Perfect Marriage Revenge, Ep 3 & 4

I am still impressed by Yi-joo’s insane revenge plot.

If I marry you, everyone will suffer, she explains to Do-guk.

There goes the quick and easy plan of slapping everyone in the face with, instead of the dramaland-favourite kelp, a nice 12kg kettlebell.

Secondary Voice
Hell, don’t stop at 12kg. Go for 18 or 20kg. Let’s do things properly.

Third Voice
Come on, Yi-joo, you know you want to. We’ll look the other way.

So, below, in no order whatsoever, I give to you a series of random thoughts. When I say “i give to you”, I mean I’m throwing them at the screen in the hope they’ll somehow stick. This is not a recap. It should be a rantcap, but I had far too much fun watching those episodes, starting with Do-guk giving his mum an “Aigoooo, I am so busy” in his best could-not-be-less-busy-if-I-tried voice before hanging up on her. You naughty, naughty man. Please carry on.

Let me tag everyone again: @mindy, @attiton, @kafiyah-bello, @lixie, @CecilieDK, @lapislazulii, @seeker, @ladynightshade, @mayhemf, @sonai, @elinor, @indyfan, @hopefulromantic @emsel @Johnb (did I forget you or did I add you while you wanted some peace? Sorry, just let me know)

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Chapter one: Do-guk’s cute little flat
I am pleased to note that Do-guk drinks his coffee in coffee-branded cups. How very middle class of him. I suddenly feel my inner George waking up. I want to pour myself a cup of GENU coffee, stir it for 2 seconds and utter “what else?” at an imaginary camera.

Secondary Voice
Be right back. Let me go and dye my hair gray. And cut it short like a middle-aged American who’s learned all his styling tips from 1950s Hitchcock’s films.

Third Voice
Where am I even going with this?

Anyway, Do-guk gives us a brief tour of his flat… Did I spot a mini Eiffel Tower in the lounge?

He also opens the kitchen cabinets to show Yi-joo that he is working hard towards giving her digestive issues, with shelves filled with packs of ramyeon.

Secondary Voice
If you don’t know what I’m referring to, this is it

Third Voice
I’ll ruin your stomach, bae. You’ll never be afraid of food again because you’ll be tube-fed for the rest of your very short life.
Jeez, cheers, man. A dream come true for Yi-joo, no doubt about it.

It turns out those packs of ramyeon will prove useful because Yi-joo is incapable of cooking food… and Do-guk doesn’t seem to trust her with the complex art of making instant noodles. We’ve seen her brownie massacre. Of course, we wouldn’t trust her with cooking. (Yi-joo is also a terrible cook in the webtoon)

Special mention to cooking class socialite teacher Jamie who, looking at the burnt brownie mass, asks Yi-joo if she’s done with it?

Secondary Voice
Do you mean Yi-joo missed an opportunity to make the brownie even worse than the 9 circles of hell it already went through?

Secondary Voice bis
I tend to roll my eyes at people who can’t cook in K dramas. This seems so over the top. How bad can one be, right? At least that was what I used to think until I was reminded of that Christmas when my mum got a little bit tipsy (she doesn’t hold her alcohol… she had barely the third of a small wine glass) and decided that everybody needed a 4PM snack. If you’re thinking cookies or pieces of fruit, I was thinking that too. But instead she served us cutlets she prepared in a frying pan. They were burnt black on the outside, raw and still frozen on the inside. I still believe it was a poorly disguised murder attempt… So anyway all this to say that there are, indeed, people with the same level of cooking genius as Yi-joo.

Third Voice
The 4PM Burnt Frozen Lump should be the official title of my autobiography…

Interestingly enough, as part of the guided tour, we also see that Do-gul bought some clothes for Yi-joo.
Sweet. If this is not Laura Ashley’s 1987 collection, we all know this isn’t going to work.

Secondary Voice
Do-guk, was it what you were doing when you and Yi-joo spent the night together? Did you tape-measure her?

Third Voice
Do-guk is a man of many weird fetishes.
Puke and kiss.
Never marry a girl you don’t tape-measure first.
What’s next? I can’t wait to find out.

