their cases with each other, but it’s starting to get ridiculous. Sheesh! Back to our new case, Ki-joon’s ex claims she suffers from her husband’s jealous delusion, but that is the least of Sara’s worries at the moment because someone is feeling a little jealous. And it ain’t no deluded husband. Hehe.
Ex’s claims don’t add up, and it’s soon revealed that she made the whole thing up because… Yool-seong sent her to Solution to separate Sara and Ki-joon. What in the makjang…?! Yool-seong even promises to raise Ex’s payment by 20% if she gives him evidence of successfully sleeping with Ki-joon. Like she should make a sex tape or what? Fortunately, Ki-joon can smell the conspiracy a mile away, and Sara actually overhears a conversation that exposes Chayul as the mastermind of the conspiracy.
The makjang scale climbs up when Solution drops Ex as a client, and takes on her husband instead because Ex hurts him on purpose and then takes care of him on live stream to rack up her viewer count. Ex’s husband has been covering up the violence because he doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s going through, but with Solution’s encouragement, he files for divorce — after exposing her on the live stream she loves so much. This case also gives us a little peek into Bom’s backstory, as we learn that her mom was a victim of domestic violence. This plays into why she joined Solution to get rid of bad partners.
Speaking of reasons for joining Solution, Ex plants seeds of doubt in Sara’s mind about Ki-joon’s “ulterior motive” for joining the firm. Sara eventually learns about Yool-seong’s five-membered committee involved in lobbying for the Chayul law school project, and to her surprise, one of the committee members, PROFESSOR SEO, is the person of interest who jumped off the roof after Ki-joon summoned him. Sara also learns that Ki-joon has been looking into Yool-seong’s associates as well as her divorce, and she gets upset thinking that Ki-joon used Solution as an avenue to get closer to Yool-seong.
Sara storms out to the rooftop, and Ki-joon goes after her to clear her doubts. He joined Solution because of her, and he tells her not to get distracted. “Fine. Then you shouldn’t get distracted too,” she replies, before pulling him in for a kiss. Okay, that was not how I thought their first kiss would go. Sara might as well have directed her “don’t get distracted” reply to the rest of us, because she’s only kissing Ki-joon out in the open so that Yool-seong can gape at the scene from down below in his car. Ha! Using one ex to get back at another ex. It can only be this show.
To be fair, the drama already established its makjang tone in the first week, and mid-level makjang doesn’t bother me as much so I’m still enjoying the watch. However, while I come in every week for Ki-joon and Sara, I’m not particularly pleased with Jang-mi’s lack of screen-time. You cannot cast Kim Sun-young in a show and make her character appear in only one or two scenes per episode. Come on, Show, we need more of Jang-mi in the office and less of Hee-jin the spy.