This Week, My Wife Will Have an Affair: Episode 3

by CandidClown

As the date of his wife’s affair draws closer and closer, Hyun-woo has to decide what he wants to do: Will he confront her, or pretend it never happened? Thankfully he has some friends on his side to help him through this, though the most helpful advice for how to deal with his predicament may come from someone he never expected.

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

Morning dawns on the day after Hyun-woo and Soo-yeon’s wedding anniversary. Sadly, Soo-yeon never showed, and Hyun-woo stayed up all night staring at the remains of their anniversary cake. The chyron informs us that there are eight hours left before Soo-yeon’s supposed affair.

Hyun-woo scrolls through the comments to his online post, which are all over the place. He does find one helpful piece of advice from a user who suggests that he try to stop his wife before she meets the other man, claiming that it’s not too late.

Soo-yeon and Joon-soo return home from his friend’s birthday party, and Soo-yeon runs around in a hurry, mentioning a meeting she has to get ready for. Hyun-woo tries to get his son to skip kindergarten today (so he can follow his wife), but Joon-soo refuses to miss school, and reminds his father that he has a film shoot today. Adorable.

Hyun-woo finds his wife dressing up for her meeting and grumps that she’s putting on too much makeup. He asks if she really has to go as he suggests that they spend time as a family this weekend instead, but to no avail. Her wording that the meeting is a one-time thing has him noticeably worried.

After Soo-yeon leaves, Hyun-woo thinks, “I want to barge into that hotel, but I’m scared and anxious when I think of the future.”

We finally meet one of the users following Hyun-woo’s post, although it doesn’t seem like this ajumma ever responded, since she doesn’t understand how to use a keyboard. She’s joined by a grandma who followed her to the computer kiosk and snaps at her to come home. The ajumma begs for one more hour since she has something she really wants to say… but an hour passes, and she still hasn’t figured out how to type one sentence.

Grandma pulls her away as the ajumma tells her all about the man, username TOYCRANE, whose wife is planning on having an affair.

A distracted Hyun-woo takes his son to the bus stop again. Clearly thinking about divorce, he asks Joon-soo which parent he prefers, to which Joon-soo asks who his father prefers among his parents. Touché.

Joon-soo can tell that his dad is stressed and assumes it’s from work, so he gives his father a lollipop and tells him to lean on him if he needs help, aw.

Yoon-ki heads in to work on the weekend, having agreed to help the film team with their new show on infidelity. Yoon-ki’s wife video chats her husband at the office, and he makes a big production of showing her the office full of hard working people, claiming he’s just so busy right now. Then he hangs up and tells the team he’ll meet them at the film site, having just secured his alibi.

Hyun-woo trudges in to work, and Joon-young covertly asks him what he’s doing here, knowing that this is the day of the affair. Dragging his dazed sunbae to the roof, Joon-young asks if Hyun-woo talked to his wife, and Hyun-woo reveals that Soo-yeon forgot their anniversary. Joon-young muses that there’s no other choice then but to end everything, but Hyun-woo snaps that it’s not that simple – they have Joon-soo to think about.

Frustrated, Hyun-woo yells at the sky, and Joon-young gives him a supporting pat on the back.

Yoon-ki’s new secretary (i.e. his wife’s mole) is spying on the film crew looking for Yoon-ki, when she’s suddenly startled by one of the team’s more handsome staff members. Awed by his pretty face, she trips on her own feet and he catches her, putting them in a heroic movie pose.

The secretary remains in the young man’s arms for a moment, then freaks out and runs. She quickly calls Yoon-ki’s wife to report that Yoon-ki is nowhere to be found.

Hyun-woo stresses as the hour of his wife’s possible affair draws closer. When the printer breaks down, he takes it personally and vents his frustration on the machine, ranting at it for not working after all they’ve been through together. Hah.

He even calls tech support for the faulty printer, screaming into the phone. His rant is cut short when he realizes that the technician he called no longer works for the company, and that he’s just been yelling at some poor ex-technician who now works at a chicken fast food shop. Joon-young has to gently pry the phone away from a very confused Hyun-woo.