We are also blessed with a weirdly uncharged scene where Do-guk and Yi-joo look at each other for a few seconds standing in the middle of the living room while Do-guk nods to himself awkwardly, like he is agreeing to something nobody has even said. He’s like my cat and he has probably spotted a fly on the wall behind Yi-joo.

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Chapter Two: All the Rumours and the Scheming
“Who is she exactly?” asks an obviously distraught co-worker at Do-guk’s company. She must be the only one who didn’t read the article that Do-guk conveniently prepared about himself and Yi-joo. Girl, he put so much work into it! Go and read it.

Secondary Voice
That’ll teach you spending all your time on Weverse. Sometimes, the highlight of the day is not Jungkook folding his laundry live but your boss ordering himself a nice little slice of pure gossip.

Third Voice
In pure Makjang style, I bet she’ll come back later to take a cheap dig at Yi-joo. She had that “I’m totally ready to become a bad bitch if I get to wear some OTT monochromatic fashion too” look on her face. Monochromatic fashion baddies in big dresses will be the end of this Makjang, mark my words.

Secretary Byeon, who works in the same company as Se-Hyeok, finally remembers where he’s seen Yi-joo. It wasn’t on any of the news articles ordered by either Yi-joo or Do-guk (really? Really? After all the efforts they put in the press coverage?!) He apparently saw her when she was bringing food to her then fiancé. Cue to the same Secretary Byeon calling his wife, Do-na (Do-guk’s sister) to let her know about it.

Secondary Voice
He’s thankfully a discreet employee and has found the most quiet spot for the conversation: inside a public bathroom where he can be surrounded by the echo of his own voice. Ideal.

Third Voice
Secretary Byeon, was there no megaphone available?

Equipped with new intelligence about Yi-joo, Do-na walks on Yoo-ra, who, subtle as a brick, is trying to bride Se-hyeok’s sister into doing her bidding. Sis is easily swayed. All she needs is a tiny, yellow purse. Her mom prefers a little white envelope, as we see her talking to Jung-hye. In fact, everyone we see in Se-hyeok’s family, including himself, seems to follow whatever the evil monochromatic mum and daughter duo tells them to do. Se-hyeok doesn’t even need to be bribed, he offers to do it for free. Well as free as spending a few seconds being verbally abused by the love of his life can be.

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Chapter Three: Masterminds Plotting
You’d think there would be two masterminds in action: Jung-hye (evil adoptive mom) and Yi-joo (good girl gone bad plotting her revenge). But it turns out literally everyone in here is busy plotting someone else’s demise. With varying levels of monochromatic goodness and mastermind’s genius. Let me put it that way, fashion statements have been appearing more frequently on screen than strokes of geniuses so far.

But let’s focus our attention first on our ready-to-be-victimised Yi-joo, who seems to be spending a lot of time at her parents’ home (Ahem, the home of your murderer, Yi-joo…) now that she’s got the key to Do-guk’s home. This doesn’t matter because, friends, Yi-joo has her revenge plan ready.

Secondary Voice
That’s nice to hear because when her ex MIL attacked her in the street Yi-joo reacted like the queen of nihilism she is by rejecting all reality through her usual lack of reaction; that really didn’t work well in her life number one, Yi-joo.

Third Voice
Let’s try a somewhat more active revenge for life number two.

Anyway, because she’s super helpful, she’s writing her plan in plain sight inside her empty bedroom with her back to the wide open door… I’m pretty sure if you turn up the volume, you can probably hear Jung-hye cackle in the background.

Secondary Voice
Bold move, Yi-joo. Don’t stop here. Publish it on your blog. Yihoos-top-secret-revenge-plan.sk. Nobody will suspect a thing.

Third Voice
Nothing says “f*ck sanity” like plotting a revenge plan in a completely open space. Yi-joo is not someone who walks back to her murderer’s home because she’s got nerves of steel. She happens to be completely unaware of the risk.

