Marry YOU: Episodes 1-2 (First Impressions)

by Unit

Dramaland does not lack tales about matchmaking, country bumpkins out for romance, or jaded characters finding love again in unexpected places, and so far, Marry YOU isn’t doing anything too different from its predecessors. But familiarity with these tropes isn’t such a bad thing, and based on these opening episodes, this show has the potential to be a pretty decent watch.

Editor’s note: This is an opening review only. For a place to chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout.
 
EPISODES 1-2

Our heroine, JUNG HANA (Jo Soo-min), is a Level 7 civil servant at Injeong City Hall, and she’s open to dating but not marriage. She’s satisfied with living peacefully alone, and indulging in a few harmless hobbies. Hana might not be the biggest fan of her job — and the occupational hazards of dealing with disgruntled citizens — but it provides her with a stable income which is pertinent to maintaining her single lifestyle.

In order for our plot to properly plot, the mayor — as part of his reelection strategy to appeal to the younger voting population — creates a marriage promotion team to help interested-but-unable-to-marry youngsters get hitched. It’s no doubt a tempting offer to work in a team directly under the mayor, but most of the folks at City Hall aren’t interested in matchmaking duties. Interestingly, Hana used to work at a matchmaking agency before she became a civil servant, and her petty team leader capitalizes on this to transfer her to the marriage promotion team after she rightfully calls him out on passing off his duties to his subordinates.

For someone who wears her non-maritalist tag with pride, Hana has no idea how she’s supposed to promote an institution she doesn’t believe in. Resignation is an option, but ain’t no paycheck as steady as the government’s, thus Ms. Civil Servant gets set to fly the beautiful banner of marriage. Enter: BONG CHUL-HEE (Lee Yi-kyung), our 32-year-old bachelor hero, who makes his appearance quite late into the first episode. Chul-hee is the typical village bumpkin who’s sweet and endearing, and he doubles as the Mr. Fix-it on the small island where he lives with his twin niblings.

After his appearance on a TV show as a man who wants to get married but finds it difficult to, Chul-hee catches the mayor’s eyes, and a story of the “generous” Injeong City helping the island bachelor makes for good optics. The mayor instructs the marriage promotion team to find a wife for Chul-hee, and this reminds me of The Matchmakers where the king orders the leads to marry off the exemplary spinsters in Joseon. It definitely won’t be easy to marry off a village bumpkin, but high risks come with high rewards, and Hana extracts a promise from the mayor to transfer her to another department if she succeeds with Chul-hee’s marriage.

Hana sets out to the island to meet Chul-hee, but they don’t have a good first impression of each other. She briefly assumes he’s a mobster (he was holding a small axe, making a suspicious phone call, and he has a few scars on his back), while he finds her motives very suspicious. It doesn’t help that Hana is supposedly from a marriage “morale boosting” team which sounds a lot like marriage “scam” team. Lol. Chul-hee wonders why City Hall would even be interested in his marriage, and Hana brings up his appearance on the TV show. But it turns out that the marriage narrative was framed by the show’s PD, and much like the older two Maeng sisters in The Matchmakers, Chul-hee is not interested in getting married. *Laughs in plot twist*

Nevertheless, Hana did not brave seasickness to come all the way out here only to take no for an answer. She will convince Chul-hee to sign up for her matchmaking services one way or the other, so she gives up on departing with the last boat for the day and asks if he has a spare room. With the many dramaland OTPs-to-be falling victims of the one room trope, I could have sworn that spare rooms don’t exist on an island. But surprisingly, Chul-hee has a spare room, and he agrees to lodge Hana for the night. Boo!

On hearing that a pretty civil servant is interested in getting their uncle married, Chul-hee’s niblings decide that Hana is their preferred candidate. As an accompaniment to dinner, they grill their aunt-to-be about her nonexistent relationship with their uncle, and Hana starts to choke. Lol. After dinner, Hana tells Chul-hee that she used to work at a matchmaking agency, but she was pressured by the higher-ups to match a couple together despite the problems from the man’s side. Unfortunately, the woman became a victim of abuse and landed in the hospital, and that same day, Hana caught her fiancé cheating on her. She began to question her life choices afterwards, and eventually came to the conclusion that she doesn’t qualify to be married.

Hana admits that she doesn’t believe in marriage, or rather, she believes that people should be qualified in order to get married. According to her, respect, responsibility, and willingness to give oneself away completely are the qualifications for marriage. And to Chul-hee’s question about whether she thinks he is qualified, she replies that he seems like a good and reliable person because he shows responsibility for the island people. Hana leaves Chul-hee to mull over her matchmaking proposal, and a week later, he shows up at City Hall to sign up for matchmaking.