The crew assemble for a meeting and discuss the unfaithful couple they’ve selected for their pilot episode: a husband and wife in their forties with a teenage daughter. Writer Bo-young suggests that since it’s just their first episode, they should look at some more cases for filming as potential backups. Hyun-woo cheerfully agrees, until he sees that the case they’ve selected is his own. Gulp.

The team discusses that this case has been gaining popularity, and has spread through a number of community sites. Hyun-woo listens in growing horror as the men on the team discuss how they’d handle the situation if they were the poor husband.

Joon-young suggests they try to contact TOYCRANE, giving Hyun-woo a minor heart attack. Everyone starts looking into ways to reveal the husband’s identity, and Joon-young wonders aloud that this story sounds awfully familiar… (Real quick on the uptake, this one.)

When under-the-table kicking fails, Hyun-woo sends a desperate text to Joon-young: “It’s about me, so shut up!” Text received, Joon-young whips around to stare at a glaring Hyun-woo. His message delivered, Hyun-woo leaves the table, and Joon-young looks like he’s about to start crying again.

When one of the team members announces that he’s starting a trace on the IP address, Joon-young flips out and screams at them for nosing into someone’s private affair. He stalks off after Hyun-woo, leaving everyone staring after him like the crazy person he seems to be these days.

Outside, Joon-young yells at Hyun-woo for posting his story online, but Hyun-woo defends that he was drunk and needed answers. The two are interrupted when Hyun-woo is informed that Yoon-ki’s wife, Ara, has come down to the office. Hyun-woo rushes in and stares at the sweet and sophisticated woman in front of him, trying to reconcile her with foot-smelling, suspicious woman Yoon-ki had described.

Ara has brought food for everyone and delicately asks for her husband, prompting Hyun-woo to scramble for a cover story. He concocts a tale about Yoon-ki getting indigestion and running to a pharmacy, then herds Ara into a side office.

The philandering Yoon-ki is currently “teaching” a golf lesson — using a very hands on method — when he gets a frantic call from Hyun-woo telling him that his wife’s at the office.

At the office, Hyun-woo stalls, telling Ara that Yoon-ki had to go to a pharmacy far, far away. To fill the silence, he cautiously asks Ara what she would do if her husband were having an affair. He quickly adds that it’s just a hypothetical to gather research for their program on infidelity, but Ara cuts in that it’s okay.

Hyun-woo stares at Yoon-ki’s wife as she says that it’s fine if her husband cheats as long as he doesn’t get caught. “If I don’t catch him, then I’m okay.” Across town, a panicky Yoon-ki awkwardly changes clothes in the back of a taxi, and we hear Ara continue, “If he’s putting effort into not getting caught, that means there’s a chance that he’s still in love with me. That’s what I want to believe.”

Back in the office, Hyun-woo asks Ara what would happen if her husband were to get caught. Ara’s sweet housewife demeanor melts away as she answers, “I’ll have to kill him.” Heh, Hyun-woo looks terrified.

Just then, Yoon-ki sprints into the office, sweaty and out of breath. Ironically, his disheveled appearance matches Hyun-woo’s indigestion cover story, and Ara fusses over her poor, sickly husband. Yoon-ki plays up the sympathy, and Hyun-woo looks at the couple incredulously.

Hyun-woo and Yoon-ki walk Ara out, and as she drives away, her look turns calculating when she notices a sign for a flower arranging class nearby. As soon as his wife is out of sight, Yoon-ki drops the act and starts laughing at the lengths that his wife goes to in an attempt to catch him in his lies. He actually sounds impressed at her tenacity, and doesn’t notice Hyun-woo’s growing frustration.

Unable to take any more, Hyun-woo challenges Yoon-ki, asking if he thinks what he’s putting his wife through is funny. “She’s nervous and worried that you might be cheating on her. Is that funny?” Disgusted, Hyun-woo walks away, and a confused Yoon-ki calls after him for being so judgmental, arguing that (to his knowledge) Hyun-woo is cheating too.

Hyun-woo turns on a dime and marches back to his friend. Finally revealing the truth, Hyun-woo angrily states, “Not me, it’s my wife who’s having an affair, you bastard.”

Hyun-woo retreats for some alone time, where he’s joined by Bo-young. She asks after Yoon-ki’s wife, figuring out that Ara wanted to learn if her husband was cheating. Bo-young calls Ara brave, admitting that she was unable to face the truth when her ex-husband cheated on her.