Talking about nerves of steel, this brings me to another steel character we’ve been introduced to: Jung-wook, Leg of Steel oozing with evilness. Actually he’s got no Leg of Steel, but I’m not going to let a mere detail stop me from making wildly inaccurate assumptions. We don’t know yet what he’s capable of doing, but he’s not even trying to hide his nastiness.

“Who would want a man like me?” he asks, taking the imaginary violin out of his backside to play with his bad leg.

Secondary Voice
Boo-oo-oo, I’m not crying for you.

Third Voice
It’s not your leg, mate. It’s the whole stench of evil.

We can already tell that he’s out there plotting, against his not-so-beloved brother Do-guk, against his future sister-in-law Yi-joo, and anything else he can get his cane on to be fair.
However, he’s missing one essential item in the toolkit of evilness: Where is the statement-making, monochromatic dress? Those boring little suits won’t do. We want it all! We want the whole fashion extravaganza!

Secondary Voice
Commit to the boldly colourful side of force, Jung-wook.

Third Voice
You can’t dress like a virgin accountant and commit evil. It’s not how it works. Show, come on, you trained us. Give the man a power dress with huge shoulder pads. We can’t treat him as a villain until you do.

Another pair of slightly old-fashioned suited boys, but those look like they’ve already tasted the forbidden fruit (unlike Jong-wook who is cultivating the keeping-my-virginity-for-satan-my-master style):

Secretary Kim also reveals that behind his glasses and blank expression there is someone who does whatever the hell he wants, despite behind Jung-hye secretary. In fact, while she’s plotting aloud, he is plotting silently. Against her, mostly, but he’s playing hard-to-get to Yi-joo by pretending he doesn’t know which side to choose.

The second schemer in a suit with good intentions, but even less scheming talent than a mackerel, is granddad who decides to put his best suit on and give Do-guk’s grand-mother a bag full of money, before proceeding to pull her trousers down.

Secondary Voice
I wish I was making this up.

Third Voice
Has nobody heard of bank transfer?

Everybody has their little scheming minds on.

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Chapter Four: Fashionably Yours
While I don’t have an eye for fashion (my cats are better dressed than me and they’re not wearing anything), that doesn’t mean I am blind. PMR is using clothes, their colours, their shapes, and generally how offensive they are to the viewers to make a point. Not sure which point, but I feel under attack.

We’ve got a fun fashion reversal, which I spotted because Yoo-ra’s Barbie pink suit and Yeon-hwa (Do-guk’s mum)’s vibrant scallion-coloured outfit still keep me awake at night. After Yi-joo attends Yeon-hwa’s cooking class, she is invited to a cup of tea by her (hopefully) future MIL… and guess who’s there too? Yoo-ra, wearing a pale shade of green, sitting opposite Yeon-hwa’s pinker than pink outfit. I also credit the pink outfit for reminding Yi-joo that she has a revenge plan to follow; she’ll even end up winning some bonus points by Yeon-hwa. Pink, probably her favourite crayon’s colour when she was marking days on the wall in her bedroom/prison cell.

Another violently fashion heavy moment comes towards the end of Episode 3, when Jung-hye, parading as something I can only describe as an oversized plastic bag meets Yeon-hwa, who chose to dress simply for the occasion, wearing her giant strawberry muffin costume. Me too, I like it low-key.

Secondary Voice
This feels eerily like a scene out of the Teletubbies.

Third Voice
I’m officially renaming Jung-hye, I-believe-in-one-colour-outfits-bitch, IBIOCOB for short. You may argue that she’s not the only monochromatic queen, but she’s definitely the only one who bitches about with the most glee.

Each of them is totally impressed with the other mum’s style and they exchange a handstretch. A handstretch is an impossibly awkward handshake where you don’t touch the other person’s hand and try to incinerate them on the spot with the power of your mind.

