Familiar Wife Season 1 Episode 2 Recap

When Ju-Hyeok opens his eyes, he’s back to his old house when he was in college. The next scenes play out just as they did back in 2006. Ju-Hyeok looks confused about what is happening but gets dressed and goes to university. Hye-won approaches him and asks him to watch the recital with her. As Ju-Hyeok agrees, he reminds himself he should not be late, but when he turns around, he gets hit by a motorcycle. Ju-Hyeok wakes up inside their bedroom and asks Wu-jin what year it is. “It’s August 29th, 2018, Wednesday,” Wu-jin replies. Later, when he eats breakfast with his friend, Ju-Hyeok notices a scar on his hand. “Where’s this scar from? I don’t remember getting this,” he says. “What are you talking about? You had it before you started working here,” his friend replies.

Wu-jin visits her mom after receiving a call from her mother’s neighbor. She gets there quickly enough to catch her mother and the neighbor arguing. The front of her mother’s house is filled with different appliances stacked over one another. Wu-jin apologizes to the neighbor for the troubles her mother has caused, but the neighbor doesn’t want an apology. She wants Wu-jin’s mother to clean her mess and dispose of the things she will not use. Wu-jin asks her mother to throw the things away, but her mother insists it’s a waste to do such when they can still use them. Wu-jin follows her mother inside the house. Out of nowhere, her mother calls for her husband. Wu-jin looks surprised because her father’s been dead for years. Then when her mother turns and sees Wu-jin standing behind her, she asks her what she’s doing there. Someone suggests that Wu-jin send her mom to a nursing home. But the pay is expensive, and Wu-jin doesn’t have the money to pay for it.

Ju-Hyeok sees a post online of someone selling the Game Station he likes. The one he owns is already old and broken, so he wants to buy a new one. The seller offers it at an affordable price, so Ju-Hyeok wastes no time and strikes a deal with the seller. They have agreed to meet at around 6 p.m. Ju-Hyeok looks excited as he’s already at his last customer and still has plenty of time left before 6 o‘clock, but the woman applying for a loan forgot her ID. The woman asks Ju-Hyeok to wait for her until 6 p.m. because she will return and bring her ID. Ju-Hyeok tells the woman he will just approve the loan, and the woman can just bring her ID the next day. “Technically, we can’t, but I’ll allow it just this once since you live so far away,” he says. After that, Ju-Hyeok pretends he has to deal with a family matter and asks Mr. Byeon to let him leave early. When Ju-Hyeok finally gets his hands on the new Game Station, he tells the seller he will take good care of it. Later at home, Wu-jin asks Ju-Hyeok how he’s doing at work and if he will be promoted to team leader. When Wu-jin goes back to sleep, Ju-Hyeok goes to the spare room to use his new game console. After using it, he wraps it in a garbage bag and hides it behind the stack of diapers in the cabinet.

The next day, Ju-Hyeok receives a call from Hwan saying the auditors are doing an inspection. They just had an audit before, but this one is a surprise inspection. Ju-Hyeok scrambles to get out of bed when he realizes he approved a loan the day before without getting the required documents from the client. He calls the woman to ask her about her ID, but she says she must attend a morning meeting. Ju-Hyeok calls his friend and asks him to buy him some time while he gets a copy of the woman’s ID. He runs to meet the woman at her office, but the meeting has already started when he gets there. The meeting will run for an hour, so Ju-Hyeok thinks of a plan to get inside the conference room. He pretends to be an employee and delivers water bottles to the attendees. When he gets the chance to be near the client, he asks for her ID. Ju-Hyeok moves as fast as he can to get to the office while he holds the copy of the client’s ID in one hand, but when he gets there, the auditing is already finished, and they have already found out about what he did. “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to your wife. Your promotion has gone out the window. If you’re on the waiting list. I’ll try to stop them from promoting you with all my willpower,” Mr. Byeon says.

While Wu-jin cleans the spare room, she notices the garbage bag behind the stack of diapers. She removes the wrap and sees Ju-Hyeok’s game console still inside a box. Wu-jin turns her head to the side and sees Ju-Hyeok’s old game console on the floor. When Ju-Hyeok gets home, he checks on the kids and changes his clothes in the spare room. When he sees the diapers on the floor, he realizes his new game console is missing. He goes to the bathroom and finds Wu-jin holding the hand shower over the tub. Ju-Hyeok walks closer and sees his game console submerged in water. “We get a small paycheck and we have child care, living expenses, and loans! You’re not allowed to have hobbies!” Wu-jin says. “Why do I always have to be so understanding? Do you even know how I feel? I always have a rough day at the office, I want to relax when I get home. I have no energy to live. And now, this? My home is more exhausting than the office. It’s harder to deal with my wife than with my customers, dammit!” Ju-Hyeok replies.

After the confrontation, he feels terrible about what he said to Wu-jin. He calls his friend, Mr. Han, and asks if he wants to drink with him. Ju-Hyeok goes to his friend’s house carrying some food and cans of beer. When he goes inside the house, Mr. Han’s mother greets him with a huge smile. Ju-Hyeok looks terrified to see her alive because he went to the woman’s funeral just a few days ago. He remembers she died after being hit by a motorcycle. Ju-Hyeok starts to question his sanity and gets confused if what he had before was just a dream. He gets into a car and goes back to where he saw a tollgate before. The tollgate is not there when he arrives, so he turns around and hopes that he will finally see the tollgate when he drives around. As he approaches, he sees the tollgate. He flips the remaining 500 won coin he received from the old man into the metal container. Like before, as he drives off, the car starts moving to full speed.

When Ju-Hyeok opens his eyes, he returns to 2006 as a college student. This time he knows he’s not dreaming, so he knows what he should do in every situation. After talking to Hye-won and agreeing to meet her at the cello recital, a motorcycle drives in his direction again. Ju-Hyeok avoids the motorcycle completely. Later, he runs to the bus station where he sees the high school Wu-jin. Once inside the bus, he pretends not to see the man groping Wu-jin. “Don’t do it,” he tells himself. Just as he’s about to say something, a woman at the back of the bus says she saw what happened. As the culprit gets into the police car, and Wu-jin goes inside a car with the woman, Ju-Hyeok just watches. “Bye, Wu-jin. Have a good life,” he tells himself.

He meets with Hye-won just in time for the recital. “I like guys who are genuine. And that’s you,” Hye-won says. She kisses Ju-Hyeok, and he kisses her back. When Ju-Hyeok opens his eyes again, he sees a woman sleeping beside him. When the woman turns on her side, Ju-Hyeok throws a fist in the air when he sees it’s Hye-won and not Wu-jin.

Our Thoughts

We think Wu-jin shouldn’t have done such. It was way too much. She was talking about how they can’t even afford to have hobbies because they have to pay for the bills. But then Ju-Hyeok already bought the game console. It wouldn’t change a thing if he started using it or not. But since Wu-jin put it into the tub under the water, they just wasted their money. She should’ve thought about it before taking action. Ju-Hyeok has always been patient with his wife. It would be nice if Wu-jin’s a bit nicer to him.

When Ju-Hyeok saw the scar on his hand, it was proof that the motorcycle incident did happen. So maybe what he had was not just a dream. Perhaps, when he changes or does something whenever he returns, it changes things in real life. But we know you shouldn’t make decisions when you’re angry, so Ju-Hyeok should’ve thought about it before he decided to leave his family to have a chance to be with Hye-won. He would really give everything up for something that has no assurance.