Air Dates: Jan 31 - Mar 7 2024 - [completed]
Genres: Action, Crime, Romance
Main Tropes: Second chance romance, strong female lead, detective team up
Synopsis: Kim Sa Ra (Lee Ji Ah) is a modern day Cinderella with a twist: her own mother is lovely, but her mother-in-law refuses to accept her. Sa Ra does her best to grin and bear it, especially for the sake of her son, but eventually can't take it anymore and makes a deal to improve the relationship; a deal that her mother-in-law never intended to keep. Framed, divorced, and sent to prison, Sa Ra is rescued by someone she helped in the past. But even with her new lease on life, and the return of the man she loved before her ex-husband, she has a lot of work to do to untangle everything that happened and get her son back.
Quick review: Is it just me, or are kdramas becoming more representative of the social reality in South Korea? I'm noticing vibe similarities with Marry My Husband (2024). Specifically? The men are pretty violent towards women, and no one seems to think much of it except the male lead. At times, it's been a bit difficult to watch (trigger warning - this drama has depictions of violent abuse, both physical and emotional). But the female lead is an interesting mix of formidable and wronged without falling into the Mary Sue character trope, so I want to see her get justice.
Episode Recap
01 & 02 - 03 & 04 (you are here) - 05 & 06 - 07 & 08 - 09 & 10 - 11& 12
SPOILERS BELOW
Episode 03
Sa Ra finds out where her son is (Jeju Island) and leaves to go see him. The former staff refuse to let her in as per the orders of her ex-husband. She waits outside and continues trying all day. On her last attempt, the staff open the door and she bursts in to search the house. They tell her that they've called the police, but if she gives up and leaves then they will tell police it's fine. She gives up just seconds away from finding her son.
When she returns to Seoul, she finds out that someone attacked the news anchor. His wife and the woman the anchor assaulted are the suspects. Sa Ra gets to work to ask her client what happened. The client says that she was not there when the attack happened even though people reported seeing her there.
Sa Ra's coworkers go to investigate and find a black box (security camera for cars). It recorded the wife being at the scene, as well as the woman who reported the assault. Sa Ra decides that this is evidence her client was lying. The client explains why she went there - her anchor husband received a text that the other woman would be there at a specific time, and so she went to verify with her own eyes. Sa Ra is upset about the lie and decides to 'fire' the client.
Sa Ra finds her ex-husband and asks why she can't see her son. Yool Sung (the ex-husband) uses this chance to tell her to stay away from the anchor man case. He promises to let her see her son if she complies. Ki Joon interrupts their conversation, and suddenly Yool Sung is concerned about why the former prosecutor is working with Sa Ra.
Ki Joon and Sa Ra end up having dinner together and talking about life. Sa Ra wants justice for what was done to her and to get her son back. When leaving, Sa Ra is looking through her purse for her phone and hands some things to Ki Joon for him to hold. He sees a picture of the two of them and thinks it means something special. Right after this, we learn that Ki Joon has been investigating something outside of work.
Meanwhile, Yool Sung finds out that his father-in-law (the politician he was using) was arrested and won't be able to help him change the law anymore.
The next day at work, Sa Ra is thinking about that picture she had taken with Ki Joon many years ago. This gives her the idea to check the pictures of the anchor's wife. She found what she was looking for, and called the wife back in. The anchor's wife admits that her husband assaulted her, too. But she fell pregnant and felt forced to marry to him. We see hints that Sa Ra felt the same way about her former marriage, and later in the episode find out that she was going to run away with Ki Joon on her wedding day. She married because she found out she was pregnant.
Sa Ra tries to convince the wife to use that as a reason for the divorce, but the wife says no - she doesn't want her daughter to know that's how she was born. But she needed the divorce because she couldn't stop thinking about what happened to her after it happened to another woman. Sa Ra accepts the client again.
