Divorce Attorney Shin – K-drama Episode 2 Recap & Review

21 thoughts on “Divorce Attorney Shin – K-drama Episode 2 Recap & Review”

1. To be completely honest, I do think that the child’s acceptance of the apology and apparent regaining of trust towards was too rushed and unrealistic. It’s not about the video, though that should have made it impossible to forget about his mother forgetting about the school event and not being there for him when he needed her because she was with her lover (ironically, his abusive father was the one that was there for him at the hospital). Not that he would have needed a reminder, unless he was cognitively impaired, delusional, or had a gerbyl’s memory and attention span. He is very well aware, as he expressed in his diary, of her choosing to have an affair instead of divorcing the guy and taking the kid with him, which made the kid’s life even harder because, as he recorded in the diary, leaving him alone with someone she knew to be an abusive sub-human. All of which reveal her true priorities in practice, despite what cheap words she might spout to the contrary: talk is cheap, ultimately actions are what counts. This might not be abuse, but it is certainly neglect. It is a breach of trust, and after being left with his father while she was increasingly not there (also thanks to the affair), plus her simply… forgetting her promise about the school and not answering when he needed her at the hospital, because she was with her lover… that’s a breach of trust, and the neglect shouldn’t have been solved in ep2 with a simple apology. No long term trust issues? No psychological issues comparable to the event where he had to be brought to the hospital? Suddenly, because of an apology? His father was even worse, in his abuse, of course. Which makes the fact he was the one there for him at the hospital, while his mother was unreachable even worse in terms of breach of trust -in terms of what he expected of his respective parents-. No, like in Thirty Nine the topic of neglect was resolved too conveniently with a simple apology. I do wish the show would have, realistically, focused more on that and made it more of a challenge, in that respect the video that was shared online distracted from that topic and most of the challenges had nothing to do with the breach of trust, but with issues having to do with her reputation now that the truth of her actions was out in public (via the video and then the trial).

2. I didn’t find the flippant way they dealt with neglect appealing (as I didn’t in Thirty Nine, which I very much preferred to this drama). His mother, instead of getting a divorce and taking him away from the abusive context, chose to have an affair that made her son even more miserable in that she was away from home for more time and he had to stay with his abusive father, plus she forgot her promise to be at the school and was unavailable when he needed her and called her, at the hospital, in order to be with her lover. Those were her priorities, factually speaking (i.e. not what she said they were, but what they actually were based on her actions and choices). If not outright abuse, that’s at least neglect, and frankly it was dealt with way too easily, done away with an apology, as in Thirty Nine with the ML’s wife neglecting her kid. It simply does not make sense for the little guy to trust his mother after her apology, given how his diary clearly showed how her neglect affected him, and the fact that she was not there for him when he needed her (ironically, his abusive father was, which run counter to the characterisation of him caring about the kid even less, and should have probably been turned into him not going to the hospital either due to an equally fatuous reason as his wife). It simply does not make any sense for him to trust her after just an apology, or for his trauma to essentially evaporate or dull from a peak where he had to be brought to the hospital, just for plot armour and because with the apology the writer wanted to be done with the topic for the most part, and not follow the kid through healing the broken trust. Unrealistic and conveniently self serving, but the reader is distracted by how utterly obscene his father was.

3. To be quite honest, I don’t get 1) why the kid asks about the father (hopefully because he is concerned about him being around the house, not because he is concerned for the guy), 2) how the guy could be in a hotel (and still be a threat in terms of future litigation) given his abuse, which was even physical abuse (last episode he assaulted his wife, grabbing her by the hair in a rather painful manner, and was clearly on the verge of beating her up), instead of in jail. I guess that this also goes for his wife not having to face legal repercussions for (absolutely justifiably, in my opinion) assaulting him in the courtroom.

4. All in all, as in Thirty Nine, I don’t find that neglect should be dismissed with a quick apology, something that now happened in two shows from this author -to be honest, contrary to this show, I loved essentially everything about Thirty Nine-.

5. Frankly, I consider pretty damning that she didn’t choose to get a divorce and take the kid away, the toxic and abusive environment becoming a concern only when her husband sought a divorce, instead of having an affair that in no way ameliorated the situation for her kid in terms of the father’s abuse, and if anything made it worse by adding her neglect to the mix, where she parked the kid with an abusive subhuman -paraphrasing her own word-, neglecting him and forgetting about the school meeting, and not being there for him when he got hurt and needed her because she was with her lover.

