Disclaimer: this is a review, and as such it contains spoilers of the whole series. Please proceed to read at your own risk if you still plan on watching this show or if you haven’t finished it yet. You have been warned.
Mask Girl
(마스크걸 / Maseukeu Geol)
MyDramaList rating: 7.5/10
Hiya! Not me unexpectedly adding in another review before the end of the month. Sometimes I like to switch up my watchlist with new releases I’ve spotted on Netflix, and this was one of them. While I may have gotten a certain impression from the trailer, in the end it blew all of my expectations right out of the window. It ended up being about something entirely different than I anticipated. Despite the heavy adult themes present in this series, I ended up appreciating it for the acting, the structuring, the storytelling/building, the cinematography and the underlying message that pretty much came full circle in the final episode. In terms of style and genre (including the bizarro elements), I’d put it in-between Somebody and The School Nurse Files, which are also short Netflix K-Dramas that I watched this year. On the one hand, there were aspects that would normally make me look away, but on the other hand I found it really intriguing for several reasons, and I’m excited to share those in this review. Let’s dive into it!
Mask Girl is a Netflix K-Drama with six episodes of about an hour each. It’s constructed as a three-part story in which every two episodes form one chapter. It focusses on rise and fall of Internet phenomenon ‘Mask Girl’, who becomes more infamous than famous after getting involved in a gruesome murder scandal. It explicitly deals with the implications and consequences of Mask Girl’s actions in the years following said scandal. Each episode focusses on a different person in Mask Girl’s life, and each person creates a new entry point for the story to proceed. I will structure my review accordingly, person by person. After each ‘chapter’ I will comment on that part of the story and analyze and ‘relativize’ each character as much as possible before moving on to the next part. I’ll also devote some comments on the plot twists that each ‘chapter’ brought about, which occasionally surprised me.
The first two episodes take place in 2009.
Episode one introduces us to the main protagonist, Mask Girl herself, Kim Mo Mi (played by Lee Han Byul). Ever since she was a little child, Mo Mi has dreamed of becoming a famous popstar, she loves being on stage and has an undeniable talent for dancing. Despite this glorious dream, she has had to face the cruel truth that she’d never be given the chance to show herself to the world because of her looks – just like my previous watch Birth of a Beauty the theme of South Korea’s demanding beauty standards plays a big role in this story and the main character’s psyche. Even her own mother tells her she’s too ugly to make it as a celebrity, and she’s booed off the stage by her schoolmates whenever she participates in talent shows. In short, all people see is her face, which is considered to be visually unappealing, and no one seems able to look past her exterior to recognize her talent.
In 2009, Mo Mi is working as an accountant for an insurance company, where she spends her time bitterly gossipping about the pretty new girl who’s doted on by all their male coworkers, while secretly crushing on her manager, Park Gi Hoon (Choi Daniel ♡). She lives an unremarkable life, very different from what she dreamed of as a child. However, she hasn’t completely let go of her dream. There’s still a part of her that longs to be seen and admired, and she expresses this through disguising herself with a mask and wig, performing in front of her webcam to receive heart points from followers. I’m not exactly sure what these kinds of livestreams are called, but I’ve seen them appear in several dramas before. Someone records a livestream from their room in which they perform some kind of entertainment or service to their followers, who can give appreciative hearts which are converted into money. Mask Girl’s livestreams usually include her dancing, but she definitely adds a sensual touch to it by wearing revealing outfits and emphasizing her (all-natural) bossom when she’s interacting with the people in her chat. She has built quite a fanbase and typically goes online every night.
In the second episode, we are introduced to Joo Oh Nam (played by Ahn Jae Hong), who works at the same company and in the same office as Mo Mi. Oh Nam can be described as a typical otaku – on the outside he’s a typical introverted guy who doesn’t seem to take particular care of his appearance, but at home he has a whole collection of figurines and inflatable dolls, and he regularly jerks off to hentai. He even speaks in Japanese to one of his air dolls, it’s very typical. In any case, Oh Nam happens to be one of Mask Girl’s most loyal followers and he’s developed a pretty big virtual crush on her.
At some point, he starts seeing parallels between Mask Girl and his coworker Mo Mi, and becomes the first person to find that they’re the same person. Rather than expose her, he falls even harder, for Mo Mi herself this time, and vows to protect her from scumbag men. When Mo Mi is taken advantage of by one of Mask Girl’s fans who offers to take her out for dinner while live-Tweeting about how ugly she is during their ‘date’, Oh Nam takes it upon himself to save her, tracking her down to a motel, prepared to do whatever is necessary to keep her and her secret identity safe.
Let’s talk a bit about Mo Mi and Oh Nam, since their ‘relationship’ forms a pretty important foundation of the story, or at least how it continues into the future.
First of all, it’s important to note how their stories correlate to each other. I found it really interesting to see how the first two episodes structured the basic element of them existing right next to each other but already creating such a difference in their respective perspectives. For example, we only find out through Oh Nam’s POV that he’s been present in Mo Mi’s work environment the entire time. He’s been there in the background in every single scene, but he’s never highlighted in Mo Mi’s POV for the simple reason that she is not aware of him. As much as Mo Mi plays a part in Oh Nam’s life, especially when he finds out she’s Mask Girl, Mo Mi is not even aware of Oh Nam’s presence, even when he sits right next to her at work. He only appears in Mo Mi’s story once, as a coworker who tries to tell her something before she gets on the elevator. The short conversation they have after they get off the elevator is, again, only shown in Oh Nam’s POV, which suggests that it wasn’t even memorable enough for Mo Mi’s.
The second episode merges Oh Nam’s POV into Mo Mi’s, but not the other way around. We find out how much Oh Nam has been keeping an eye on Mo Mi only through his POV. For example, the night when Mo Mi finds out that her beloved manager and the pretty lady are having an affair. For her, this is a shocking revelation which causes her to become so distressed that she gets super drunk and ends up taking off her clothes during a livestream, resulting in her suspension from the website. For Oh Nam, the discovery of the adultery comes as a huge relief as he was terrified that it was Mo Mi and the manager together, and he comes home exhilarated only to get surprised by Mask Girl’s reaction to it in her video that night.
By structuring the scenes like this, it was emphasized how different the focus of these characters were, even when they were so close to each other, and I found that really interesting. Oh Nam’s scenes merge his presence into Mo Mi’s story, but not the other way around. While their storylines happen simultaneously, they still go in such different directions and lead to such different interpretations and reactions.
