Bridal Mask, eps 3-4

Better late than never, here is my humongous write-up on eps 3-4 of Bridal Mask. If I enjoyed ep 1 and loved ep 2, eps 3 and 4 got me in a fever pitch not seen since the glorious mid-days of City Hunter, and perhaps not even then. In many ways, these episodes seemed like the nadir for Kang To (who is a protagonist but not a hero) and the end of episode 4 showed the hint of hope for redemption and climbing out of the pit...



Mok Dan is left wandering in the woods on her own, falling down unconscious and I am left with three thoughts (a) Jin Se Yeon is gorgeous (b) even if she finds out Kang To is the boy she's been waiting her, this ordeal is going to be hard to overlook and (c) I know Kang San is busy and all but leaving a severely wounded woman deep in the woods is not one of his brightest ideas.














Luckily she hears Shunji's organ (OK, that sounds bad :P) and stumbles into his school and he takes care of her. The contrast is pretty clear - KT caused her to be this way, Shunji is healing her. In any other story (even a kdrama), Shunji would be her OTP, and he is certainly the sanest of the main characters, but you know that is not in the cards. Of course, oddly, because of who Mok Dan is (daughter of a revolutionary leader), Shunji has no chance with her, however kind he is, simply because he is Japanese.














Oh, the contrast and irony! I love this sequence. Also, this drama is ridiculously gorgeous and noirish, it's unreal.








More Shunji taking care of Dan, for h/c afficionados like myself (side note - I was always rather indifferent to Park Ki Woong prior to this, but he's got another fan with this drama).











As I said on tumblr, evil never looked so good. Maybe Kang To should send a thank you to Gaksital and other revolutionaries, as running after them clearly keeps his body super-fit.





"Is there a woman in your closet?"
"Umm, yeah."
"Huh, I thought it was our relationship that was there."








Once again, this is just pretty.








This was the most horrifying, painful sequence in the episodes so far - KT, desperate to catch Gaksital (because his own life is now tied to that) and prove his loyalty, rounding up all the men at the market, and one of them mouthing off and KT hitting him over and over. And when Kang San tries to stop him, KT loses it and starts kicking his disabled (or at least as far as he knows) brother over and over and over. I love KS' face there because some of his grief is for KT himself, for the fact that KS' actions (and I don't mean being a hero, but pretending to be handicapped and needing care and surgery) are what led to this moment. You know, it is not surprising KT lashed out at the brother he loves - if you live for so long with violence and rage, it is going to steep everywhere, become the norm. You can't just leave it all at work. But you know what struck me the most in this scene? It was Kang To screaming at his mother "I am not worthless Lee Kang To, I am Sato Hiroshi [his Japanese name]." KT clearly has so many issues and what he hates most are not rebels but himself and his own sense of lack and powerlessness - that is what he is trying to bury. By helping the Japanese, by trying to be Japanese, he wants to erase everything about himself and be a new person entirely, which is, of course, not possible. We carry our psychic baggage always.



































Kang To torturing a subject and Kang San listening outside, knowing that this is, in large part his fault, and reliving his own torture. It's an interesting circle - Kang San got tortured and set off a chain reaction which resulted in his little brother becoming a torturer. The thing with Kang San is that my reaction to him is as the same as to Kang To - I care for him and I pity him and I can understand him but not excuse him. By that I mean is he let KT sell his soul for nothing, to become a monster for a lie. If Kang To knew his big brother was not crazy (he was bitter at the rebellion taking his family away but also driven by the practical, urgent concern of providing for his family now that he had two people to support and keep from starving and get expensive treatment for one of them) do you think he would have ever joined the Japanese? Of course not. And Kang San knew it and still let him join. Whatever his fears about KT turning him over to the Japanese now, they wouldn't have yet been there before KT joined. Not to mention what KS' actions did to their mother. I love the man, but he's just as much of a wreck as KT.























KT confronts Gaksital who...saves his life. You see the first desperate cracks in KT's ordered Universe and his passionate bewilderment.






































I especially love how he cradles him - awww, sibling love. Dysfunctional beyond belief sibling love.








The flaskback to KS, tortured and faking insanity, brief though it was, was the stuff nightmares are made of.





Here is KS with his helper (his father's bodyguard).








I loved this sequence in the club for many reasons - on the shallow front, Joo Won looks damn edible cheekily singing OR brooding. But mainly, I loved it because you can see him panicking as his old certainties are swept away and he has to rearrange his basic worldview - the man he is hunting saved him, the Korean hero saved a Japanese collaborator - what how why? In many ways, KT is still so very young, despite everything he's done and everything that was done to him.


















































His bar friend casually says that if not family, who'd save him, and lightbulbs go off in KT's head. Yes, boy, think!








