"Family Outing" Episode 7

The whiplash from the last cliffhanger is in full force here. I really need to make clear- a storyline about an awful crime that happened before Kkeut-soon left Korea has dramatic potential. There are also decent comedic stakes involved in having Joon-hee fake amnesia. Neither of these plot points at all mesh well with the other. We can't just go straight from furious, angry crying to wacky sitcom hijinx. It just feels awkward.

The serious plot also suffers somewhat from how arbitrarily it's forced into the plot. All Joon-ah appears to have accomplished with this move is antagonizing every single member of the family, including Kkeut-soon herself. For that matter I don't know what his accomplice is hoping for either. Does he seriously expect that even if the test comes back in his favor, anyone is going to treat him with anything less than absolute disgust and resentment? Honestly I'm surprised Jong-tae and Dal-soo agreed to it in the first place.

Still, I guess that's one way to set up a classic cliffhanger, and I am at least somewhat curious as to what the outcome will be. Taken in concert with Joon-hee's amnesia scheme, one obvious way to view these proceedings is that neither one of these interlopers has any idea what they're actually doing. They could probably do a better job impressing Kkeut-soon with their actual meritous abilities rather than resorting to this frankly bizarre scheme. Right now they mainly seem to be victims of their own success- there just isn't any good direction for them to go from here.

It also adds an odd dimension to the relationship between Joon-hee and Dong-seok. At present the main reason he doesn't suspect her of anything is because there's no possible logical explanation for her behavior. I doubt Joon-hee herself has really thought through how any of this is supposed to work beyond the near term. So in some sense the illogic presenting itself in"Family Outing"is somewhat logical.

Bear in mind it's not much of an incentive to actually watch"Family Outing"unless you're already engaged in it somehow. Right now it's hitting the bare minimum of passable entertainment- the performances are pretty on-point even if the story is jumping all over the place. It took me way too long to remember who those people were at the hospital, for example- just how many subplots does any single drama need anyway?

Review by William Schwartz

"Family Outing"is directed byJoo Dong-min, written byKim Sin-hyeand featuresLee Jeong-hyeon,Jin I-han,Oh Sang-jin,Park Won-sook,Jeong Han-heonandPark Joon-gyoo.