Another thing I found remarkable about this show was that it allowed me to empathize with all the main characters (with which I mean the predominantly featured characters in each episode) in spite of their extreme and problematic actions. Looking at the whole story, you could say that there isn’t a single main character who is innately ‘good’ in the sense that they don’t have a single problematic or twisted trait to them. Still, for some reason, I was able to understand where everyone came from, and that doesn’t happen very often. In typical dramas, there’s always a clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys, and you can easily point out who has the right to do something ‘bad’ and who doesn’t. Mask Girl kind of plays with that logic, especially in how it creates a background for all the main characters that enables us to relativize with them, even when they go to extreme lengths.
To start with Mo Mi, our heroine, when we are first introduced to her I found her the most relatable person ever. I admit I have a weak spot for characters who are gaslighted into believing their ugliness is a crime to society, especially when they’re not even ugly people. Mo Mi never had someone to fall back on, no one to tell her she was beautiful and valid and that everything would be alright. Her own mother wouldn’t even do that. Despite this, it does look like she learns how to accept her fate, and she developed a quite tenacious tendency towards people who would take advantage of her or who would openly ridicule her. In a sense, I was really glad she was at least able to stand up for herself properly. She may have been acting very subdued and introverted at work, but we also see her publicly call out a guy on the subway who’s hand brushed her butt, even dragging him to the police station. It may have kept killing her inside whenever something like that happened, but at least she stood her ground. She didn’t have it easy. It was like, every time she finally dared feel a little bit confident, someone would come along and kick her right back into the ground. She just couldn’t catch a break, she wasn’t given the chance to feel good about herself for even a moment, and that was awful.
I think it’s safe to say that what happened with Handsome Monk (or ‘Motel Guy’ as I prefer to call him) was the final drop in the already brim-filled bucket that pushed her over the edge and made her decide that she couldn’t live like this any longer. Honestly, I was so disappointed during this part. It actually seemed like he was being genuine when she took her mask off and he didn’t even flinch before going all, ‘Why are you wearing a mask? You’re beautiful’. It was so good to see Mo Mi open up and laugh and have a good time. Sure, it was to be expected that it was yet another prank, because so far all male characters in the story had turned out to be douchebags, but I still found myself going 😓 when it was revealed that he was indeed just playing her. I did like how she charged at him when he revealed his true colors and they had that awkward fight in and around the waterbed (seriously, the waterbed was a paid actor). During their wrestling, they fall through the curtains of the bed and Motel Guy hits his head hard on the stone sink and is rendered unconscious.
The way Mo Mi reacted to seeing Motel Guy lying there and how puddle of blood was starting to form under his head proved to me even more that she wasn’t a bad person. On the contrary, I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her to get it through to her that it wasn’t her fault. It’s not like she meant to kill him or something, she was literally trying to get away from him. I honestly didn’t see how she would be in the wrong if she’d call the police and tell them the true story. Yes, she had followed him into the motel room, but she was super hesitant and she’d mentioned multiple times that she felt uncomfortable and that she wanted to go somewhere else. He didn’t let her go and then tried to take advantage of her, and in her struggle to get away from him, this had happened. There was no intended murder whatsoever, and honestly I wasn’t even that surprised that he was still alive.
In any case, after going home and taking a bath, I guess the hallucination of her face melting off was a kind of metaphor of her losing her mind. She disappears for a while after that and when we see her again at the end of Oh Nam’s POV, we see that she’s had plastic surgery as her whole head is wrapped in bandages. I’m guessing she made up her mind that she really had to change her face if she didn’t want to be treated like this by anyone else again that same night after the motel incident.
The biggest plottwist for me was how at the end of the second episode, Mo Mi’s insanity took over and she actually went so far as to kill Oh Nam. I guess I just wasn’t aware of how ‘not okay’ she was, despite consistently giving the impression she’d accepted the way she looked. I think that Oh Nam just happened to visit her while she was spiralling big-time, and his sudden sexual advances on her in combination with what she’d just gone through (both with Motel Guy and with her manager) came over her in a wave of heated rage and despair. I still don’t believe she wanted to go that far. Seeing how she started sobbing after she’d finished stabbing, it just showed how completely out-of-control she’d gotten. I honestly think she temporarily lost her mind and that led to this very regrettable action. It’s so sad because I wonder what would’ve happened if Oh Nam had told her that the guy had still been alive. Would that have helped? I’m not sure if it would’ve made things that much better, to be honest.
There are different sides to analyze in Oh Nam as well. We’re initially made to empathize with him through a concise flashback sequence of how much he’s been bullied his entire life, and how this has caused him to adapt to his environment by making himself invisible. He starts seeking his relief in the world of anime (particularly the erotic kind) and becomes what one would call a typical otaku. Just in case people aren’t sure what this term entails: it’s a Japanese term which refers to a specific group of very fanatic individuals and it commonly has a bit of a negative connotation as it’s mainly used to indicate people who have become slightly delusional in their fanaticism regarding a certain topic.
Oh Nam doesn’t get to rely on his looks much, but it seems like he’s found peace with it, just like how he’s found peace with his way of living and his virtual relationships, including the one with Mask Girl. As one of her most loyal followers, he always posts encouraging and validating comments, and Mask Girl regularly acknowledges him by his username.
Despite his tendency to get pervertedly passionate about Mask Girl, one thing that I did find surprisingly decent of him was that he actually covered his screen when she started taking her clothes off during that disastrous livestream. While other followers were cheering her on or commenting on how badly she was behaving, his first reaction was to NOT look at her naked body, and this instinctive behavior to respect her privacy made me feel like he did have a pure side – at least it meant that he wasn’t rotten to the core. He became seriously concerned for Mo Mi’s wellbeing and started looking out for her, even though it may have looked like stalking to an outsider. I mean, he even got rid of Motel Guy’s body to keep her involvement in the whole incident a secret.
Same as with Mo Mi, I don’t think he ever imagined ending up in a situation like this, and the adrenaline probably caused him to act without thinking straight, which made the situation even more messy and complicated without intending to do so. Even though I definitely did not condone how he suddenly forced himself onto Mo Mi – and I was really surprised by this because he’d been so respectful towards her before – I keep thinking that that was also him giving in to some feral, long-suppressed desire. He may have regretted it later as well, if he’d been given the chance. In any case, despite his perversion I also can’t find it in myself to completely write Oh Nam off, because I still believe that he wasn’t completely rotten. He genuinely cared about Mo Mi and thought she was beautiful the way she was. He probably showed more sincerity than any other male character in the entire show, so there must have been some good in him, even though it took such perverse forms.