6. Genuinely wish that they had some relative the kid could have gone to. Not really realistic to see him do a one-eighty with respect to his mother’s neglect. Reading the diary, while his father’s behavior was so abusive that it dominated the conversation over his mother’s absence, her neglect was a problem in and of itself. And while it was appalling to traumatize him like his father did, I do find it important that if the question of who to stay with comes up her mother essentially leaving him alone with someone that was abusive and she considered less than human by her own admission, while she was absent and off with her lover, or forgetting about the school event and being unreachable while the kid was at the hospital, because she was sleeping with her lover, are taken into account. She didn’t get a divorce and take the kid away from the abusive environment, she was in fact quite happy to leave him alone with her husband while she was often out of the house, as we read in the kid’s diary, and, rather self servingly and very conveniently, only started concerning herself with taking the kid away from the husband’s abusive environment when the latter initiated the divorce and she fought for custody.

   Now, that’s where he ranked, in practice, as demonstrated by her actions, in terms of importance compared to her affair (as opposed to her words on the matter, who are cheap and are factually speaking in plain contrast with her actual actions and choices -otherwise, it wouldn’t have been the husband the one that had been there at the hospital, while she was not there when her kid needed her the most… something that I sorely wished they would have changed, because if we are going with the notion that he is an irredeemable monster that cares about the kid even less than she does, him being there for him when he needed him, and she being with her lover, really runs against narrative… they could have made him unavailable for something equally futile as well, to demonstrate that he gave as little or even less of a d**n about the kid-). If he had any brains, the kid wouldn’t need to be reminded of this unpleasant but nevertheless true reality, if he does it just means he is either cognitively challenged, delusional, or his wishes had been granted and he has the memory of a gerbyl.

7. All in all, I find it ironic that the writer of Thirty Nine wrote this drama as well, and she was lambasted for normalizing cheating in Thirty Nine, but afaik not in this drama.

   One thing I found she normalized in both dramas, to be honest, was neglect. Here the mom basically parks the kid with his abusive father while she is off with her lover, and often missing from home (as evidenced from the kid’s diary), and forgets the school appointment and is unreachable when her son is at the hospital, because she is with her lover. If not outright abuse, that is at least neglect. And yet, neglect is treated as something that can be brushed aside with an apology, as in Thirty Nine where the neglectful mother, after an apology, takes the kid to London while the adoptive father that loved the kid stays back in Korea.

   We would find it appalling to see the abusive behavior of the husband be brushed aside with a quick apology. I find also outrageous to see neglect be brushed aside in such a manner. Frankly, had the husband been any regular guy rather than the monster he was portrayed as, he would and should have gotten custody instead. Honestly, I wish they had some relative they could have given the kid to, because I find absolutely disturbing how she could essentially park the kid with someone she considered below human while she was with her lover, and how she missed the school thing and was unreachable when the kid got hurt… what if it had been something serious -crippling or lethal-? What if the kid had run away, or was kidnapped? Essentially, she was not there for the kid when he needed her the most. She parked the kid with the abusive husband/father and is bothering to take him away from said abusive father only now that he wants to get a divorce.

   On her being scared after her brother’s death and not getting a divorce, I cannot help but find that to be pure hogwash. When did her brother die? She was apparently not scared to have an affair for more than a year. She certainly doesn’t seem scared facing her husband. In any case, if she though he was that threatening, then surely parking the kid with him and basically not showing any intention, before the affair or even during for that matter, to want to get a divorce and take the kid away, and only fighting to get the kid away from his father now that said father wants to divorce her himself, do not make any sense whatsoever. If the father was a concern for the kid, and he clearly was, she should have gotten a divorce and taken the kid away a long time ago. For that matter, the excuse provided for not getting a divorce instead of doing what she had done was worse than if she had said that she wanted to “prove her husband right” as a form of revenge before divorcing him and taking the kid, though that too would have been rather nonsensical, given that she would have weakened her own position and lowered the chances of getting custody -though her having an affair when she knew, by her own admission, that it would have come to light with the devastating consequences one could imagine, essentially put her in this very same position, so it wouldn’t have really made a difference in that respect-.

8. Without the vague handwaving such as “life happened”, etc., her words of apology towards her son would have been much more believable. Granted, she wasn’t all “ah, whatever” when talking to the kid as she was with the attoney, but still, these words are being uttered by the same person. The bit about her brother dying as an excuse not to get a divorce was pretty incomprehensible -was the suggestion that her husband had something to do with it and she got scared at the prospect of leaving? Then why was she perfectly comfortable having an affair, which by her own admission she knew would end with her being discovered? Frankly, if she was scared, then it was all the more reason to take the kid and run-.