This is news to Hyun-woo, who listens raptly as Bo-young confesses that when she suspected her ex, she couldn’t ask him about it. Afraid of getting hurt, she held it in, but now she realizes that she was just putting a shield around her heart. Looking back, Bo-young thinks that if she truly loved her husband, she should have talked with him rather than run away. That way, even if they’d still divorced, it would have been a clean break.

Bo-young heads back to work, and Hyun-woo takes out the lollipop his son gave him, remembering Joon-soo’s words about leaning on others in tough times.

Hyun-woo’s “fans,” the ajumma and grandma duo, sit at home. Grandma harps about laundry while Ajumma frets over a keyboard, moaning that she really wanted to tell TOYCRANE something. She asks Grandma for help on spelling something out, and the older woman grudgingly helps until she realizes that the letters she’s pointing to spell “son of a bitch.” HAH! That was the message Ajumma wanted to respond with so badly?

With an hour to go before his wife’s clandestine meeting, Hyun-woo reads over the final comments on his posts. One in particular advises him not to use violence, but to instead show his wife that his love for her is far greater than the other man’s.

A sudden emergency arises when the team finds out that the cuckolded husband they were planning to interview is backing out. Hyun-woo instructs the team to continue as planned, and orders Bo-young to get the man on the phone and convince him somehow.

Hyun-woo informs the team that there’s somewhere he needs to be, asking them to film without him. Joon-young, who knows where his hyung wants to go, assures him that they can handle it.

Yoon-ki and Joon-young both chase Hyun-woo to his car. Joon-young gives Hyun-woo some last minute support, and Yoon-ki tells him that though he may not know exactly what’s going on, he’ll help in any way if Hyun-woo needs it. He even advises his friend to gather evidence, since he’ll never know if he might need it later. Aww, he may be a terrible husband, but Yoon-ki’s a pretty good friend.

Hyun-woo runs to the hotel (how does he know which one?) and nervously camps out on the lobby couch. All the TOYCRANE fans are anxiously posting to the thread, asking for an update now that the deadline is so close. Hyun-woo responds, “I’m at the hotel. I’m waiting for my wife right now. Truthfully, I hope she doesn’t show up.”

Hyun-woo tries to ask the front desk about a reservation under the name Michael, but when the concierge asks if that’s his reservation, Hyun-woo fibs that he’s Michael… Jordan, which doesn’t work. Hyun-woo resigns himself to the couch once more to wait.

The crew drives to the filming site, and Bo-young manages to get their client on the phone, finally convincing him to meet with them.

One of the other team members announces that their backup case, TOYCRANE, has posted that he’s at the hotel waiting to catch his wife. The team debates switching over to try and film this case instead, but Bo-young shoots the idea down, saying that the timing is off and the husband would be too flustered to interview.

Joon-young continues to fuss over his hyung, while Yoon-ki starts to put the pieces together, drawing the connection between TOYCRANE and the claw machine that Hyun-woo liked to play. Joon-young leans over to Bo-young and asks if she can manage the client on her own, then bails out of the van.

Grandma and Ajumma are back at the computer, reading Hyun-woo’s newest post. The two fret and draw the attention of others until there’s a whole group gathered around the monitor.

Joon-young joins Hyun-woo on the hotel couch, both of them trying to sink down on it to stay out of sight. Hyun-woo brings Joon-young up to date on his efforts at the front desk, and Joon-young observes that you need a room key to get on the elevator.

Turning to the internet again, Joon-young posts that he’s a friend of TOYCRANE and that they’re both in the hotel, asking if anyone knows how to get around the elevator key problem. Amidst a cloud of unhelpful replies, one user recommends they just get a room of their own, and thus their own key.

Joon-young drags Hyun-woo up to the desk again, holding his hand. The two of them stand at the front desk, fingers still interlocked, as Joon-young demands a room. The poor concierge has to inform Joon-young that there are no rooms available for this evening, and Joon-young, near tears and still gripping Hyun-woo’s hand, yells out that they can’t wait and they need a room right now – it’s really urgent! Hahaha.

The yelling draws the attention of everyone in the entryway, and they all stare at the two men holding hands and asking for a room. Hyun-woo notices the attention and tries to disentangle Joon-young, but his hoobae has gone into full drama queen mode as he wails at the concierge. Hyun-woo finally breaks free and retreats to the couch, and Joon-young gives a giant pout to the front desk before following.

