Familiar Wife Season 1 Episode 1 Recap

An announcement plays on the speakers: “A spectral type fixed Wolf star, which is 68 light years away from Earth is rapidly turning into a black hole as it‘s about to dissipate. The astronomical community is amazed by the exceptional speed of dissipation and are seeing if this will cause a change in the gravitational pull between the moon and Earth.”

Ju-Hyeok is a father and a husband who works in a bank. He lives in an apartment with his wife, Wu-jin, and their two kids. Wu-jin works in a spa. One morning they wake up and realize they are both late for work. Ju-Hyeok can’t find a clean shirt to wear, so Wu-jin tells him to wear the shirt he wore the day before. “You didn’t wash it? Gosh, it smells bad,” Ju-Hyeok says. Wu-jin prepares their son for school as she reminds Ju-Hyeok to pick their kids up later after school. The train doors are already closed when Ju-Hyeok gets to the train station, so he runs as fast as he could just to get to the office. Ju-Hyeok’s shirt is soaked with sweat, and he’s catching his breath. He knows he’s already late, so he takes off his jacket and leaves it outside the office with his briefcase. Then he opens the trash bin and picks up a used cup of coffee. He walks into the office holding the cup and tries not to get anyone’s attention. But even before he gets to take his seat, the manager of the Loan Team, Mr. Byeon, sees him. “Ju-Hyeok, it’s a three out for you. I told you it’ll affect your evaluation if you’re late three times,” he says.

Just in time, the branch manager walks in and greets Ju-Hyeok who he thinks is a family friend because they share the same surname. The branch manager asks Mr. Byeon to take it easy, then he smiles at Ju-Hyeok and asks him to play bowling with him later. Because they have a lot of customers, the Deposit team asks the Loan team to handle some customers. Ju-Hyeok tells his junior, Hwan, to help the other team and in exchange, he can leave early for his Chinese lessons. Just before they’re about to go home they find out Hwan has made a mistake in exchanging currencies. Mr. Byeon gets mad at Ju-Hyeok for letting Hwan leave early, so he asks Ju-Hyeok to handle the mess himself and contact the customer. Since the customer is already on his way to the airport, Mr. Byeon asks Ju-Hyeok to follow him before he leaves. Ju-Hyeok borrows Mr. Byeon’s car and rushes to the airport.

Wu-jin receives a phone call from their son’s teacher asking her to pick up her kid. She tells the teacher to wait, but the teacher says she has a family meeting. Wu-jin tells her manager about her situation and asks if she could leave to pick up her kids. “I told you earlier that we had a group appointment today! You should’ve come up with a plan!” the manager says. Wu-jin keeps on calling Ju-Hyeok to ask him to pick up their kids. While driving, Ju-Hyeok reaches for his phone in the passenger seat. The phone slips from his hand and moves further to the end of the seat, closer to the door. He takes his eyes off the road for a couple of seconds to get his cellphone, but before he knows it, his car hits the road barriers and turns a couple of times before it gets hit by another car.

Ju-Hyeok wakes up at the hospital after Hwan kicks his bed. Suddenly, Ju-Hyeok remembers his wife, so he checks his phone. After seeing Wu-jin had called him multiple times and left a lot of messages, he leaves the hospital and goes back home. He can’t even tell Wu-jin he got into an accident because she’s so angry. She throws a crab leg at Ju-Hyeok. Ju-Hyeok avoids it, but it still left a small cut on his cheek. “Get out!” Wu-jin shouts. Ju-Hyeok meets with his friends and tells them he wants to leave his wife because of her anger management issues. He says his wife swears at him in front of other people. His friend, Jong-hu, says their wives are tired because they have to do household chores, look after the kids, and still go to work. Ju-Hyeok says he understands that, but he hasn’t eaten a home-cooked meal for a long time and doesn’t know his wife anymore. “It’s terrifying to see her change,” he says.