Another lovely fashion statement too is how incredibly overdressed Se-hyoek manages to look at his workplace even though he’s probably wearing his dad’s school uniform. By comparison, Do-guk seems much cooler, which isn’t a hard sale because:

• He doesn’t wear an antique kid’s suit
• He doesn’t wear a fringe that cover half of his face, unlike emo-kid Se-hyeok
• He tape-measures puking women for lols. (never heard of a coolest hobby before)

I do have some comments on the conversation between Se-hyoek and Do-guk, but I’ll keep them to myself because my knowledge of the webtoon might bring some spoilers forward.

Some more unmissable fashion statements and news to terrify the viewers. Writer-nim felt that it would be fair to keep things real, and has Do-na explain that she’s often at home because everybody works from home these days. And I would 100% buy that because I work from home and I have been working from home long before the pandemic. I can’t help it, I’m about as socially awkward as that handstretch between the giant plastic bag blouse and the strawberry muffin. I’d probably think it’s a cultural thing and I’d go stretching my hand in there with them.

Secondary Voice
Watch me stretch. This is culture awareness right here, right now.

Anyway, Do-na, my girl, one thing I realise I have failed to do as a work-from-home person is to wear my most expensive suit paired with sleeves the size of a f*cking elephant. Thank you for showing me the way.

Do-na is a casual-friday-is-another-power-suit-day kind of girl.

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Chapter Five: To be Medically Realistic Is The Death Of Drama
Thankfully, drama is alive.
And doctors are crying somewhere in a corner.

I give you, exhibit A.
Do-guk is feverish because he doesn’t like Leg of Steel boy. I don’t like Leg of Steel either, but I slept very well, thanks for asking. We all know that fever is Dramaland’s way of highlighting high-stress levels. It is not related to a viral infection that your body is busy fighting. It’s stress, and nothing keeps stress at bay better than your future wife giving you a belly rub and kneeling next to you all night in her best pyjamas.

I give you exhibit B
Yoo-ra’s been told that Do-guk finds her so unattractive that he doesn’t want to spend the night with her. Apparently, nobody swipes her left, and hell she will not have any of it.

Secondary Voice
Yoo-ra, there are better flirting lines.

Third Voice
You might want to try not being an insufferable cow for a start… But let’s not forget Leg of Steel boy plotting in the background. He might like a cow. To use her, of course, not for love, for who cares?

Anyway, Yoo-ra’s mastermind move is slightly on the weak side. She empties an entire bottle of sleeping pills. When I say empty, she throws them literally everywhere on the floor and probably passes out from tiredness because given the amount of pills all around her, it’s unlikely she did as much as licking half a pill.

Secondary Voice
I would not like to give tips on the best ways to unalive yourself. But I am fairly convinced that when someone takes sleeping pills, they do a little more than redecorating the room with pills.

Third Voice
We all know the best suicide party is to call in your ex-boyfriend’s closeted gay friend and threaten to let his secret out.

So, we can safely assume that Yoo-ra was not really trying to harm herself. In fact, even the hospital assumes she wasn’t because they literally plug an IV bag and ignore her.

I give you exhibit C
Leg of Steel planned a meetup with Yi-joo, who conveniently lets her phone die when she goes to meet an unknown man at night. Sure, sounds fun.

Secondary Voice
Yi-joo, working overtime to end life number 2 as early as possible because the best revenge is dying before mom gets to kill you apparently.

This probably went like this:

Leg of Steel: We should meet up. At night. Don’t tell anyone. Come alone.
Yi-joo: OMG, this sounds fantastic! Is there a nearby back alley where I could get stabbed too? I haven’t tried death by stabbing yet.
Leg of Steel: I’ll see what I can do.

Anyway, Do-guk turns up too, because he hasn’t had enough screen time in this episode. And, would you believe it, we get another trauma. Do-guk doesn’t like the ocean. I am assuming it is the ocean and not water in general, otherwise I’m not sure how he washes.

And finally, we get an answer as to what happened to the sleeping pills that Yoo-ra threw all around her room. Do-guk must have taken them because the moment he arrives, he falls into a deep sleep. Trauma just makes you sleep.

PS: All typos and grammatical monstrosities are caringly and lovingly hand-grown.
PPS: For PRM-relevant gif games, please refer to @attiton and @CecilieDK who’ve already been delivering some little gems.