Becoming Witch (The Witch is Alive / 마녀는 살아있다)is a mystery-comedy Korean drama series created by Kim Yun-chul and Park Pa-ran and starring Lee Yu-ri, Lee Min-young and Yoon So-yi. The TV Chosun series has 12 episodes total and Becoming Witch episode 1 has a runtime of 61 minutes.
Netlix describes the series as:
Three women in their 40s reach a breaking point as their already-frustrating lives go completely off the rails.
– Becoming Witch episode 1 Recap Contains Spoilers –
Becoming Witch episode 1 starts with three friends, Ma-ri, Hui-su and Jin-a, peeing in the middle of a field and are almost caught by the police. The scene highlights their relationship as being extremely close since they have grown up together.
As the friends meet sometime later and things at first get off on a tense foot between Ma-ri and Jin-a, but things get back to normal once the misunderstandings are cleared up, and they start chatting about what’s been going on for so long.
We get a glimpse into Ma-ri’s life – she has an overbearing mother-in-law who hates her guts for getting married to her son and also has a daughter in college. Hui-su, meanwhile, has some fertility problems and is having issues with her husband regarding their lack of intimacy. Jin-a, on the other hand, has come across some money, but no one knows how.
One fine day, while cleaning the apartment in Becoming Witch episode 1, Ma-ri discovers strands of hair on her husband’s things and thinks back to Oracle’s predictions about her husband probably being a cheater. She thinks nothing of it, but while checking through their PC, she finds porn in an unnamed folder and is left absolute fuming. Meanwhile, her husband, Nak-gu, is facing his own issues at work.
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Jin-a, on the other hand, is getting gassed by salespersons and buying extremely expensive shoes. We learn here in a flashback that she got married to U-bin, who was extremely sought after by everyone, but it turns out he was not a good person. Hilariously, he apparently drowned while being chased by creditors. However, it seems like things worked out for Jin-a in the end because her worthless husband’s life insurance policy helped her get out of the rut!
Anyway, Ma-ri confronts her husband, who immediately gaslights her into thinking that it’s her fault that she has to look at porn and that married couples should have to get divorced after 10 years together. He then proposes that they should get divorced, and when Ma-ri brings up the point that he was the one who desperately tried to marry her, he gaslights her some more.
Meanwhile, Jin-a gets agitated at the thought of a rapist doing the rounds in her neighbourhood and arms herself. The next day, as Ma-ri tries to see a divorce lawyer, her mother catches her outside the door and brings her home to shame her without even asking why she went in the first place. In a flashback, we see the abuse that she went through at her mother’s hands, who doesn’t even acknowledge her birthday.
However, she has great friends who celebrate with her, and she discusses the divorce debacle with them. On the other hand, Nak-gu gets shocked when he learns that a tabloid has quoted him having an affair with a younger woman, shocking both him and his show’s producer.
Becoming Witch Episode 1 Ending
As the women light up the dance floor at a club, Hui-su gets some shocking news and runs off to attend to it. Nak-gu, meanwhile, goes to meet his affair partner at a seedy motel. Ma-ri also happens to be there at that time and catches a glimpse of her husband coming out of said motel as the fire alarm of the place goes off. As she looks on, she is approached by a random woman who starts to chat with her. Confused at first, she realises why this woman seems familiar.
As Ma-ri catches her husband with his pants down, literally, Hui-su gets a call from her husband, and she looks absolutely horrified.
Becoming Witch Episode 1 Review
Introductory episodes are usually quite dull, and Becoming Witches seems to be quite that – dull and very heavy on the exposition. It also tries very hard to seem funny, which it, unfortunately, isn’t. There’s a lot of sexism, and people laugh at the most inane things.
Then again, this is just the first episode. Although it hasn’t caught my eye just yet, I am hopeful that these extremely disjointed storylines will reap some benefits in the future.
Becoming Witches is streaming on Netflix.
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