The next day at work, Mr. Byeon scolds his team for what happened. He tells them that the branch’s rank in the loan performance ranking is way down. As punishment for the trouble they caused, Mr. Byeon tells them to hand out 500 flyers. Because Ju-Hyeok finds it difficult to distribute his share of fliers, he goes inside a building and puts the flyers in the residents’ lockers. The security catches him and asks him to stop what he’s doing. “Ju-Hyeok, it is you,” a voice says. It’s Hye-won. She and Ju-Hyeok went to the same university years ago. Since they haven’t seen each other for a long time, they go to a restaurant for lunch. “They said your wife is very pretty. They said you’re really impressive. I was a little jealous when they said that. Because I used to have a crush on you,” Hye-won says. “I had no idea that Hye-won liked me, too,” Ju-Hyeok tells himself.

He looks back on his college days when he was a working student. One day, he saw Hye-won playing the cello in the practice room. Hye-won was known as the Goddess of the Music Department. “Any guy with eyes would fall for her. You have eyes, too,” Ju-Hyeok’s friend says. On Hye-won’s birthday, Ju-Hyeok bought her a flower as a birthday gift. Then he saw another student give Hye-won a bouquet of red flowers. Though he wasn’t able to give Hye-won the flower, he overheard her talk about her favorite cellist holding a fan signing event. Since he knew Hye-won wouldn’t be able to attend the event, Ju-Hyeok bought the album and asked for the cellist’s autograph. He then gave it to Hye-won as a birthday gift.

The next day, Hye-won asked him to watch a cello recital with her. “Don’t be late,” she said. While he was on the bus on the way to the venue to meet Hye-won, he saw a man groping Wu-jin who was a high school student at that time. The man denied he touched Wu-jin, but Ju-Hyeok said he saw what happened. He accompanied Wu-jin to the police station, but he immediately left when he remembered Hye-won was waiting for him. When he arrived, the recital had already started. He didn’t see Hye-won that night. The next day, he apologized to Hye-won, but she was obviously disappointed with him. Wu-jin visited Ju-Hyeok at the university because she wasn’t able to thank him before. She kept following Ju-Hyeok even at his workplace. Ju-Hyeok accepted the offer to be Wu-jin’s math tutor, but Wu-jin wouldn’t take her lessons seriously and would always distract Ju-Hyeok. “I really like you,” she said. One night during one of their lessons, they received the bad news that Wu-jin’s father had passed away.

In the present time, a strange man announces something inside the train. “If a star becomes a black hole, the force generated by it will slow down the Earth’s rotation. It’ll cause a crack in space and time, which will create a wormhole. It’s forming a crack already. Once the Wolf star dissipates, and the gravitational force is at maximum, the wormholes will allow us to travel back in time! It’s all about timing,” the old man says. Then the old man trips and falls. Ju-Hyeok helps him up. The man then hands Ju-Hyeok two 500 won coins minted in 2006. Later at work, Mr. Byeon asked Ju-Hyeok to attend a funeral in his place. When Ju-Hyeok is on his way home, he passes by a tollgate that was not there before. He flips five 100 won coins because he has to pay 500 won, but the machine just took his money. Ju-Hyeok takes the 500 won coin the man handed him on the train and flips it to the machine. The pole goes up, so Ju-Hyeok continues to drive off. Suddenly, the car starts to go to full speed, and the brake stops working. When Ju-Hyeok opens his eyes, he’s at his old apartment when he was in college. He looks at the calendar and sees it’s June 2006. 

Our Thoughts

Maybe it would be best if Wu-jin just stayed home to look after the kids and do household chores. Since their first child is still only a toddler and their second child is still a baby, maybe they won’t need much money yet. If they start needing more money when the kids go to middle school or high school, then perhaps that’s the time for Wu-jin to get a job. But for now, many things are going on, and perhaps it would be best if Wu-jin just quit her job. The focus here is on the relationship between Wu-jin and Ju-Hyeok. But if this was real life, we would be worried about how the kids will grow up hearing Wu-jin shout at Ju-Hyeok all the time.

We think Ju-Hyeok is very unlucky most of the time. He just can’t stop getting into trouble. But we must admit that we feel sorry for him because of how his wife treats him. We hope Wu-jin stops raising her voice at him and scolding him in front of other people. That’s just disrespectful. As for Hye-won, we absolutely think she shouldn’t have told Ju-Hyeok she used to like him. Confessing to someone you liked when you were younger is different than confessing to someone who is already married. That was unnecessary.