The Husband: Episode 1 (First Impressions)
by missvictrix
The premiere episode of The Husband is giving When the Phone Rings, but without the cheesy goodness, and Mad Concrete Dreams, but without the black humor. Instead, we have a giant dollop of adrenaline, and somewhat sparse, suspenseful storytelling. It’s a great first episode with some nice editing to boot.
Editor’s note: This is a first impressions post only. To chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout post.
EPISODE 1
Our opening episode starts with the usual disclaimers about being purely fictitious and filming children safely, but also includes a notice that some scenes used Gen AI. Say what?! This is the first time I’m seeing this, so I was intensely worried, but so far it seems like using Gen AI in a K-drama is pretty equivalent to using crappy CGI. So, when our first scene opens with KANG TAE-JOO (Namgoong Min) and Go Se-yoon ( Lee Seol) scaling a terrifyingly high mountain peak and then enjoying the view, it was clear this was at least part of the AI-generated bit.
This scene is the only scene we get of our couple’s romance, and it also sets up the only things we know about them: overachievers who do not get rattled by near-death experiences and know how to react when their body is flooded with cortisol. (Important for later.) They also know how to enjoy the view from the top together. It seems like this is the moment that galvanized them as a couple; later, their carabiners are attached much like love locks and sit in a piece of art in their house. However, the marriage we see subsequently is not so happy.
The drama tells us very little about them, or what happened between them, so we’re left to wonder why the seemingly promising relationship on the mountaintop has devolved into two people who are icily cold with one another. Tae-joo is the genius spinal surgeon (naturally) and Se-yoon is the director of the hospital board. It just so happens that her father is the chairman of the hospital, and so yes, this is a bit like Tae-joo having married up into a wealthy and powerful family (for full contrast, we later see the dinky restaurant his mother runs — dramas love to do this!).
At this point we just have to take for granted that their relationship is falling to bits, but the part that I spent the first half of the drama trying to figure out is… who can I trust? Who’s the good guy? Is someone hiding something nefarious? As it turns out, the drama has more nuance than that — and wants to keep us a bit unsettled — but since the POV is clearly with Tae-joo, it’s hard not to be on his side straight away.
And what do we know about Tae-joo? Straight away, we see him abandon an important hospital press briefing about their first artificial spinal cord surgery to attend to an OR emergency. Not long after, he postpones the surgery of a VVIP (the horror!) to give a poor peasant an emergency surgery. This is clearly The Right Thing To Do, but Se-yoon and her father are more focused on keeping in the good graces of the VVIP (and his pockets). In order to make his point, Tae-joo shouts his father-in-law out of the OR while Se-yoon watches on. And this, my friends, is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And the camel here is their failing marriage.
From the scenes we have seen so far, we know the two sleep in separate rooms, leave for work and come home separately, and barely have any interactions at home. It is rather brutal. They both look miserable every time we see them, and they’re clearly burying themselves in their work to avoid tending to this growing, festering schism. Though Tae-joo apologizes for his disrespect to his father-in-law and also to Se-yoon, the ice continues to grow.
Then, with the help of a nudge from his doctor friend (Woo Ji-hyun), Tae-joo attempts to talk to his wife and get them to try to repair things. This goes nowhere, and it’s painful to watch. Se-yoon says their marriage is not repairable, and it might just be me but based on her words here, and her reaction to seeing a child in an earlier scene, they might have lost a baby early on in their marriage, which was the beginning of the end.
While they’re squabbling at the table, fighting over who gets to pour the makgeolli, the artwork with their entwined carabiners crashes to the floor and shatters. Tae-joo looks horrified by this symbolic moment, but Se-yoon picks up the carabiners and throws them in the trash. Brutal.
Reacting to this, Tae-joo flat out asks for a divorce, citing how unhappy they both clearly are. But Se-yoon coldly refuses the idea, telling him she will never give him anything he wants. It’s clear to them both (and us) that she would rather stay miserable and torture him (and herself) than choose a different outcome. This is pretty awful, and I wish we had more insight into Se-yoon’s character at this point, because one teary panic attack is not enough to get me to see her side yet. Maybe those character details are coming in future episodes. (Either way, I haven’t seen Lee Seol in a drama before, and she’s great here!)
