Summary
Things get real as the net tightens and the suspense builds, and there’s still plenty more to come.
It’s ingrained in most parents to do the best for their kids. An instinctive, natural thing, like breathing. Dong-ha’s determination to provide for his family isn’t new. It extends back years, to their earliest difficulties. But has his desire always been realistic? That’s a different, more difficult question. How much improvement constitutes “better”? Where does it end? At what point does a hypothetical future have to be abandoned for present reality?
A Model Family Season 1 Episode 3 Recap
This is probably what soured Eun-ju on her husband in the first place. But it cracks a window into Dong-ha’s psyche. He has spent his life, or at least the last few years, trying desperately to improve his circumstances – and failing. His wife berates him. His kids don’t respect him. A man like that is liable to make some pretty bad decisions and be manipulable, which we’ll return to later.
Anyway, the net is tightening, to put things mildly. Dong-ha’s neighbor might have taken the punishment for his sins thus far, but that’s a little too close to home all the same, and neither the police nor Kwang-chul is willing to let the matter slide.
Of course, this lack of subtlety doesn’t bode well for Kwang-chul himself either and has made quite a mess thus far that there will likely be repercussions for, but in an odd way, the archness of the plot is quite enjoyable. Nobody really seems like they know what they’re doing in this show, and there’s a truthfulness to that sense of winging it that helps to create suspense.
Admittedly this episode gets a leg-up from catching up to the events of the first outing’s prologue, with Dong-ha being buried alive. Kwang-chul eventually decides to have Dong-ha dug up to be used as an asset, tying back into what I said at the top. This is a desperate man, after all. And desperate men will do things that others won’t. What choice do they really have?
What did you think of A Model Family Season 1 Episode 3? Comment below.
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