Queen of Tears has been the talk of the town ever since the first stills drop. It shouldn’t be surprising because this drama is top-billed by an interesting pairing of A-list actors: Kim Soo-hyun and Kim Ji-won. It was also the successor project for Crash Landing On You’s writer Park Ji-eun and Vicenzo/Little Woman Director Kim Hee-won. Unlike the writer’s previous dramas, Queen of Tears started a bit differently.
Queen of Tears’ first half dealt with the crumbling marriage of Queens’ Group heiress Hong Hae-in (Kim Ji-won) and lawyer Baek Hyun-woo (Kim Soo-hyun). Hong Hae-in is a strategic and smart woman who knows what she wants and does everything to get it. That includes the charming lawyer she met while doing an internship at her family’s company. Baek Hyun-woo is a simple country-raised lawyer who fell in love with an odd company newbie. The start of their love story came straight from the rom-com books but their marriage is made by the melodrama gods instead. A tragic event put a wedge in their relationship and the audience got to dig deep into the root cause of their marital woes slowly in each episode. It’s the main selling point of this series. Both Ji-won and Soo-hyun portrayed their characters very well – from the saddest scenes to the hilarious ones. Their performance as Hae-in and Hyun-woo brought color to their respective characters. The inverted trope of having the female lead as the “cold-stoic” type while the male lead is the “emotional” one was also entertaining to watch. The plot also unfolded at a nice pace where all the characters – a ton of them – and their respective motivations were introduced in the story.
The story of two dissimilar families connected by an unlikely relationship is the most interesting part of the plot for me. The Hongs and the Baeks have clashing personalities. The Hongs have all the cold rich apathetic character archetypes while the Baeks have the warm lovely empathic characters. The series expertly emphasized the families’ contrasting home environments to show the audience where the main couple’s personalities came from.
The standout character from both families, however, is Aunt Hong Beom-ja (Kim Jung-nan). She is painted by everyone as the crazy rich unmarried aunt in the Hong Family. But Beom-ja is just a misunderstood character whose priorities have always been her family. I appreciated her the most when she found out what Hae-in was going through. She also blended well in the Yongduri neighborhood. Almost everyone – except for Hyun-woo and Hae-in – never takes her seriously. In the end, though, everyone found out she had been right all along. She wasn’t blinded by the fake niceties of the series’ antagonists Moh Seul-hee (Lee Mi-sook) and Yoon Eun-sung (Park Sung-hoon).
Similarly to any other Park Ji-eun written series, Queen of Tears’ villains are evil just because. Seul-hee and Eun-sung might have a bit of a backstory shown in the series but their motivations still felt shallow. I’m okay with Seul-hee not getting a redemption arc but I would have understood it if the writers gave Eun-sung a chance. He is sort of a victim of his mother’s coldhearted life decisions but at the same time, he also made some very selfish decisions. He was obsessed with Hae-in and thought his feelings were that of love but I doubt he knew what true love really means. Despite the thinness of their characters’ backstories, they still brought a lot of tension into the story and led the show to its peak.
The drama’s most entertaining episode, for me, was when the Hong family was forced to stay at the Baek Family’s house. Although Hyun-woo’s parents were welcoming and nice, the Baeks still had to adjust their lifestyle. It was really fun to watch the rich try and struggle to adapt to the countryside. One thing I appreciate though with this arc is how it helped Hong Soo-cheol (Kwak Dong-yeon) get his long overdue character development. He went from a dull-witted sheltered chaebol to a more sensible patriarch of his own family. His scenes with his son Hong Gun-u (Koo See-woo) and his wife Cheon Da-hye (Lee Joo-been) are heartwarming.
This series could have ended with the Hongs getting back to their status with fresh perspectives and our main couple working out their marriage but somehow, the writers struggled to finish the story on a high. The plot struggled in the third arc. They played around with borderline makjang cliches and threw them all in as if they couldn’t pick one. And when the story had finally settled down, the script had been dragged further to a supposed “realistic” ending that didn’t have the impact the writers might have wanted.
In the end, Queen of Tears had a good run in the first half while the second half was only saved by the actors’ performances. While the rest of the series remains a compelling watch, those who have yet to watch this series have to prepare themselves to let the story and characters go even before the story reaches its last part.
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