9. All in all, in the son’s place I wouldn’t really want to live with either -attoney Shin really was correct in saying that they were all pretty appalling as parents-. One abusive, the other never there, leaving him in the hands of someone abusive and forgetting the school meeting and not being there when he got hurt. Her behavior was appalling, it was just that her husband was even worse.

10. Nice seeing some acknowledgment that she left her son down -not her husband because he didn’t deserve anything in the first place, per the plot of this drama-. Not sure what to make of the attempt to muddy the waters by mixing two different things together: whether she ever loved her husband, which is a separate matter as to whether he deserved to be treated with basic honesty and respect, the answer to which is no, on account of his irredeemably monstrous nature, and the fact that she had an affair (the only bothersome parts of which, on account of her husband’s monstrous nature, are the neglect of the kid on her part and the way he was hurt by her not being there for him). 100% agree with Shin about them both being horrible parents (her husband being an irredeemable monster being the only thing that makes what would have otherwise been unacceptably appalling behavior accepted -but still appalling-). If I was in her son’s shoes and had to choose between an abusive father and a mother that basically was not there and left me alone with someone she knew to be abusive, and forget about my school event and was not there for me when I got hurt and needed her, because she was with her lover (the monstrous father being the one running to the hospital, ironically), I would prefer not to be with either, but the father alternative was so appalling that the neglectful mother comes out on top.
    In terms of writing and character building, I would not have made the husband into someone that went to the hospital for the kid and saved her brother by selling his house, because those contrast with the image of the perfect monster necessary to not make the wife’s actions completely repulsive -and the show clearly went with that irredeemable image for the husband, and it was a good thing if the wife needs to stick around: you cannot make the viewer empathize with him-. But selling the house for the brother and being there for the kid at the hospital when the mother was not are elements than are incongruous and difficult enough to reconcile -not that the show tries- with someone that blatantly doesn’t care at all about said kid. By the way, the kid bothering to ask where the father was was also out of place. In other words, when you make someone into an irredeemable monster -and he needed to be such for the wife’s actions not to be unacceptably appalling, as already mentioned: the victim needed to be someone horrible enough that not only you couldn’t empatise with them, but you wished them to be hurt, so that hurting and humiliating them was considered a good thing-, what is one to make of seeing them sell their house for the sake of the brother of the person that will betray them, or being there for a son when their mother was not because she was with her lover, when the whole point you were trying to convey was that the mother cared for said son and the father not… those two details didn’t really add anything to the characterization and were completely out of place. I am not joking: they simply didn’t make any sense with the characterization the show went with for the guy, they just serve to confuse the viewer.

11. Frankly, at this point it’s less about her being disloyal to someone that deserved no loyalty, and more about the fact that she:
    1. Was never at home and knowingly left her son be alone with someone that was abusive, which is the reason she doesn’t want her husband to have custody.
    2. Forget about the school event.
    3. Was unreachable when her soon tried to contact her because he was brought to the hospital (incredibly, it was her husband that ended up being there for the kid at the hospital), since she was busy sleeping with her lover.

    Frankly, the fact that she had not divorced her husband, and they are now divorcing because he found out her affair, and initiated the divorce, seems more damning to me -together with her not being there for the kid during the affair and leaving him to her father, or the school/hospital incident, all off which sends some pretty clear and incontrovertible messages about her real priorities, as opposed to the ones she professed by words, but that she betrays in practice- than the affair.

12. I must say that I don’t really know how realistic removing the video of her affair from the internet would be… I mean, once it’s out there, it’s just a matter of someone saving it on their hard drive, and she was a famous person. There is also the fact that she expected to be discovered, by her own admission, and one can hardly see how she could have expected it not to have impacted her son, given that, again, she was famous and it’s hard to say that it could have been kept on the down low.

13. There is something to correct here: we know that the guy that took the video is, very correctly, in prison. He still didn’t get much commentary, though -the focus was very much on her husband, the lover was essentially shown only in a flashback-.

    One other thing I had missed on first viewing was the fact that she says she knew she would have been discovered. Which begs the question of why didn’t she simply leave the guy instead of having an affair (and would have apparently not left him had he not discovered her betrayal and wanted a divorce).