But guess who also shows up at City Hall? It’s Hana’s ex-fiancé, CHOI KI-JOON (Gu Jun-hoe)! It’s been three years since their breakup, but Ki-joon tries to act familiarly with Hana and she welcomes him with a belated slap — which attracts Chul-hee’s attention. Chul-hee comes over to make sure Hana is all right, but she introduces him to Ki-joon as the man she will be marrying. Pfft. Ki-joon doesn’t buy the story, but he leaves her be. On the other hand, Chul-hee resorts to teasing Hana by demanding to know the details of their upcoming wedding. Lol.

It turns out that Ki-joon has been appointed as the new team leader of the marriage promotion team — after volunteering to join them when he could have been placed in any other department he wanted. Smh. Clingy much? Since going back and forth from the island to town for blind dates might be too stressful, Ki-joon suggests that Chul-hee and his niblings move to the team’s official residence in town for the duration of the matchmaking. Of course, Ki-joon can’t find any other place to stay, so he also moves into the same building. Proximity is everything in dramaland, and this love triangle is poised to run into each other frequently outside of work — especially with Chul-hee’s invitation for Hana to drop by whenever she wants for free homemade meals.

Speaking of blind dates, Chul-hee gets a makeover in preparation for an upcoming date, and his transformation is WOW! On his way to the restaurant, Chul-hee gets caught up in a romance movie moment when he saves a lady from getting hit by a falling helmet from some construction work beside a building. But to remind us that this is a comedy, he goes on to get splashed with a bucketful of water. LMAO! Chul-hee’s straightened hair returns to its natural curly form, and he has to change out of his suit into his usual country bumpkin style. *Sniffs* The makeover was good while it lasted.

Still, Chul-hee and his blind date have a pleasant time together — with a sprinkle of his dad jokes. But while his date is touched by how down-to-earth and considerate he is, they both have different perspectives on relationships and they agree to stay as friends. Hana takes Chul-hee out for a homemade meal since he couldn’t eat properly on the date, but Chul-hee questions the “homemade” part since they’re having the meal at her friend’s diner. Hana replies that home food is whatever you eat with people you’re comfortable with, and Chul-hee sees the logic in her submission.

As the week comes to a close, Chul-hee has a pied piper moment where he pushes his niblings in a shopping cart and leads a bunch of nursery school students to their school after their bus breaks down. Chaebol heiress, OH IN-AH (Ji Yi-soo), witnesses the moment firsthand when she spots the shopping cart — which belongs to her family’s mart — and she finds the situation cute. Coincidentally, In-ah is the lady that Chul-hee saved on the way to his blind date — and for someone who turns down all her family’s arranged blind dates, In-ah’s interest in Chul-hee is piqued. Because this drama loves its coincidences, In-ah is also the other woman in the Ki-joon × Hana cheating saga, and our main quartet run into each other outside Chul-hee’s apartment when In-ha drops by to thank him for saving her. *Insert dramatic background music*

Ki-joon and In-ha appear to be friends of sorts, and it seems the cheating saga was a huge misunderstanding. But for some reason, Ki-joon did not clear the air when Hana saw In-ha in his apartment back then. Now he shows zero subtly in his attempt to get back together with Hana, but why wait three whole years? Hana has since moved on, and it’s refreshing to have a heroine who doesn’t spiral on learning that her ex is her new boss. Rather than invent reasons to avoid him, she faces him confidently and professionally while clearly maintaining the boundaries between them, and I liked that.

Maybe because we got more insight into Hana this week, I’m more interested in her than I am in Chul-hee. The village bumpkin bachelor is not exactly a new archetype — and while the addition of the niblings gives his character a little spin, the twins have been pretty tame so far and they haven’t exhibited much of the scheming, harmlessly manipulative and chaotic traits one would expect from kiddos who want to marry off their uncle. It’s still week one, though, so it’s not too late for their shenanigans to ramp up as the drama advances.

This show has set up a heroine who’s perfectly content with her non-maritalist life, but it’s kinda obvious that marriage will win in the end and I’m not sure how I feel about that — especially when dramaland gave us Romance in the House with a similar set-up, but without marriage as the ultimate end of its romance. But maybe for Hana, the end goal here is not the marriage itself, but for her to rise above the self-deprecating thought that she is unqualified for marriage. Overall, Marry YOU is off to a good start, and with its simple and straightforward plot — and the absence of screeching, loud and gossipy villagers — it looks like this will be an easy watch.

 
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