The end of this first chapter, these two episodes, created the first plottwist for me. Honestly after the motel incident I started to think that maybe the story would be about Mo Mi and Oh Nam teaming up to get away with murder and keep Mask Girl’s identity a secret. I guess this was also a reason why Mo Mi killing Oh Nam came as such a surprise, because it just made me go ‘OKAY GUESS NOT🥲’. Honestly, if they’d met under different circumstances and Oh Nam’s actions of keeping an eye on her and following her had come out a bit more subtly, I feel like the two may have made a good team. They definitely had similar issues, they were both ostracized for the way they looked at both hid behind their PC screens and virtual systems of validation to find solace.
The third and fourth episodes, chapter two of the story, takes place a year later, in 2010. To bridge the gap, we are introduced to a new main character, Oh Nam’s mother Kim Kyung Ja (played by Yeom Hye Ran). Accordingly to the structure of every episode, we first get a little background story of her and her relationshionship with her son. We’ve heard her voice before on the phone in Oh Nam’s POV and from there it seems like she’s quite a fierce mom. She keeps scolding him for not sending her money and new clothes like the kids of her peers, and consistently pushes him to get married. When we are introduced to her in person, we learn that there’s a lot of layers to her character that you wouldn’t typically expect from an elderly foul-mouthed hillbilly who’s also a loyal churchgoer. Despite her strong language and awkward way of expressing affection, it’s clear as day how much she cares for her son. You could say she’s the epitome of a tsundere, because she hides her disappointment when her son tells her he wants to live on his own by scolding him even more and even accuses him of ungratefulness. In reality, we see her love shine through her actions: she keeps sending him food and tries to call him as regularly as possible, much to Oh Nam’s own annoyance.
What I found the most interesting when seeing Kyung Ja’s POV was revealed was that she had such an inaccurate image of her son. It’s clear that she had no idea of his perverted tendencies and she consistently told everyone how her son was the sweetest and meekest boy in the world. She may have scolded him for not sending her money or clothes, but on the other hand she told her peers that he did do those things, so there was definitely an aspect of wanting to keep up appearances, as well. The fact that she didn’t know about his lifestyle was proven when she and those two agents got into his house after not being able to contact him for some time, and she saw those naked air dolls lying around. Kyung Ja’s life is turned upside down initially when they discover a dismembered body in Oh Nam’s fridge. Kyung Ja naturally assumes it’s her son, but when it turns out to be someone else (Motel Guy), she starts doing her own research in order to find her son, because it does seem like he’s disappeared after having something to do with that dismembered body.
The sheer effort this lady puts in to locate her son is admirable: she takes computer lessons so she can go through his computer and inevitably stumbles across Mask Girl. When not much later Oh Nam’s body is found and a clear connection is made to Mask Girl, and Kyung Ja starts digging even deeper into her fanbase to get an understanding of her son’s involvement with her, which results in her also making the link between Mask Girl and his colleague Kim Mo Mi. As she deals with her grief for her son, Kyung Ja is taken over by a force of vengeful rage when she acknowledges Mask Girl’s involvement in her son’s death. She decides she won’t rest before she finds this mystery girl and makes her pay for what she did.
After some searching with the help of one of Mask Girl’s online fans who’s trying to keep tabs on her, Kyung Ja comes across a young woman who she starts believing might be Mask Girl. The woman in question has had plastic surgery, and she goes by different names. After following her one time she even spots the same necklace on her as the one she’s seen Mask Girl wear in one of her livestreams, and she takes action to corner ‘the little bitch’. However, the woman claims that she’s not Mask Girl, on the contrary, she shares a hatred for her and would like to assist Kyung Ja in her revenge plan.
The truth about this young woman is explored in the fourth episode, and we are introduced to Kim Choon Ae, who is about the same age as Mo Mi. Again, in consistency with the rest of the episodes, we first get Choon Ae’s background story from when she was a teenager (where’s she played by Kim Sang Ji). Being a bit of an outsider at her new school, she fell head over heels for a male idol trainee in her class, Choi Boo Young (U-KISS’ Lee Joon Young). When they met a couple of years later as Choon Ae was working in a convenience store, Boo Young swayed her into selling cigarettes and alcohol to him and his friends. After that, he kept visiting her and made her feel like she’d become a special person to him. He even invited her to his birthday party at a club one night. Due to her feelings for him, Choon Ae was never able to recognize the signs, not even when he asked her to pay for the entire club night. Seriously, feelings or not, you don’t invite someone to your party and then ask them to pay for everything, that’s BS. But yeah, Choon Ae believed him when he told her he’d pay her back (which of course never happened) and kept supporting him throughout his idol traineeship. After his debut, she once visited his agency to leave him a gift, and then she overheard him talking about her to a groupmate. Much to her shock, she heard him refer to her as his ‘ATM’, aka the person who always gave him money whenever he asked for it. In her rage after realizing how he’s been using her, Choon Ae published damaging and malicious content of him, photos from the club that revealed him smoking and drinking, which ultimately ruined his entire career.
Now, in 2010, Choon Ae is all grown up (and now played by Han Jae Yi). She’s changed her face and name and works mainly as a hostess. One day during a promotion job, she suddenly sees Boo Young and she finds herself approaching and greeting him. Seeing how she looks now, Boo Young was more than willing to immediately get it on with her (🚩) and Choon Ae even lets him stay at her house indefinitely. However, during the months that follow in which Choon Ae builds up a respectable career and salary as a successful hostess, she develops more and more disdain towards her freeloader. He just sits around playing games all day and doesn’t even contribute to the household she so generously offered to share with him.
Choon Ae initially tells Kyung Ja that she met Mo Mi (now played by Nana/Lim Jin Ah) when the latter became a new employee at her hostess bar, and that she basically lost her entire clientele to Mo Mi. However, when we see Choon Ae’s POV, we find out that the two women are actually best friends, and Choon Ae is only trying to get Kyung Ja off her bestie’s trail. Choon Ae and Mo Mi bonded over their shared past, having been ridiculed and taken advantage of for their looks. They also both ended up changing their faces to allow themselves a better life. Mo Mi even trusts Choon Ae with the story of Oh Nam, and Choon Ae proves to be a true friend to Mo Mi by not judging her for it.