14. Frankly, if instead of making her husband someone that saved her brother and at the same time making him into a completely irredeemable monster that abused both her and the child, they had merely made him have an affair as well, they could have had a situation where she would have been completely justified in having an affair of her own and at the same time one didn’t wonder why she would ever risk having her kid around someone so blatantly sociopathic. I didn’t get if there why something in her brother’s death made her afraid of leaving her husband: did she suspect he was involved somehow? That was the implication, it seems to me. Again, not that any of that made the affair made sense over the much more sensible alternative of simply leaving him. If the assumption is an abusive and potentially murderous sociopath. Not that any of that had to do with her forgetting the parent teacher conference and the school/hospital issue when she was sleeping with her lover -despite protestations, words are cheap, and actions are what counts in the end, so what her priorities are, factually speaking, is perfectly clear… again, in any other circumstance she would have been complete scum, and frankly if you set aside her husband’s actions and focus only on her forgetting about the kid to be with her lover, that’s still the vibe, it’s just that her husband was so horrible and abusive to her and the kid that she still comes out on top by comparison… again, it’s one thing to basically say that the husband is a monster that doesn’t deserve any compassion and whose suffering and humiliation is an explicit good, and in fact she has no regret over her actions there, it’s quite another to bring the kid into the mix, and there I do think that her apology was not really sufficient, and the handwaving and excuses were not credible, and in particular, there was a deliberate muddying of the waters and attempt to couple her husband’s behaviour with her own choices to have an affair with her lover, when the truth was that the second absolutely didn’t necessarily follow from the first, and anything in terms of the risk of possible consequences for the kid (even absent her lover and husband’s actions, it was a risk nonetheless, anything could have happened, including her kid seeing her with her lover by chance, or finding some messages, etc.), and more importantly about what actually happened at the school (her missing the parent teacher conference and the school/hospital debacle where she was unreachable because she was with her lover)… basically, she got away without criticism in terms of the message that the show wanted to convey because her husband happened to be even worse, and that really was a sweeping under the rug of behaviour that in absence of such abuse would have seemed appalling and unacceptable… again, not about betraying a husband that deserved to be betrayed, but about forgetting she had a son whose school meeting she had to attend, and being awol while he needed here because she was busy sleeping with her lover-.

15. I mean, if you ask me objectively speaking the nuance kind of went out of the window, and I had trouble reconciling the guy that saved her brother with what we saw later on… I mean, this is not really a character with depth, but given that his purpose was essentially to be destroyed as a punching bag, and we would have felt pretty horrible with the main female character had we been able to emphatise with her husband even a tiny bit, making him a completely unlikeable monster that didn’t care even for his own child (yet somehow bothered to save her brother? And I don’t really know what to make about the fact that she married him, at one point… then again, she did also choose to take up a lover that illegally recorded her… but then again, again, the guy was willing to have an affair with a married woman with kid, so in terms of non-scumminess that was a pretty high self selection bar to pass). Overall, therefore, I am glad for the “hatchet job”, and am only wondering why they didn’t make the guy a wife beating drunk or bothered to even create the backstory with the brother.

16. I think it would have been significantly better if the argument had been keep at:
    1. What she did was her decision, it was not necessary, and she could have just as well just gotten a divorce.
    2. The husband was an irredeemable sociopathic monster whose suffering and humiliation were not merely inconsequential, but positively good outcomes. He was unworthy of any loyalty, and therefore didn’t get any.
    3. The only bad thing about the cheating was the impact on her son in terms of the school episode, see above.

17. Not sure how to interpret the bit about the brother dying, whether the husband was involved with the incident in any way (he certainly was depicted as deranged enough to have had something to do with it). In any case, she had a responsibility to protect her son, and not only her decision to have an affair endangered his happiness (the school episode, plus the risk of discovery that existed even without her lover and husband’s actions -a risk that, despite her words, she was factually speaking willing to take, in terms of priorities-, as well as not leaving her husband).

    If she felt scared then I would say it would have been all the more reason to leave her husband, if only to protect the kid: to be explicit, if what is being suggested with this hand-wavy and confused mention of her brother’s death is that she suspected her husband to have been involved in killing her brother, all the more reason to take the kid and run as far away as possible from the dangerous psychopath.

    It was very good to see her apologize to her son for making that decision, though the attempt to skirt responsibility and act as if this was something that “just happened” (“life happening”) kind of detracts from the sincerity of her words, as it runs contrary to her taking full responsibility and owning up to her actions. Bottom line, she should have divorced and taken the kid ages ago.

    One must say that both her husband and her lover were real pieces of work (though I guess that, considering he was willing to have an affair with a married woman -with a kid, to boot-, the fact that her lover was not someone worthy of trust was kind of self evident… kind of surprised that him illegally filming the video was not turned into a bigger deal, both by her -her son saw that very same video- and by the law -cannot remember if he was put in jail, in any case the focus in the last two episodes was more on the husband-).

