Queen of Tears review

Queen of Tears is two great leads stuck in a story that will not stop adding things. Kim Soo Hyun plays Baek Hyun Woo, a village boy turned lawyer who married Hong Hae In, the heiress who runs her family's department store, and three years in the marriage is already dead. He is working up the nerve to ask for a divorce when he learns she is seriously ill. That setup is sharp, and the first four episodes are the show at its best: funny, bitter and built on two people who still know exactly how to hurt each other. Kim Ji Won is the reason to watch. She makes a cold, proud woman readable without softening her, and the family around her, especially Kwak Dong Yeon as her hapless brother, has more life than the script gives it. Then the writing loses its nerve. Instead of doing the hard work of repairing a marriage on screen, it lets the illness do that work, and the couple gets pushed to the edges of its own show while a corporate takeover, an amnesia arc and a stack of accidents pile up around them. The villain ends up with more screen time than the romance. Whole subplots could be cut, and at sixteen episodes of around ninety minutes the drag is felt in hours, not minutes. The big crying scenes land if you are already invested and read as noise if you are not. The production is lavish and the wardrobe alone is a show. Watch it for Kim Ji Won, the in-law comedy and a strong first act. Give it four episodes, and if the leads have not hooked you by then, stop, because it does not change gear. Skip it if you want a tight plot or a real reconciliation story.