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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Two Weeks" Episode 10

There's a lot of focus on In-hye this episode, as for the first time this drama, people start seriously challenging her choices and opinions. An excellent question is brought up here- why is she trusting Tae-san? From her perspective he's a vicious deadbeat. Now, we in the audience know that he's trying, and that his main objective is to stay alive along enough to give his daughter the transplant. But In-hye hasn't been watching this drama. She's taking all of his promises on faith.

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Her worldview is further blasted when one character reveals essential story information to In-hye, causing her to suffer a major breakdown. For a woman like In-hye, who's motivated in large part by belief in her own personal infallibility, the idea that she could be so horribly wrong about something is a rather humbling moment. It's not something that can be spun away as being a personal decision.

It's a broader aspect of her character that I really like, because it's the kind of realistic contradictory depth we see in real people who rationalize their actions with the rhetoric of personal agency. I particularly enjoy the contrast between In-hye in flashback and in the present. In the past, she was a dance instructor. She did performance art. She took an extremely proactive role in romancing Tae-san. In the present day, she manages a chain pizza shop, having suffered through years of impoverished single motherhood, and has lost most of her personal agency because she has to dedicate so much energy to holding on to what she already has.

In literal terms, the flip in character focus changes little about the drama's general design. "Two Weeks" is still largely about information management, schemes, and plotting evasive maneuvers and escapes. But the new perspective is tremendously fresh, and does a lot to further the drama's greater themes about struggling to make up for past decisions. As we see in this episode, that kind of reflection isn't just for people who've made necessarily bad past decisions.

The remaining nagging question is how Seung-woo fits into all this. The drama continues to play him off as honorable and sympathetic, and he's the only central character in this drama who has not, as far as we know, done anything in his past worth regretting. And yet, he's no white knight. I can only hope that at some point we get a character focus for him that's as effective as this one was for In-hye.

Review by William Schwartz

"Two Weeks" is directed by Son Hyeong-seok, written by So Hyeon-kyeong and features Lee Joon-gi, Kim So-yeon, Ryu Soo-young and Park Ha-sun.

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