While Choon Ae tries to keep Kyung Ja away from Mo Mi, she faces another threatening situation. Boo Young has somehow found out that she was the one who published the pictures that ruined his career. Not only does he refuse to leave her house, he starts physically abusing her. He starts beating her (AND her dog!!🤬🤬), and this escalates on the night Choon Ae and Mo Mi have decided to run away together. The two women end up strangling Boo Young with a dog leash and he ends up dismembered in a suitcase, just like Motel Guy. As they drive away to get rid of the body and hopefully head towards a new life (this is also where Mo Mi tells Choon Ae that she thinks she’s pregnant with Oh Nam’s child), they’re not aware that Kyung Ja is following them by car. One of her informant Mask Girl fans revealed that Choon Ae and Mo Mi were in cahoots together. The episode and this second chapter of the story ends tragically with Choon Ae getting fatally shot by Kyung Ja (that long shot of her being blasted backwards was insane, by the way). She uses her last strength to save Mo Mi from Kyung Ja by knocking the latter out, and then passes away in Mo Mi’s arms. Mo Mi ultimately drives away after pushing the remaining car, with Kyung Ja in it, into the water. We are led to believe that hereby, Kyung Ja has been taken out of the equation. I’m not entirely sure what she did with Choon Ae’s body.
Because there’s still a whole part on Kyung Ja to come, I’ll leave her character relativization until after my analysis of the story’s final part. Let’s talk a bit about Choon Ae instead. There are so many parallels between Choon Ae and Mo Mi that it’s almost freaky, and it’s no surprise they hit it off so well. They both decide to undergo plastic surgery after growing up being ostracized for the way they look, and it’s truly heartwarming to see how close they get. Honestly, at some point I wouldn’t even have been surprised if they had become more than friends, because that’s how emotionally intimate they were. I could’ve totally seen them bring up Mo Mi’s child together, too. Honestly, this part of the story had so many twists it became hard to keep up, first when Choon Ae turned out to know Mo Mi, and then when it was revealed she was actually friends with her, not enemies. If these two girls had met when they were both teenagers, they might’ve been able to find solace in each other and face their situations together from the start.
I did have mixed feelings about her taking in Boo Young, though. I honestly thought she had all the reasons in the world to expose his rotten nature like that, but after seeing for herself what kind of person he was, she still went to him when she recognized him. Was it some sort of weird nurturing thing, like, to make him acknowledge that she’d always been there for him, even after making sure he lost his idol career? It kind of felt like she still found herself drawn to him and she still wanted him to ‘see’ her, even after she’d changed her face, or rather because she’d changed it. At least she succeeded in that, because he agreed to sleep with her right away after he saw her new face (🚩). I couldn’t help but think it was naive of her to assume he’d become a better person after she’d show him some hospitality. On the other hand, that naivety and weakness also made her so incredibly human and realistic in her mixed feelings. Sometimes you just find yourself drawn to someone who you know is bad news, but you can’t help yourself craving for their confirmation and validation. I guess that must have also been the case for Choon Ae. I definitely wouldn’t say she’s a bad person, she helped people who didn’t deserve it because she genuinely wanted to, she cared for them. She and Mo Mi were a platonic match made in heaven, and although I did think they could’ve ran away as soon as they rendered Boo Young unconscious without actually killing him all the way, I was kind of impressed by how they handled him together. The knowing looks of pain and despair they gave each other were quite heart-wrenching, in my opinion. When Kyung Ja came after them, she even went so far as to pretend she was the real Mo Mi in order to save her friend. It was really sad how unfair her death was, as collateral damage to Kyung Ja’s revenge plan.
Can I just say how immensely relieved I was that Ping Ping survived? That little doggie was the most precious thing. I loved how loyal it was to Choon Ae and how it even started barking to warn her that Boo Young was close 😭 When Boo Young kicked her I was literally going 💪🏻🤬💪🏻 at the screen. Mo Mi ended up taking Ping Ping with her and left her at her mother’s house together with her newborn child.
For me, the plot twists in this part of the story lay mostly in that I was continuously misled by who Choon Ae was and what her intentions were. First she was Mask Girl and then she was not, then she was Mask Girl’s enemy and then she was actually her best friend… I kept being pulled into different directions, and this made this part very exciting. The writers definitely played with unexpected twists and turns and it really helped me get even more invested in what was happening.
In the final chapter of the story, episodes five and six, we move on to the years in which Mo Mi is in prison. In 2011, Mask Girl finally turns herself in. We have to assume that she gave birth to her child somewhere before she went to jail, because she is still able to personally deliver her baby (and Ping Ping) to her mother’s house, probably with the intention of turning herself in.
As we’ve seen from the very beginning in Mo Mi’s past, her mother Shim Young Hee (played by Moon Sook) has never been a very warm and loving figure to her. If the two were already barely speaking before the Mask Girl scandal, the ties were completely cut off afterwards. When Mo Mi temporarily disappears from the narrative after entering jail, we get some more insight in her mother’s life through the way she raises her granddaughter.
I don’t know what caused the spark of genius in this particular name-giving, but Mo Mi names her daughter Mi Mo. Mi Mo (as a child played by Kim Ha Neul) grows up as an unproblematic, cheerful child. She sometimes wishes her grandmother would tell her more about her parents, but she’s not really bothered by growing up without them. However, no secret can remain uncovered, and Mi Mo ends up finding out about her mother’s identity and the whole Mask Girl scandal in a rather unfortunate way. Somehow a rumor has been spread around, causing her school friends to all turn on her and she’s suddenly called ‘a murderer’s daughter’ and ‘a monster’ by passersby. As her grandma still keeps her mouth shut, Mi Mo is forced to go in search of the truth all by herself and this brings her to the source through which most people get their information from: the Internet.
Let me just get this straight: Mi Mo is SIX years old in 2017. She has to deal with all this stuff, including the knowledge that her mother is apparently in jail for murdering someone, all by herself at the age of SIX. She has NO ONE to fall back on. Her grandmother refuses to explain anything, and she just has to find ways to process the whole thing by herself. With her six-year old brain, it is nowhere near possible to make sense of this, as she’s simply too young to understand anything. Mi Mo is left to her own devices and starts developing problematic behavior. We see her switch from attempting to strangle herself to dancing in front of her mirror wearing a mask – she goes through different phases in trying to come to terms with the whole Mask Girl/mom thing and I don’t think it’s very surprising that she grows up to be a bit of a problematic youth with delinquent tendencies.
After transferring to a different school once again, teen Mi Mo (now played by Shin Ye Seo) finds herself seated next to a girl named Kim Ye Choon (played by Kim Min Seo). While they’re both initially reluctant to get along, Ye Choon gradually becomes more interested in Mi Mo as she discovers her ‘darker’ side.