This scene was so painful (but then what scene in this drama isn't?). KS almost being caught, taking refuge in his 'insanity' and KT's horrified certainty becoming confusion and then bitter remorse and self-hatred when their mother tells him the bleeding is because people take out their rage toward KT on his brother and KS lying there, self-hating as KT stands there self-hating. I think there is not enough therapy in the world for this family.





























I loved this slomo sequence. Methinks Rie (who is so awesome, I have no words) likes what she sees, though I am with gwinna487 and think she should hook up with her hot samurai helper.























God, and that is why nepotism is bad. Chief might be a bad guy but at least he's fairly competent. Jr. has the brain power of an amoeba on a slow day, a temper with no trigger, and the ugliest moustache known to man. Props to KT for having balls of steel though.








This sequence!!! I love that Dan cherishes that knife so much that she sneaks back into town for it despite being hunted. But you know what I love the most? That KT finds out the truth - he catches her and does his usual 'where is Gaksital, this is your lair blahblah' speech and scoffs when she tells him she just came back for the knife only to see the knife and realize who this is. The way his face changes, as if the glib monster is buried now and the feeling, suffering man is out - I love.
































Dan doesn't waste time wondering what is the matter with her pursuer but escapes, and KT, overwhelmed, remembers his first love. They really were adorable back then (only in this kdrama would the 'meet cute' involve the frozen corpse of her mother) but you know what struck me? Sure, they were adorable and together for a month and she was his first love (he is the one who saved her life by asking his father to take her with them, she'd probably have frozen to death) but I think another reason for why she is so important to him is that that is the last time in his life that was happy - her (seeming) death is when they entered the world of family loss and privation and eventually now. And of course, the fact that he saw her die in front of his eyes as a result of being with them, even as he tried to save her with his life (and seriously, I didn't realize the knife was his father's - that's even more amazing) - yeah, that's going to leave a permanent mark on your soul.



























































And then, of course, he remembers all he had done to this girl he begged to survive no matter what, now that they met as unknowing adults - hunted her, tortured her, etc. Yeah, being a bastard has its own punishment.











In the club with Shunji, asking him what he would do if he found out the woman he had to kill was his first love, the one you thought dead. And declaring, over and over, that he can do it, he can kill her. With every declaration, the falsity rings more and more - it is KT desperately trying to deny his humanity, to convince himself he can do it, to escape to the safety of his bleak but orderly world, raging at the fact that he knows he can't and won't do it. And also, possibly, looking for a smackdown out of some self-punishing impulse. And Shunji obliges. Is this the first crack in their friendship? Please say no!























Kang To overhearing his mother praying for him praying that any punishment for his sins falls on her head instead. You know, this drama really promotes the idea that no matter what, ultimately you have your family and they will love you even when you are crazy or have gone off the deep end into evilsville.








Oh, this scene! I bawled. This is my favorite scene in all four eps so far - Kang To seeking solace from his big brother, knowing he won't find it there, but not being able to stop despite it (or because of it), weeping, plaintively calling 'hyung' into KS' back like a little kid, and KS trying to contain his own misery, pretend he is not feeling anything. You get KT's desperation so much here - how he hates what he is and what he does but cannot stop, and his explanation about how being a rickshaw driver barely even put food into three mouths despite all the cursing and beatings and hard work and for someone like him, with no education, connection and background, the only way to survive is to serve the Japanese. Oh honey. I can't condone his actions, but I can't blame him for wanting to be doing the beating rather than being beaten, and for wanting to survive and provide for his family. Ah, what a mess. Especially since a large part of it is for KS (when he says he didn't mind doing whatever because KS was getting an education - my heart! Clearly KS' insanity broke something in him for good) who doesn't actually need it. All KT's rage makes so much more sense - he's angry at himself, at the world, at everything - so that anger permanently seeks an outlet.






































In the morning. I loved the adorable family meal and how his mother and brother put all this food in front of him (in a way, for KS, this is the one way he can show his caring and his sorriness, as he cannot give up his disguise).












































But it's Gaksital and so we can't end on a happy note. The circus performers decide to assassinate Kang To so as he'd stop hunting Mok Dan (little do they know...). Umm, great idea, guys! Kang To fights assassins for a living and you what...twirl batons? That is going to end well.








Kang To shoots the masked figure aiming for his heart with a knife (not that I blame him) but I love how quickly his set coldness turns to horror as he sees the knife. He lifts the mask to see Dan. I love how he cradles her as the most precious thing in the world and looks around in utter, soul-stripping panic. He always looks so impossibly young when he lets his shields down. Yeah, sure, you'd be able to kill her, Kang To. And I can swim across the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, that's a problem in KT's line of work - personal loyalties. You know, maybe I like him because he throws himself into everything, service the Japanese or caring for someone 100%.








































Before this drama started, I was hoping for an offspring of Capital Scandal and City Hunter but what I got is more awesome than either. I think it has more in common with CS that CH, but the big difference is that this is so much darker. And I love it, because it is set in dark time and deals with dark choices. This is my drama of 2012, for sure.