After this mess, Tae-joo heads to his mom’s scrappy restaurant and gets drunk with his hyung, sharing his woes. This is so true-to-life and relatable — for a moment I think we’re watching a regular ol’ drama and not a crime-y thriller. But Show doesn’t let us forget that for long. Completely hammered, Tae-joo waits in the street for his designated driver to take him home… and this is where it all goes horribly wrong.
According to what we see, the driver gets in the car and takes him home no problem. Tae-joo wakes up hungover in his little twin bed as expected. But there’s so much more to it. We get a hint of this when we see someone walk into his wife’s room (!). She thinks it’s her husband and tells him to get lost, but we can assume nothing good is happening here.
The next morning when Tae-joo heads to work, the horror slowly reveals itself. First, his driver from the night before calls him and tells him he didn’t send him the money. It’s a weirdass conversation and when the driver gets rude, Tae-joo hangs up on him. Then, when Tae-joo reaches the hospital, he learns his wife missed an important golf outing. That’s not like her. Third, when Tae-joo calls his wife’s cell, the “driver” from last night answers. *Goosebumps* This is the best scene in the drama so far, because we watch Tae-joo standing in the middle of a hospital corridor go through a whole range of emotions, from annoyance to fear to absolute horror and panic. (Well-played, Namgoong Min!)
Adding to the suspense and cryptic nature of this whole thing, Driver then texts Tae-joo a photo of his wife in her pjs duct-taped to a chair and looking very kidnapped. Then, a video comes through. It’s the dead-drunk Tae-joo, muttering brokenly to the driver that he needs to get rid of his wife and will pay him 500 million won to do so. The driver calls Tae-joo again, and lets him know his wife is alive. Tae-joo’s relief is palpable. The driver then tells him to choose if she lives or dies. Tae-joo quite clearly begs Driver to let her live, so Driver does what any good bad guy does and doubles his price. One billion won in three hours, or she dies.
Thus begins the heart-stopping, race-against-the-clock portion of our tale. Tae-joo does all the smart things, retracing his steps, checking his car’s black box, calling the car service company — none of it leads anywhere. He’s utterly screwed (and, I think, being played by a bigger scheme than we currently can see) and heads to the police. It’s then that Driver calls again, this time semi-drowning Se-yoon on the video call to fully terrify Tae-joo from going to the cops. Somehow, Tae-joo’s every move is being tracked, and it only ratchets up the suspense more. As punishment, Driver also changes the deadline to one hour from now instead of the three.
It’s off to the bank for Tae-joo, who asks his rep to cash out his 80 million won in savings and also give him an instant 920 million won loan. The look on the banker’s face is priceless. Even for a VIP client he can’t get a loan approved that fast. We see Tae-joo look at a fruit knife (?) on the coffee table and then, next thing we know, he’s sitting in his car with the 1 billion won in two black duffle bags, fruit knife tucked into his suit pocket. Then he calls Driver, gets the address, and speeds off to get there in time. The GPS reads off the directions as Tae-joo drives like a madman, and something about this just amps up the tension horribly.
Just as he arrives and screeches around the corner, a guy on a motorcycle comes in out of nowhere and Tae-joo slams into him. The guy and the bike go flying. Tae-joo is horrified and rushes to check on the rider, telling him he will call an ambulance. The rider mutters something and seems gravely injured. Tae-joo tries to hear what he’s saying and leans in. Just then, the rider turns toward Tae-joo, perfectly fine, and in a menacing voice, asks for his 1 billion won. Tae-joo gets tased, the title treatment comes on the screen, and wham, the episode is over. *More goosebumps*
Bravo! This was a nicely put together premiere episode that basically compresses what could have been the drama’s entire plot into the first episode, leaving me to wonder just how insane the rest of the drama will get (11 more episodes to go!). Although the story did lack the setup to make me truly root for this couple, we did learn that Se-yoon retrieved the carabiners from the garbage, so that is a clear bit of symbolism that deep inside she wants to repair their marriage as well. For all the stress this drama is going to put us through, a happy ending would be nice at the end of the tunnel. And in the meantime everyone, let’s be careful of our words and not say anything we wouldn’t want to be taken literally, recorded by a sociopath, and then used against us to destroy our life in a carefully orchestrated takedown.
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