Ye Choon is the oldest of a family of five, with two younger siblings that take up most of her parents’ attention. As the oldest child, she is expected to help more around the house and assist in taking care of her siblings. Ye Choon is a typical teenager so she finds it all a bit bothersome and craves for a bit more adventure in her life. When Mi Mo appears, Ye Choon finds herself drawn to her as Mi Mo seems to have a bit of a dark past. She doesn’t have parents and it seems like she gets into trouble a lot. She even has scars of cutting marks on her wrist, which Ye Choon finds fascinating. In her own naïve way, Ye Choon starts approaching Mi Mo by making up things about her own life, such as that her dad is abusive. She even attempts to cut her own wrist just to prove to Mi Mo that they are alike.
Through Che Yoon’s persistence, the two girls gradually grow closer and develop a close friendship. Mi Mo eventually even tells Ye Choon about her mother, under the condition that she can never tell anyone else. Not long after that, the rumor about Mi Mo being Mask Girl’s daughter suddenly starts getting around her school again, and Mi Mo immediately turns on Ye Choon – after all, she’s the only one who knew about it. This is also when she finds out Ye Choon has been lying about her dire family situation, and Mi Mo’s trust in her crumbles completely. Now there’s only one person left for her to go to – the sweet tteokbokki grandma who’s helped her through hard times ever since she was a child.
I’ve been looking forward to this part of my analysis, because there’s so much to say about their respective perspectives.
First of all, I think we can all agree that Mi Mo is probably the biggest victim of this entire story. Even when it must have been Mo Mi’s intention to have her child grow up with her grandmother so that she wouldn’t have to live under Mask Girl’s shadow, this little girl’s life was ruined before she even reached an age at which she could make sense of things all by herself. We see clearly that little Mi Mo didn’t have a single bad tendency in her, there was no indication of being ‘rotten from the start’ as her grandmother had described Mo Mi (although in Mo Mi’s case that also wasn’t true). It was so incredibly cruel that this child of all people was made to suffer under the reputation of her mother while she didn’t even grow up with her mother. Her mother wasn’t even there to directly influence her, she’d never met her, so how could people automatically assume that she was a ‘bad seed’ from the start? I always find it so sickening when people start portraying parents’ misdeeds on their innocent children. Mi Mo was literally isolated and ended up having no choice but to rely on the few people that did show her kindness, even though it often resulted in betrayal. It was because of her trust issues caused by this constant betrayal that she immediately condemned Ye Choon. After all, this was how she’d been living her life ever since it came out that she was Mask Girl’s daughter. Whenever people found out about it, they always responded in the same way, and it was natural that this messed Mi Mo up.
I seriously have no words for how messed up it was that Mi Mo had to deal with this all by herself. I’ll say something more general about this in terms of all the main characters later, but how could her grandmother not even have supported her after this came out? She clearly saw how she started behaving, but instead of reprimanding her she should’ve realized that she needed TLC more than anything at that point. Instead she just let Mi Mo do her own thing and become a delinquent, just as she’d let Mo Mi develop her own issues. I think it’s safe to say that, despite her good intentions and hidden feelings of affection towards both her daughter and granddaughter, Shim Young Hee was definitely not fit to raise a child. She was more like a strict governness than a warm (grand)mother, no wonder how both the girls she raised turned out so estranged. I just felt so sorry for Mi Mo that she was made to go through this all by herself at the age of SIX, because that was completely messed up.
While I think it’s easy to condemn Ye Choon for not exactly stimulating Mi Mo’s trust issues by lying about her own situation, I couldn’t help but relate to how she was feeling so much. Honestly, I’ve never a more accurate depiction of a teenager than Ye Choon. You just need to keep in mind that the way she behaved was so typical for a kid her age. Honestly, I recognize it from when I was in the first years of high school. I remember there was this group I hung out with that started doing Wicca, and I just assumed that I would have to participate in that if I wanted to be part of their group. I never stopped to think about what Wicca actually was and how it could get seriously dark, it was just something I apparently had to do in order to get closer to these people. I even remember just nodding along when being told me I had to do an initiation ritual and whatnot. Luckily I never ended up joining them, also because they were definitely not my ‘friends’, but I just remember that feeling of just going along with something before even thinking about what it actually meant and what I was actually doing. It also has to do with the naïve thought that showing you have things in common automatically creates a stronger bond with someone. You could just see how little awareness Ye Choon had of everything while she cheerfully showed Mi Mo her make-believe wrist scars and how she just made up those stories about her father hitting her mom. She didn’t stop to think about how messed up that was. Everything she did was purely to get closer to Mi Mo and to give her the impression that she understood her situation. Don’t get me wrong, I went ‘oh God, Ye Choon🤦🏻♀️’ on a very regular basis, but I just understood so well where her behavior came from that I couldn’t even fully blame her for it. What mattered the most was that it came from a good place and it was never her intention to betray Mi Mo.
Honestly I felt like the friendship between Mi Mo and Ye Choon was a karmic reincarnation of the one between Mo Mi and Choon Ae. I mean, their names even share the same syllables. There’s even an interesting parallel in the introductions of Choon Ae and Mi Mo – they’re both made fun of for their unusual names by their classmates when they introduce themselves to their new class.
Ye Choon accepts Mi Mo just as naturally as Choon Ae accepted Mo Mi, and both pairs develop a very meaningful emotional bond. You could even go so far as to link Choon Ae and Ye Choon by saying that Choon Ae dealt with physical abuse and Ye Choon lied about dealing with physical abuse.
Things like these just made me think about every little detail of this show, and I think it’s genius how they added these references and parallels, linking all the chapters of Mo Mi’s life, including Mi Mo’s together like that.
In terms of consistencies, I don’t know if this was intentional (it probably was), but I found it interesting how almost everyone was called ‘Kim’ in this story. When looking at the episode titles, which consist of the name of the main character that’s featured in that particular episode, ‘Kim’ is definitely the predominant name, even though none of the people named Kim are actually related to each other. There’s Kim Mo Mi, Kim Mi Mo, Kim Kyung Ja, Kim Choon Ae, Kim Ye Choon. I can’t help but feel like there’s a reason for it, to tie everyone together in some sort of cosmic way.
In episode six, the final episode of the final chapter, the series focusses on Mo Mi again while she serves her jail time between 2012 and 2023. After an initially rocky start to win the respect of the most influential prisoner in her cell block, Mo Mi (now played by Go Hyun Jung) has devoted herself to display exemplary behavior, even going so far as to pretend she’s converted herself to Christianism. As the possibility of an early parole approaches, she first receives a letter notifying of her daughter’s misconduct, and not much later she is confronted with the real danger at hand, and possibly the biggest plot twist of the latter half of the show: the return of Kyung Ja.
