Grade: A+
Category
Grown-up romance
What it’s about
A middle-aged
housewife finds a kindred soul in her son’s dentist as she
struggles with the unforgiving expectations of her husband and his
status-obsessed family.
First impression
What to say about
this lovely, naturalistic show? It feels more like an indie film set
in upper-middle-class New York than a Kdrama, for one. Its characters
are real human beings, not drama bots. And it reflects life as people
actually live it—full of disappointment, envy, and failed
connections, but also moments of companionship, contentment, and even
happiness. Set in a midwinter Seoul that’s as drab and dormant as
its heroine’s life, this episode explores the fragile marriage
between a driven reporter and his free-spirited wife, the combatants
in an ongoing battle over their son’s education. In a world where a
child attending the right middle school confers esteem and bragging
rights, he wants professional tutors and round-the-clock studying,
while she wants learning for the sake of meaning and insight, not
showmanship. And caught in the middle is their poor, sweet-tempered
son, a boy who spent most of his childhood too sickly for anyone to
worry about his academic achievements. A Wife’s Credentials
thinks so outside the box that I can’t even begin to anticipate
where it goes from here, but I can’t wait to find out.
