K-Drama Rewind, When The Phone Rings: Yoo Yeon-seok, Chae Soo-bin drive a twisted love story that makes no sense

The marriage contract trope is always guaranteed comfort, especially in Korean dramas. It probably comes right after enemies-to-lovers in the fan-favourite rankings.. And no doubt, it usually delivers. There’s something endlessly watchable about a forced marriage slowly warming into friendship, then slipping into love. My Demon was a fun example, because what sells a show better than being married to a demon who needs to hold your hand to recharge yourself?

Well, with When The Phone Rings, Yoo Yeon-seok and Chae Soo-bin fight different demons—but this time, in their own marriage. He’s a rich, arrogant politician named Baek Sae-eon, who treats his furniture slightly better than his wife—she is Hong Hae-joo, a mute woman, forced to marry Sae-on, because her sister ditched him at the altar. Or so it seems at first. Their strained marriage receives a jolt, when Hae-joo is held at knife-point by a kidnapper in the car—and Sae-on’s disinterested phone call not believing that she is in danger actually scars Hae-joo. His throwaway line—‘let me know when there’s a corpse' is seared into her mind . In response, Hae-joo begins to torment Sae-on by pretending the kidnapper is still in contact, using the phone as a weapon to shake him emotionally. A psychological game begins. 

Now that twist in the first few episodes was actually engaging—it was different. The show took a daring storytelling risk: a woman exhausted from being ignored, dismissed—even emotionally abused in her marriage.

It was almost fun to watch Hae-joo mess with Sae-on, but then, as if afraid of its own momentum, the show reels back from the precipice and takes the safe route. 

Of course, he’s secretly loved her all along. And as always, there’s a conveniently noble reason for a man to treat his wife with icy detachment.

But you grudgingly try to forgive what could have been. Or at least, you try. The romance and emotions run high in Episode 5 and 6—and you almost feel for harried Sae-on trying to track his injured wife down in the woods. The love confession delivers. Alright, so it will follow on the heels of a normal K-Drama thriller with a kidnapper on the loose. We can live with it. 

Sadly, that acceptance is snatched away from you as the show progresses into a more cliched, wearied territories. You lose count the number of times Hae-joo is in danger, and you’re thrown into a past family connections, trauma—to finally pave the way for the most frustrating penultimate finale and conclusion in the past two years. The show derails so much that the last two episodes feel as if someone else wrote it. Disappearances, explanations, crying in forests and a reunion that should have ideally made you relieved about a happy ending, but by that point, you feel that you have just been put through several hoops, only to fall into a quicksand pit.

When The Phone Rings, could have been so much more. It had the potential, and the actors to pull off a different, distinct story—instead, we just got the ingredients—and none of the fire that could’ve cooked up something unforgettable.