Because Kyung Ja didn’t die. She managed to get out of that sinking car just in time and with that, the final insanity switch in her mind finally flipped. After initially feeling lost when she finds out Mo Mi has been locked up and she has no way to deal with her lingering feelings of vengeance, the cruellest method falls into her lap when she discovers Mi Mo. After changing her own face (which I didn’t even realize because she’s portrayed by the same actress throughout the show) and name, she approaches Mi Mo on purpose. To the child herself, she becomes that sweet tteokbboki grandma who’s always there for her when she’s sad, but we see through her POV that she is actually the person who turns everyone against her overnight, and she’s the one who spreads the rumor about her being Mask Girl’s daughter, knowing Mi Mo would start suspecting Ye Choon. Kyung Ja’s new goal is to keep punishing Mo Mi while she’s in jail, through her daughter, her own granddaughter. To be fair I’m not actually sure Kyung Ja was aware of the fact that Mi Mo was conceived by Oh Nam, and I don’t know if that knowledge would’ve changed anything. In any case, it was enough for her to know that she was Mo Mi’s child.
After visiting Mo Mi in prison as part of a Bible-reading volunteer group and revealing her evil plan to harm her daughter, Mo Mi goes to great lengths to escape prison and go after her.
The final showdown takes place at Kyung Ja’s remote house in the mountains where Mo Mi, her mother and even Ye Choon come together to save Mi Mo. In the process, Mo Mi, her mother, and Kyung Ja all end up getting killed.
Again, I just couldn’t fathom who messy this whole thing must have been for Mi Mo. Not only does the last person she thought she could trust, the sweet tteokbokki grandma, turn out to be a lunatic who wanted to take revenge on her mother, she even has to watch her attack her own grandmother with a knife and, after finally meeting her biological mother for the first time, she immediately loses her again in front of her eyes. Mo Mi takes the bullet Kyung Ja aimed at Mi Mo in the back and dies in her daughter’s arms. This final part was so freaking intense and despite the fact that we’d seen hesitation in Kyung Ja’s eyes when it came to harming Mi Mo, her insanity just came to a climax here.
I’m just glad that Mi Mo turned out okay, and that she was taken in by Ye Choon’s parents (who already had three kids = superheroes). I just wished she wouldn’t have had to go through any of this mess.
To finally get to Kyung Ja, it’s safe to say that this woman completely lost herself in her grief and turned completely insane. The lengths she went through even after Mo Mi was locked up, still not granting her some respite and reflection on what she’d done showed just how serious she was about getting justice for her son.
Despite her extreme actions, I couldn’t help but notice that she also wasn’t like the typical villain without a conscience who just mercilessly went on to execute her revenge. As a matter of fact, she is very well aware that Mi Mo has done nothing wrong, she even tells her so. We also see her flinch with hesitation when she acknowledges Mi Mo’s goodness on several occasions.
I won’t relativize everything she’s done, because she also had a hand in taking several innocent lives that had nothing to do with her revenge. But I do remember that, when she was first introduced in the third episode, I spent the entire episode feeling so sorry for her. I kept thinking ‘oh that poor woman’ for what she went through after losing her son. Her grief was absolutely heart-wrenching, and it was incredible how she could still muster the energy and strength to devote herself to finding out what had happened to Oh Nam, even going the extra mile of taking computer classes to get into his mind better. Everything she did came from the feelings of a bereaved mother, and I couldn’t forget about that. Her revenge didn’t make her blind to the fact that she was making an innocent child suffer. I think it was just that she’d gone so far already that she wasn’t able to allow herself to get swayed by sentimentality anymore. She’d decided that she would devote the rest of her life to punishing Mask Girl, and Mi Mo allowed her to keep doing that even after Mo Mi had already admitted to her own misdeeds. She was too far gone to be able to think straight anymore and this was the only way she could think of that would help her find closure in coming to terms with her loss. Of course, I definitely think punishing Mo Mi by killing her best friend, mother and even attempting to kill her daughter was very excessive. It was probably for the better that the police shot her in the end, because she just wouldn’t have stopped.
To end my already quite elaborate story and character analyses, I just want to make a final comment about the ending, because as I said it brought the whole story full circle in my opinion.
In the final scene, we see Mi Mo watching an old video of her mom when she was little, the one that we’ve been shown in the first episode during Mo Mi’s character introduction. It shows Mo Mi as a little girl participating in a dance/talent contest. When the host asks her what she wants to be what she grows up, little Mo Mi says, ‘I want to become someone who is loved by another person’. I mean. If this doesn’t sum up the entire show, I don’t know what does. Because when you think of it, every single main character in every single episode in this story is the same. They all grow up as people without any love or admiration from other. In almost all cases, they didn’t even grow up with the ‘normal’ unconditional love and warmth from their parents. No one has a special person they can fall back on, a life partner or whatever you wish to call it. Every action from every single main character ultimately stemmed from the desire to be loved by someone. It just all clicked together when little Mo Mi said that. I hadn’t even expected her to say that, I was expecting her to simply say ‘I want to become famous’. The fact that Mo Mi, as a little girl, was already able to hit the nail on the head and phrase the desire of possibly every person on this planet like that, as an innocent child’s wish, that just wrapped up the entire story with such a powerful final message. It really felt as if everything came full circle right then and there, as Mi Mo was tearfully watching her mother’s innocent smile, unaware of the dark future that awaited her.
‘I just want to become someone who is loved by another person’. As simple as that.
Apologies for the detailed story summary and analysis, but there are just so many parts that I wanted to touch upon and I want the show to be acknowledged for its genius in its entirety. Besides the many parallels and interesting character developments, I was really impressed by the show’s way of storytelling, namely the way it constantly added new POVs to thicken the plot. The structure of the storybuilding reminded me of a book I read last year, ‘How High We Go In The Dark’ by Sequoia Nagamatsu, which follows the development of a specific global crisis. Rather than create an entire story within the time period in which that crisis occurs, it builds up a timeline by placing every single chapter in a different time period, phase and part of the world to create a complete history of how that global crisis develops into the future, and how ultimately generations in the far future are still influenced by the way their predecessors coped during that crisis. I recognized this structure in Mask Girl because it shows how far one single inciting incident can stretch so far into the future and how much it can keep influencing people’s lives years later. Even after Mask Girl isn’t a contemporary phenomenon anymore, people still remember her and retain their associations of her. I thought it was very interesting to build a story about an incident that completely spins out of control, ultimately causing the main involved person to get stuck in a situation she can’t escape from.
