(I’m really good at this updating once a month thing, huh?)
I feel like I get like this whenever I finish an exceptionally good drama — Misaeng being the most recent example — but A Wife’s Credentials (jTBC / 2012) is in my heart of hearts. On paper, a drama about a housewife trying to educate her son and falling in love with his handsome dentist sounds boring, but I assure you it is not! This show is definitely the best of the best, maybe even among the Top 5 of all the dramas I’ve ever watched. (Someday I’ll be brave enough to do a definitive ranking.) The opening chords of The Byrd’s “Turn! Turn! Turn!” get me all glubbed up and it’s only been a week.
This post is sponsored by Tae-oh’s Jeep Rubicon (harbinger of doom), and my endless tears.
Episode 1: When Tae-oh rode towards Seo-rae from the distance, I thought: “this is it. This is the moment.” And the words she used to describe it later on (“a friendly in a war zone”)… so perfect. My heart still swells every time and you can kind of see why I’ve become so attached to that song. (Conversely, “Yesterday Yes A Day” didn’t really do it for me because I just watched Utsukushii Hito a few months ago and I couldn’t separate the two.)
I think this writer (Jung Sung-joo) is just really good at writing different types of love stories, and telling a very human story — or maintaining that human element despite some taboos (see: Secret Love Affair, Heart It Through the Grapevine). Seo-rae’s isolation in the sea of upper-middle class women and their uber-competitiveness about their children’s education is so palpable. And in meeting a kindred spirit and finding love in Tae-oh, A Wife’s Credentials was thorough in the feels and the impact of the affair outside of themselves. DEVASTATINGLY so.
The camping trip, aside from being one of the best uses of PPL I’ve seen, was raw as fuuuuuh. And just so I’m clear, everything was so idyllic and butterfly-inducing in the beginning (the way Tae-oh looks at her, my god, just punch me in the face lmao), but episode 5 MESSED. ME. UP. I really I kept thinking nothing could possibly end well, and also how could have so much happened in so few episodes? It’s a testament to the writing that everything felt like a gentle progression rather than having so much story that ends up being put to very little use. And what a story it was.