Bo-young and Yoon-ki meet with their reluctant client, who admits that he isn’t sure of his wife’s affair, but lately he’s been getting a strange feeling. Yoon-ki shows that he is truly a pro at infidelity as he asks about the wife’s schedule, but the husband assures them that she’s too busy with their daughter.

When the husband goes to pick up their drinks, Yoon-ki smirks that the man’s wife is definitely cheating. He uses the guy’s hiking jacket to deduce that his wife must go hiking frequently, which is the perfect opportunity for her and a certain hiking partner to peel off from the rest of the group, do the deed, then rejoin them later.

When the husband returns, Yoon-ki asks if his wife likes to go hiking with the other neighborhood parents. Surprised, he answers that she does so every weekend, and Yoon-ki grins at Bo-young.

As the husband asks Bo-young and Yoon-ki what he should do if his wife is really cheating, Joon-young advises Hyun-woo not to beat up his wife’s lover. When Hyun-woo admits that that’s what the internet posting said as well, Joon-young admonishes his hyung again for sharing his problems with strangers.

In a beautifully cut scene, Hyun-woo and the husband answer Joon-young, Bo-young, and Yoon-ki’s questions together, making it seem like they’re both being interviewed for the show. They share how they both felt alone and had no one to talk to, and didn’t know how to confront their wives. Both of them worry about how a divorce would affect their children, and if it would be better if they’d never learned the truth.

At the hotel, Joon-young realizes that it’s long past the appointed time for Soo-yeon to show up, and Hyun-woo smiles for the first time, wondering if his wife said no to the affair after all. Hyun-woo calls his wife, but she doesn’t answer.

At the same time, the husband receives word that the car his wife was driving to go hiking got hit in a parking lot, except the car wasn’t parked anywhere near the mountain where his wife should be. The husband asks Bo-young and Yoon-ki to go with him to his car.

In the lobby, Soo-yeon calls Hyun-woo back, and Joon-young simultaneously receives a call from Bo-young telling him to rejoin that team since they’re heading to confront the cheating wife. Off their phones, Hyun-woo tells Joon-young that Soo-yeon is in a meeting, so everything should be fine, but Joon-young notes that he still looks worried. Hyun-woo admits that he used to trust his wife’s words, but he can’t anymore.

The husband, with film crew in tow, finds his scratched up car parked outside a motel. Yoon-ki is inappropriately helpful, laughing as he points out that the wife was smart to leave the car outside the motel to avoid it being traced there. Bo-young threatens violence get him to zip it as the husband looks more and more battered with every word.

Bo-young guides the man back to the van, where Joon-young joins them. Under Yoon-ki’s supervision, the husband calls his wife, letting her know that their car was scratched. When she answers that she’s going to check, they all stare out the car window to see the wife emerging from the motel to check the car, a strange man following right behind her.

The husband angrily runs out of the car to confront his wife, and the whole team trails along, video cameras out (all except for Yoon-ki, who hilariously slams the van door and proceeds to re-enact a scene from The Man from Nowhere, a movie Kim Hee-won starred in).

Video cameras circling around them, the husband runs up to his wife, demanding to know who the other man is. The woman tries to play it off for a moment, then coolly answers that if her husband is here, then he must already know the truth. Her lover grows uncomfortable with the cameras in his face, and Joon-young actually hides behind Bo-young.

The woman tells her lover to leave and that she’ll call him later, calling him “honey.” The term of endearment causes her husband to lose his temper as he yells at her for her lack of shame. She unabashedly yells back at him for raising his voice, and Yoon-ki steps in to suggest that they move somewhere a bit more private.

After waiting nearly an hour, Hyun-woo finally leaves the couch, relieved that his wife never came. But just as he heads to the lobby, he stops dead to see none other than Soo-yeon walking through the front doors, accompanied by another man.

Hyun-woo gracelessly flings himself back onto the couch to hide. Peaking over the top, he stares as his wife checks into a hotel with the other man beside her.

After relocating to a café, the film crew watches the husband ask his wife how she can be so calm about this. The woman stays blasé about the whole matter, saying there’s no reason for her to be sorry.