I gained so much insight from this story, but also so many questions. When is someone good or bad? What is good or bad behavior? Does being connected to someone problematic automatically make you problematic as well? Is evilness or rottenness innate or created?
In response to the last question, I’d definitely say that in the case of Mask Girl people tended to develop a dark side due to the influence of other people. Every main character of each episode became the way they were because of how other people had treated them ever since they were young, in addition to the lack of a solid support system. No one was born with the urge to wreak havoc, no one simply woke up one day and decided to go kill someone, it was all much more complicated than that. With the sole exception of Kyung Ja, even when they had strong negative feelings towards another person, no one considered murder as a first option. Of course, this doesn’t take away the fact that almost every character does end up committing a serious crime throughout this story, but I also feel like this has to do with the theme of how people act when they are pushed over the edge in extreme situations.
In terms of genre, Mask Girl is definitely a very turbulent and emotional series and it depicts a lot of violence and both physical and sexual assault. In contrast, I found the level of nudity quite mild: they mostly just showed butts and only mentioned boobs and it wasn’t nearly as explicit as for example in Somebody. I remember that when I first saw the trailer on Netflix, which only features a scene from episode 1, I just thought the whole series would be about this woman who was secretly an Internet celebrity and how she had to keep that a secret. I even thought it was a comedy when I started watching, only to go full, ‘What the Jesus Christ was that?!’ at the end of the second episode. The story took such an unexpected turn and went in such a different direction that what I’d expected. In hindsight I think it was more about Mask Girl as a symbol rather than a still-active phenomenon.
Structuring it like a timeline in which Mask Girl goes from a big hit to a vague memory (even though the associations with her misdeeds remain well-known) was a genius decision. It also highlights the biased media presentation of how Mask Girl’s story becomes subject to the public opinion. Rumors about her are spread by people who don’t even know what really happened, no one knew her and Oh Nam and no one was aware of the circumstances they were in at that moment. No one thinks about how it may have been an accident, or that she was defending herself while being raped. The only thing that matters to the public is that she killed him, and so she must be a cold-blooded killer.
Even when it gets out that her child goes to a certain school, no one even considers the fact that the child is innocent and that she didn’t even grow up with the direct influence of her mother. None of that matters, everyone is just instinctively driven to keep their own kids away from her.
It gives such a painfully accurate depiction of typical human behavior, especially in the context of crisis and scandal. I found it quite enlightening.
My only personal qualm with this show is probably that, despite its impressive cinematography and overall structure, it definitely wasn’t a light watch. It was incredibly emotionally loaded and featured extreme depictions of aggressive and escalated behavior. It did feel like I had to brace myself nonstop throughout the entire series, because even the smallest sweet or touching moment would quickly evolve into something dark and heavy again. I personally like to have a balance between light and dark moments. Although this series definitely makes a strong statement about the nature of people, the constant focus on human perversity and insanity wasn’t always that easy to swallow.
As I’ve now tackled all my comments on the story itself, I’d like to mention some practical details I found noteworthy. First of all, I was intrigued by the opening sequence. I’ve never seen anything like it. I always love it when they come up with something abstract which still contains clear visual references to the story. I think it captured the estranging aspect of living a double life, changing your appearance, and the (sometimes unwanted) attention from other people quite well. It was very eerie and unsettling in combination with the music, but I still played it each time to discover more recognizable images, like how the lines of red blood seeping through the crevices around floor tiles (literally depicted in the motel scene) turns into computer keys (a reference to the Internet world of Mask Girl but also Mo Mi’s office job) and how that in turn changes into teeth and a mouth and a woman covering her face with a mask. The metaphorical act of putting on a mask also gets a double meaning, because it’s really not just about Mask Girl with her signature mask. It’s a metaphor for hiding who you truly are, and this didn’t only apply to Mask Girl. Every single main character was wearing a mask, everyone kept something about their true identity hidden, whether it was actually changing their identity or lying about their home situation. Everyone pretended to be someone else in a way, which tied every single character together in an incredibly intricate way.
I also want to give a huge shoutout to the cinematography because it was AMAZING. Honestly, it was an absolute masterpiece to look at in terms of how each shot was framed, because that in itself told a very clear story. A show that looks good in terms of how it was filmed always gets bonus points from me.
Let’s get on with the cast comments, shall we?
Honestly, I’m surprised that this was Lee Han Byul’s first ever drama. I could’ve sworn I knew her from something else. In any case, I really liked her portrayal of the OG Mo Mi. Especially the way she managed to retain the layered personality of someone who sometimes just couldn’t contain her rage against stupid people. I found her very refreshing in that she wasn’t a typical ‘boohoo, people think I’m ugly’ kind of female lead, she would literally charge at someone and call them out in public, and that was really gratifying. She lay a very good foundation for the other two Mo Mis to build on, especially in terms of the aggressive tendencies. Also, maybe this is weird to say, but I still find it strange how people hated on Mo Mi’s face so much. I personally didn’t even find her that ugly (hello, that bone structure??) and honestly, I bet people would give so much for a body like hers. It was repeated throughout the series that she never had anything done to her body, it was only ever her face people didn’t like. I wonder how people have so much time on their hands to literally pick one specific part of someone’s appearance that doesn’t agree with them and focus all their hatefulness on that. In any case, I liked Lee Han Byul’s performance a lot and I hope that Mask Girl contributes in kickstarting her career and that I’ll get to see her more often in the future!
To be fair, I had seen on MyDramaList that Ahn Jae Hong was in this, but it still took me a long close-up of Oh Nam to realize it was him. I guess I’m just so used to young people in K-Dramas always having perfect skin, but here that all went out of the window and that’s probably also something that contributed in making everything so realistic. I mainly know Ahn Jae Hong from Fight For My Way, but he’s also been in Legend of the Blue Sea. This is definitely the best role I’ve seen him in so far, even if it’s just in terms of expressivity. I would’ve never even imagined him as a character like Oh Nam, but they gave him an incredible transformation. It’s a pity he only appeared in the first couple of episodes, even though of course his ‘legacy’ lived on in Mi Mo, although she would never know him. It’s kind of sad, I wonder how he’d have felt knowing Mo Mi gave birth to the child that was conceived when he forced himself on her. Anyways, I’ve discussed his character elaborately enough in the above section. I was really impressed by his performance and I’m definitely going to see more of him, so let’s see what more he has in store!