18. Again, not really a fan, in any way, shape or form, of the “life happened” hand-waving… this is not taking responsibility for one’s choices -repeated over time- in any way, shape or form. I would have very much preferred for her to focus on the obvious fact that her abusive husband was very much undeserving of any loyalty. But this “whatever” attitude where she avoids acknowledging the fact that it was a deliberate choice, very much *not* the only option, and that it always posed a risk of hurting her son (school episode, and the possibility of this coming to light even without her husband and lover’s atrocious actions), yet she chose to do this anyway. In that respect, I very much appreciated her apologizing to her son (though, of course, the “life happened” hand-waving kind of detracts and undercuts/undermines the perceived sincerity).

    I very much would have liked more focus on the incident where her brother died and why that in any way impacted her decision to stay with her husband: was the implication that she suspected her husband to have had a hand in the incident and was afraid that he would have killed her and her son had she chosen to divorce him (not sure how having an affair that he could have discovered would would have been a risk more worth taking if that had been the case, though of course a divorce is something that her husband would have necessarily known, while the affair she could attempt to hide… of course, if she felt her husband was dangerous to that extend than it would have been even more reason to get both herself and her child away from him).

    On the point of the son deserving to know who his mother really is, I have to agree with the principle, though not with the abusive husband’s actions, meaning that if the child is to decide who to stay with, having the full context would be very important in terms of him being able to make an informed decision. The affair is something I would have very much liked to know about before making such a decision, in his place, particularly if there had not been any abusive behavior from his father: without that, it might have been a decisive element in determining who I (he) would have liked to stay with (i.e. putting the school incident in the context of her affair with her lover, etc.). Now, all this is made a moot point by the abuse which makes the question of who to stay with a no-brainer, plus his father tried to traumatize him by showing him an illegally filmed and distributed video filmed without his mother’s consent, which by the way should have legal implications on its own (was the mother’s lover put in jail?). But I do agree with the principle of the child having the full context and taking everything into account if he is to make an informed decision about who to stay with. Again, in this case it was a moot point because on balance his father was abusive and unworthy of any loyalty.

    Once again, I very much would have preferred a more honest approach of owning up to her own actions and acknowledging the factually incontrovertible reality that they had been her own decisions and choices, and that they hurt her son, and had in risked hurting him and endangered his happiness even if it had not been for her husband and lover’s atrocious behavior (the school episode, plus the fact that being discovered, with all the traumatizing consequences on her child, has always been a risk, and a risk that she was willing to take… in that respect, I do have, again, some issues with the notion of the kid being the one person she never wanted to see hurt given that, once again, in terms of her priorities running such a risk was something that mattered to her less than the affair, as evidenced by the fact that she chose to run that risk and have said affair… talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words, and are what counts in the end, and she certainly didn’t put her money where her mouth was in that respect), while making the case that her husband is essentially someone unworthy of any loyalty.

    Her husband’s characterization was that of a monster with no redeeming qualities, which I am okay with given that it’s basically necessary in order to not make the mother seem utterly repulsive -the case being that she was disloyal to someone that didn’t deserve any loyalty and essentially a monster that deserved to be hurt and humiliated in such a manner-. I would have frankly expected more focus on the lover as well, given that he had illegally filmed a video without her consent. Basically, the two choices to “sell” this kind of behavior and have the viewer be on-board are to make the one suffering the consequences of it utterly repulsive (this drama, Secret Love Affair, or A Good Lawyer’s Wife, The Magicians, where I was 100% on board with the wife/girlfriend sleeping with another man as revenge on their cheating husband/boyfriend) or give the two lovers no choice due to circumstances (Hymn of Death, though not Mr. Sunshine because there she honestly breaks off the engagement).

    I guess that the only wrinkle there is that while her husband very much deserved zero loyalty and was depicted as scum whose suffering and humiliation not only don’t matter, but are a positively good thing, is the fact that her child was hurt by her actions too, something that she apologized to him for (albeit an apology in my view undercut by the attempt to evade responsibility with some vague language… again, her husband was responsible for the abuse, but the decision to have an affair instead of, say, divorcing him, was entirely her decision). I guess there the husband was depicted in such a way where it was clear that he cared for the kid even less, so she still comes ahead in relative terms. Again, I would have expected also more focus on the lover (who filmed without her consent the video that was shown to her son).

19. Erlkönig by Franz Schubert

20. Yes! Please! Beautiful piece of music

21. Can you tell me the title of the piano piece Atty Shin played at the end?