The devastated husband asks why she did it, to which she replies that there was no reason — she just met the man while hiking and liked him. Her husband can’t believe that she’d do this after fifteen years together, but she answers that after dating her lover, she doesn’t understand how she could have spent those fifteen years with her husband. Damn, that’s cold.

Nearly crying, the husband reminds her of their daughter, but his wife answers that she doesn’t need a child. She goes even further, yelling, “To tell you the truth, I hate the sight of her because she takes after you.” Wow. Just, wow.

Her words enrage her husband, and Yoon-ki has to hold him back. It doesn’t help that his wife starts egging him on, yelling at him to hit her as she shouts about getting more alimony because of it.

The wife continues to yell at her husband to hit her, when suddenly she does get slapped, hard… by Bo-young. The wife and film crew stare in shock up at their usually composed writer.

Back at the hotel, Hyun-woo watches from the couch as his wife and another man rent a room and head toward the elevator together. He follows them, hiding behind a corner and remembering Bo-young’s words about how she wished she had confronted her husband about his cheating instead of running away.

Hyun-woo frets in indecision as the elevator light blinks in time with his heartbeat. As the door opens, Hyun-woo pulls up his hood and sprints towards the elevator, thinking that he has to stop her before she goes through with it.

Just as Hyun-woo makes a break for the doors, he gets caught up in a long line of tourists as they file into the same elevator, carrying him along with them while giving him some cover.

Stuck amongst the tourists, Hyun-woo hides from his wife in the front corner. But it can’t last, and soon the elevator stops and the tourists all file out, spinning Hyun-woo around so he comes face to face his wife and the stranger.

With just the three of them left in the elevator, Soo-yeon glances up and pales to see her husband looking right at her. She breathes out a shocked, “Honey,” and all Hyun-woo can do is reply, “Yes.”

 
COMMENTS

Awkward turtle! I’ll admit that I really didn’t expect Hyun-woo to confront his wife so soon, and especially not in such a damning situation. I’m still holding out hope that there isn’t really an affair, but it’s looking pretty bad for Soo-yeon right now.

I’m glad that both of Hyun-woo’s friends know about his situation now, and hopefully Yoon-ki’s cooler head can balance out Joon-young’s antics, though they are priceless together. It’s interesting that of the two friends, the cheater and joker provides a realistic suggestion to gather evidence, while the more serious Joon-young turned up the crazy and made an entire lobby believe he was Hyun-woo’s gay lover. We still don’t know that much about Joon-young, but it’s clear that he’d go to any lengths for his beloved hyung. His wild reactions add a dash a humor that’s helping to keep the show somewhat light and fun, in spite of its darker subject matter.

I spent a good portion of this episode waiting to see things from Soo-yeon’s perspective, especially since she remained a complete mystery throughout the first two episodes. Now I’m realizing that it’s being done on purpose, since not showing us Soo-yeon’s thoughts and actions puts us right in the same boat at Hyun-woo. We really don’t know any more than he does, so we’re in the same situation, always wondering if she did or didn’t. Normally I’d be annoyed — as I prefer to know everything right now — but this method is growing on me, and I have to admit it’s a clever way to keep us guessing. It may be raising my stress level, but I can’t deny I’m involved.

While this show is still engaging, I was disappointed with the turn that the infidelity show-within-show took this week. I don’t really know what I was expecting, but to actively film a couple as they confront each other over recently discovered infidelity is just cruel. I was incredibly uncomfortable for the whole thing, and didn’t find it believable that someone would be okay with having their private life exposed like that. There were moments when Yoon-ki and Bo-young stepped in to support the husband, but he would have been better off hiring mediators, not video cameras. It was a painful thing for anyone to go through, but the fact that they filmed it for the sake of entertainment is a sad commentary on where society is headed.

That being said, I did love the moment when the husband was being interviewed, and he and Hyun-woo answered the questions together. It was a lovely way to effectively interview Hyun-woo, but still keep the heart in it by showing us that Hyun-woo wasn’t alone. The show drew a clear connection between the two men, and pointed out that while every infidelity may be different, each one involves a broken heart. Hopefully Hyun-woo can rally and fight for his broken love, but now he may have to face the fact that he might not be fighting to keep his marriage, but to end it peacefully.

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