Ki Joon watches a news broadcast about the attack on the anchor and spots a drone flying illegally. Since he dealt with these when he was a prosecutor (they're illegal to fly in certain places), he knows roughly where the drone offenders live and goes to track the person down. Eventually they secure the footage and get an alibi for the wife as well as the other woman. They realise that the attack on the anchor was fake.
The wife and the woman who was assaulted work together to get footage of the husband admitting that he didn't believe in consent. Sa Ra and Ki Joon take that evidence to his lawyers and demand a fair divorce. The anchor's lawyers have no choice and agree. This isn't enough for Sa Ra and her coworkers, though. They set up the husband and prove that he's faking his injuries.
The episode ends with Yool Sung's second wife, the daughter of the politician, walking into their office to ask for their help.
Episode 04
Yool Sung and his mother discuss how to get rid of his second wife. They think that she will just get in their way and plan to make an accident or problem just like they did for Sa Ra. Unfortunately for them, she overhears this talk. They threaten her and say they have something that could ruin her. She thinks it could be a spy cam video of her and a former lover. Someone else had threatened her about it already.
Sa Ra initially does not want to take the case. The wife offers to help Sa Ra get in contact with her son to entice her. Sa Ra takes some time to decide. Yool Sung, her ex-husband, finds out that his second wife went to see Sa Ra. He asks her to stay out of it and threatens her. Sa Ra decides to take the case to spite him.
In their next meeting with the wife to determine a reason for divorce, Ki Joon is shocked to hear what both of the women had to put up with. They list the reason for divorce as "verbal insult." After that, the team realises that Yool Sung doesn't control any of the wealth (his mother does), so they need to make sure that Yool Sung does not have anything he can use against the wife in order to ask for alimony.
They create a plan and get to work. Sa Ra and Ki Joon successfully check Yool Sung's data file and find out that he has no evidence. Then another member of their team tracks down the person who threatened the wife with the spy cam video. He learns that it was his brother doing this, and destroys every copy of the video that he can.
This was difficult for this team member as he was previously dying of cancer, and his brother didn't show up to donate the cells he needed. Meeting his brother like this was emotional. He asked Sa Ra for a hug when he met with her to tell her about the video destruction.
This is where things take a turn. A new manager had joined them at work not long before this case. She was quiet, acted weird, and also a spy for Yool Sung the whole time. She follows the coworker and his brother, obtains a copy of the video that wasn't destroyed, and takes it straight to Yool Sung.
Meanwhile, Yool Sung wants to submit his own candidacy for politics. But he needs to get his divorce finalized before they will let him because it looks bad that his father-in-law was arrested. His wife won't meet with him and comply. So he arranges to kidnap her, but the kidnappers take Sa Ra instead. Ki Joon rescues her.
Ki Joon does more of his own investigation. He notices that Yool Sung's assistant is poking into the same things.
My TMI for this recap:
I'm a few episodes ahead as I write these recaps. And this helped me learn that I need to write these immedaitely after the episode because this show likes to hop back and forth with details and reveals. It's absolutely great while watching, but it makes it hard to go back and recap events. I almost wrote something from episode 5 into the writeup for episode 4! Oops!
Anyways. The one thing I don't like about episode 4 is Ki Joon's reaction when he saw Sa Ra hugging her coworker. I think it falls under the "misunderstandings" trope. And I hate that trope. JUST ASK EACH OTHER WHAT'S GOING ON. But no - that's not how this trope works. They see something, and they misunderstand, and they look dejected, and they walk away.
I think it can sort of be explained by collectivist culture (to respect what someone else is doing). But...we see this trope in western novels/tv series, too, so it's not always that. Anyways. Because Ki Joon is this super smart vigilante type, it took me out of the story when he walked away without a word. The writer gave this character a high emotional intelligence, too, but this was just not it.
I hoped I would be wrong about the trope. I thought, "Maybe he was respecting their space...and he'll ask her at work in the next episode?" I guess you'll have to check in with the next recap to see if he did!
If you're also watching this drama, let me know what you think over on X (Twitter)!