If there was anyone who impressed me the most in this series, it was without a doubt Yeom Hye Ran. First of all, the actress herself is only 47. How the heck did they make her look so much like a grandma? The transformation tactics in this series were amazing. I see I’ve only seen her before in Goblin, but there are a lot of big drama titles on her repertoire and I’m also going to be watching a couple of those, so I’m excited to see more of her. I was blown away by this woman, how she was able to exude so much tenacity through such a small body, haha. Her expressions were incredible, her energy was incredible. For some reason I really liked how she was so foul-mouthed because it became almost funny at times how she was cussing everyone and everything out. Combining that with the other side of her, for example after she had to identify her son’s body just made me internally applaud her versatility. How have I not seen more of this woman. She was truly amazing.
Apparently, Nana (or Lim Jin Ah) is a former member of Orange Caramel! I haven’t seen anything with her before, but it was nice seeing her as Mo Mi 2.0 because she exuded such strength in finally being able to express the confidence she’d previously only felt as Mask Girl. I really enjoyed the scene where she was dancing together with Choon Ae and they were having so much fun together. After she went to jail, I liked how that confidence got a slightly sharper edge and her tenacious tendencies came out more, for example when she kept charging at that one woman from Ahn Eun Sook’s crew, even though she kept getting locked up for it, she kept coming back for her. She suddenly managed to become intimidating, which I thought was pretty cool. Her emotional variety, which came out for example in the scene where Choon Ae died in her arms, was also impressive. I think she did a really good job.
I see that Han Jae Yi was also in Something in the Rain, Room No. 9, Hotel Del Luna and Melting Me Softly, which I’ve all watched in the last couple of years, but I don’t immediately remember her from anything. I may have recognized her face from any of those, but this is the first time I’ve really noticed her individual performance. I found Choon Ae to be a typical tragic heroine who, and maybe this puts it a but cruelly, just couldn’t learn from her mistakes. I loved how she was such a great friend to Mo Mi when Mo Mi needed it the most, especially after taking on her new identity. To find someone to bond over that after she must have felt so alone, it must have truly created something special between them. Honestly, I could see a whole Thelma and Louise scenario for them where they drove around together. I don’t think either of them would’ve craved something more than that. It was sad how she came to her end, I thought her character could’ve done with more validation for the goodness in her heart. I see from her dramas on MyDramaList that I’m going to see her in more dramas in the future, so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for her there!
My girl Kim Min Seo is going places! I previously only knew her from the ODG YouTube channel, after which I saw her properly act for the first time in Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, and now she’s in this! As I’ve elaborated, I really related to Ye Choon’s character because she was such a child but she still had such an urgency to help her best friend in need, even when the situation turned out to be much more dangerous than she could’ve ever anticipated. Honestly, I was terrified that she’d get stuck in the middle of the crossfire, but luckily she survived and she and Mi Mo even got to be like sisters since Ye Choon’s parents took her in. She’s still only fourteen years old, so I guess she still has to grow into an actor a bit more. So far I’ve only seen her play stubborn teenagers, so I hope she’ll get the chance to portray even more challenging and mature roles in the future. I’m rooting for her!
I haven’t seen Shin Ye Seo in anything yet, but I probably will. I thought she did a really good job portraying the different sides of Mi Mo’s character as a teenager, both the softer one and the edgier one. Despite her looking so sweet when she smiles, she also managed to pull off the intimidating youth delinquent vibe very well. With everything that came her way (thanks to Kyung Ja), I had nothing but compassion and respect for how Mi Mo had to deal with all of that by herself. Especially in that final episode, when she meets her biological mom for the first time, only to immediately lose her right in front of her eyes, that girl really got some severely unnecessary trauma thrown onto her plate and I’m just happy that after that, she at least had a new family in Ye Choon’s. I hope she gets more opportunities to show off her skills!
Go Hyun Jung looks so familiar to me, but I haven’t seen her in anything before. I thought she pulled of the Final Mo Mi very well, because she really mixed the first two versions of her characters and merged them into one. I found it interesting how she apparently just cut off her hair and lost the necessity to flaunt the beauty that had been such a driving force in her life so far, but she still retained that kind of manic energy, especially in her calmer scenes. When she was calm and obedient, I felt the manic bubbling underneath her surface more than when she lashed out, for some reason. Her energy was really good. I also liked seeing her portray the motherly feelings towards Mi Mo, because we hadn’t seen that in Mo Mi at all before she got Kyung Ja’s letter notifying her of her daughter’s misconduct in school. The way she literally jumped in front of her daughter without a second hesitation proved enough. I actually found myself feeling sorry for the fact they could never spend time together. I would’ve liked some Mo Mi-Mi Mo mother-daughter scenes at the end, but it wasn’t meant to be, unfortunately. I liked her performance.
Me being me, I can’t finish a review without mentioning people I like who made a cameo, so let me just quickly give a shoutout to Choi Daniel, lol. I love him too much to ignore him. It was kind of refreshing to see him as a less than ethical character here, although I did appreciate at least he never directly hated on Mo Mi’s looks or talked badly about her. It was generally icky of him to have an affair with his employee, but he did remain sort of respectable towards Mo Mi when he apologized to her via text. At least he didn’t cuss her out or something. I just kept thinking that, should this event have happened later on in the stories, he might have actually ended up like motel and idol guy, but I guess it was fortunate for him that he escaped the crossfire just in time, although I did feel like being betrayed by his affections played a part in driving Mo Mi over the edge. I just liked seeing him, even if it was just for two episodes.
I guess I’ve now come to the official end of this review. For such a short drama I sure wrote a lot! It took me an entire day again✌🏻I’m glad I gave this drama a shot because it turned out to be so different from what I’d expected and I came out with a lot of new thoughts and things to process. Coming out of the initial layer of ‘what the heck did I just watch’, I feel like there are a lot of valuable messages in this series, and as I mentioned I really appreciated the ultra-human way in which all the characters were written. It’s not often that you see a K-Drama in which basically all the men are depicted as scumbags – I’m not surprised it’s based on a webtoon written by a woman, lol. It was screenwritten and directed by a man, though! I am very impressed by it. Gosh, how I enjoy the feeling of discovering hidden gems!
I will be watching another newly discovered recent Netflix K-Drama next. I’m guessing it’ll also be quite short, so who knows how soon I’ll get to write my next review? Stay tuned and find out!
Bye-bee! x
