The Suspicious Housekeeper
상한 가정부
SBS (2013) 20 Episodes, Grade:
A+
Family Melodrama, Mystery, Crime
Drama Review by Richard, Ireland Some "Spoilers" Ahead
The Suspicious Housekeeper
(2013) is one of the most complex and remarkable Korean
dramas I have yet seen. This review only gives a partial
indication of its excellence and I am sure that each time I
see it, I will find something new.
The plot is well
structured, with a double center. There is, first of all,
the suspicious housekeeper herself, Park Bok Nyeo (Choi Ji
Woo, Winter
Sonata, Twenty
Again) who is psychologically dysfunctional,
having witnessed the murder of her family and been suspected
of being party to the deed by the police, and especially by
a particularly unpleasant, vicious, and fiercely domineering
mother-in-law.
Then there is the dysfunctional
family she comes to serve as housekeeper, the Gyeol family.
The tragic mother has committed suicide, in part because her
husband Eun Sang Chul (Lee Sung Jae, Gu
Family Book, Jealousy
Incarnate) has been cheating on her. He is
seriously, morally indecisive, and quite confused about
where his loyalty should lie - with his four children or
with his mistress Yoon Song Hwa (Wang Ji Hye). Indeed, so
incredibly weak-willed and afraid of responsibility is Eun
Sang that for a considerable time he lives apart from these
loving children and favors Yoon Song, despite the fact that
she is willing early in the drama to throw him under the bus
to save her job.
FULL OST
For each of these two
plot lines there is a villain. Yoon Song is certainly the
dark person in the family story. She is most immediately
responsible for the mother's depression and suicide through
her taunts that she possesses Eun Sang's love.
Far more wicked is the evil
Seo Ji Hoon (Song Jong Ho). While Yoon Song does grow as a
character, and finally achieves some sacrificial
redemption, Seo Ji Hoon remains a horror to the end.
Motivated by jealousy and consumed with a desire to
control Bok Nyeo the housekeeper, he initiated the fire
that killed her family, manipulated the dreadful
mother-in-law, corrupted a detective, changed his identity
and was able to stalk Bok Nyeo by keeping tabs on both Eun
Sang and Yoon Song through offering them jobs with his
firm.
There are some interesting
side-plots, such as the story of the relationship between
Eun Sang's father-in-law Woo Geum Chi (Park Geun Hyung) and
the woman who directs Park Nyeo's agency, Dr. Hong (Hae
Sook Kim). The busybody neighbor of the Gyeol family rings
another variation on the cheating husband theme, and there
is the gentle early love of Han Gyeol for a member of the
pop band, Soo Hyuk (Kang Joon Seo).
However,
the major power and drive of this drama has its origin in
the tremendous acting performance of Choi Ji Woo in the
title role.
When we first meet her she is
clearly psychologically crippled. The combination of the
murders of her husband and son, and the hateful influence of
her angry, vengeful mother-in-law, combined with being
stalked by the corrupt detective who is secretly employed by
Seo Ji Hoon, has left her unable to respond with love to
others.
She adopts a defense mechanism -
an external robotic coldness that caps the volcanic
emotional turmoil within. She works according to set
patterns; she follows orders which permit her to avoid
making morally responsible choices. Her request "Is that
an order (myungyung)?" frees her from making a moral
choice by giving control to another.
On two occasions
we see the danger of this situation. First, she takes the
little Hye Gyeol (Ji Woo Kang) to the river where the
mother died. She leads the child into the water and is
clearly reaching a point where one or both might be swept
away. Fortunately, the oldest son Doo Gyeol (Chae Sang
Woo) arrives in time to prevent this from happening. This
is a very disturbing scene - particularly as Bok Nyeo is
following little Hye Gyeol's orders.
Later, Se Gyeol (Nam Da
Reum) is being bullied and in a fit of depression and anger
tells Bok Nyeo to kill the bully.
She nearly does.
Se Gyeol is there on the scene
to stop the deadly attack and, in fact, he learns from the
experience that violence is not always an effective answer
to life's problems.
As the
drama progresses, Bok Nyeo slowly humanizes. She organizes
the house; she goes to the school to deal with the
problems of Se Gyeol; Doo Gyeol at first resents her but
is won over as Bok Nyeo helps him discover a hidden
talent; she cleverly helps prevent Han Gyeol (Kim So Hyun)
from making a disastrous sexual mistake, and most
significantly she forms a deep emotional attachment with
the little Hye Gyeol - in effect she becomes a mother
figure to the little girl.
This gradual change - the
deepening of character and moral authority - is brilliantly
conveyed by Choi Ji Woo. With incredibly skillful
minimalistic acting she conveys the emotional transformation
of the character with slight movements of her facial
muscles, through body language, through tonal variations in
her voice, and with that incredible gaze.
And through it all she never
smiles (her angry mother-in-law had ordered her not to).
Later she actually plays the
part of a mother. But this is actually a way of helping
the children and the father to finally face their feelings
for their dead parent. They must be faithful to the love
they have for her, and they must learn this lesson by
again acknowledging that maternal love, and
re-experiencing the sorrow of her loss.
Oddly enough, Seo Ji Hoon
is a factor in Bok Nyeo's transformation. Finding out that
he is alive after all gives the housekeeper a powerful
motive to re-direct her energies. Proving his guilt of
killing her family to the world frees her from her own
guilt, and frees her from the malignant, psychotic hold of
her mother-in-law.
And, finally, in a
wonderful scene near the end, she smiles.
