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Can’t Lose: Episode 9
by javabeans | September 21, 2011
http://www.dramabeans.com/2011/09/cant-lose-episode-9/
And now the tide begins to turn: Not from one spouse to the other, but from divorce-minded antagonism to…well, if not outright reconciliation, then at least serious reconsideration. The previous episodes did a pretty good job of establishing the problems in the marriage as real and not-insignificant, but now we start again why they are, in other ways, good for each other despite (or because of) their differences.
Can’t Lose broke into the double digits for the first time with this episode, which is great news, although it was probably helped by its airtime being pushed back a little. It’s still in third place, but the distance between 2nd and 3rd just got a lot closer; it brought in a 10.2%, against The Princess’s Man‘s 22.1% and Protect the Boss’s 14.5%.
COMMENTS
Now that the initial adrenaline rush of battle has started to fade, the ugly reality starts to sink in more and more. Both sides are starting to see more of the stuff they’d forgotten in their race to one-up each other in the “Who had it worst in this marriage” contest. It’s a game with no winners, and the more it drags on, the more lonely they become.
I liked that we got to see both sides needing the other; after a number of examples framing their differences as incompatibility, now we get a few examples of the complementary aspect of their partnership. Who else is going to force Hyung-woo to go to the hospital and take a shot? And when Eun-jae’s lost an important client, who better to understand than Hyung-woo?
Communication remains their key sticking point, though, and while they’re both lacking on that front, I’ve got to pin more of the blame on Hyung-woo. I can understand his instinct for avoidance when we’re talking about routing nagging things, but there’s the fact that he hasn’t told her about his car accident or his dead brother. (He’s balked at driving before, and she hadn’t known why, assuming he was just being selfish at wanting to be driven.) It looks like he hasn’t dealt with that trauma yet so maybe he’s not ready to share with anyone, but we’ve seen him in multiple instances shutting down a conversation rather than offering an explanation. Eun-jae refuses to talk about her mother, but at least she explains her rift in a way that he can understand. Whereas he tends to refuse to talk, full stop. As we see in this episode, they’re missing that confidence in each other, and that realization is, at least, a sign of hope.
I like what this drama is doing with its side characters, and in particular the odd couple pairings springing up between the two moms, and Woo-shik and Professor Jo. If there’s a clear theme in this episode, it’s loneliness, and that extends to these side characters as well. It’s nice to see the motif applied across generations, stages in life, gender, and marital statuses.
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发表于 2011-9-22 12:35
