Summary
Romance in the House continues to make misguided attempts at humour, but the core of the mystery remains compelling.
In Episode 3, Romance in the House continues to be a bit hit and miss, with lurching shifts in tone that don’t always work and a split focus that sometimes neglects the most intriguing dramatic thread of parental estrangement through Mi-rae and her father, Moo-jin.
But it’s early days yet, so don’t let me put you off. When it works, Romance in the House really works, and there’s definitely enough dramatic meat on the bones for an intriguing show to manifest down the line. Let’s just hope the scattershot comedy falls by the wayside a bit as we go.
Moo-jin Makes A Wager
Anyway, things pick up from the end of Episode 2, more or less, when Tae-pyeong kicked Moo-jin in the face. A brief scene of him teaching kids tae-kwon-do lets us understand the seriousness of the kick. Mi-rae herself rather enjoyed it, but she would like to keep the whole thing quiet.
We mustn’t forget the conversation that occurred just prior to that unfortunate – or fortunate, for Mi-rae – mishap, since Ye-yeon decides to stay in Family Villa rather than move out on the back of it, despite Mi-rae’s displeasure and misguided suggestion of taking out another loan.
I said in my recap of Episode 1 and again in Episode 2, but money is a crucial theme in this series, and it proves as much again when Moo-jin makes a wager with Mi-rae that he’ll be able to win Ye-yeon back. The rather substantial prize is Ye-yeon’s pending alimony money, adjusted for interest and inflation.
Given Mi-rae’s history with her father’s bad financial habits – explored in flashbacks in the previous episode and snippets of this one – money is not just a present-day problem but fundamental to Mi-rae’s lingering resentment for her old man.
The Moo-jin Mystery
We mustn’t forget either about the big mystery surrounding what Moo-jin has been up to during his “death”, which is something that the other Family Villa residents, especially the guy who lives in the half-basement and saw Moo-jin with the previous landlord on the night of fire, and Jeong-hyeok, all theorize over.
If you were going to make a wager, this would be a fun one. Is he an ex-con? A murderer? A gambler? Nobody seems to know, including the audience, and this does make for a compelling dramatic thread, especially when you factor in the previous landlord’s death. But a K-Drama wouldn’t have a ML be a murderer, right? There’s something more afoot for sure.
Romantic Overtures
A good chunk of Romance in the House Episode 3 is devoted to Moo-jin moving into the Family Villa and making other moves on Ye-yeon.
With his first attempts unsuccessful, can you guess how he proceeds? Yes, of course, he tries to help them out financially. There’s more of a link established between the villa and the department store here, too, since Tae-pyeong’s father turns out to be the CEO, and Tae-pyeong is keeping quiet about booting Moo-jin in the face, but Moo-jin now knows where Mi-rae and Ye-yeon work and the villa residents are being noisy about their suspicions that Moo-jin killed the previous landlord.
Moo-jin’s romantic overtures cause Mi-rae and Ye-yeon to be reprimanded at work. For Mi-rae, it’s history repeating itself; loan sharks smashing up her snack bar isn’t entirely similar to her presumed-dead dad messing things up at work. Moo-jin is just an obstacle and is left to drown his sorrows in soju.
Moo-jin Comes Clean
Moo-jin eventually decides that honesty is the best policy, so he promises not to lay it on too thick with Ye-yeon anymore and also gathers the Family Villa residents to assuage their fears that he’s a mad arsonist murderer. He also testifies to the police about the same.
This seems to be enough – for the time being, anyway. But Moo-jin clearly isn’t going to stop in his pursuit of Ye-yeon, and the epilogue, which reveals the previous landlord as a bit of a creep, still can’t help but imply that Moo-jin might still be guilty.
Is this guy just a master criminal? Are we being naïve? Only time will tell.
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