Mask

Mask was something I tried because I was a little curious about the premise - doppelgangers, dark plots, secret identities - but soon enough I was swept in. The danger and the deceiving made Mask so addictive, so it's up there with some of my favourite thrillers, but that isn't to say I thought it was perfect.

Byun Ji-sook is a ordinary woman who works in a department store. Her family have been deep in debt for years, so Ji-sook is often desperate for money. It's fair to say she doesn't have the best life. Well, Ji-sook happens to have a doppelganger, Seo Eun-ha. Seo Eun-ha is fairly wealthy and newly engaged to abrasive, germophobic Choi Min-woo. She has a secret - she is having an affair with Min Seok-hoon, Min-woo's brother-in-law, and they have a plot to destroy him. Well, they had a plot. Then Eun-ha dies. Seok-hoon has to come up with a quick solution to keep all his evil plans a float - and that's where Ji-sook comes in. Seok-hoon blackmails her into becoming Eun-ha, staging an accident and putting Eun-ha's body in her place, therefore pronouncing Ji-sook dead. So Ji-sook has no choice but to do as Seok-hoon says, and meanwhile she and Min-woo fall deeply in love. Soon enough, Ji-sook has buried herself so deep into this tangle of secrets that she now has no hope of escaping.

I'm frankly more suited to reviewing romantic-comedies over romantic-thrillers, so I'm kind of out of my depth here. Bear with me! I love thrillers, and Mask was delicious. The show experimented with morals (I loved how Ji-sook's story was all about her struggle with her conscience against her actions), and I liked how it portrayed every character to have their own darkness - whether or not you can perceive someone as good or bad almost entirely depends on your perspective. For example, Ji-sook was undoubtedly a good person, unless you imagine that she stole Eun-ha's identity out of greed rather than due to blackmail. It's intriguing to consider that everyone you trust and love may have a second face (and no, I don't mean a doppelganger) that you don't know about. It gave most of the characters depth and little clarity, which is one of the things that made Mask so addictive.
  Seok-hoon was simply a text-book villain. As chilling as he could be, he wasn't a very compelling character and there isn't much to deconstruct about him aside from his confusing romantic trajectory. His motives were clear as day, until the last episode at least when he became completely opaque. It was only the actor, Yeon Jung-hoon, who was skilled enough to make him come alive. On the other hand, his wife and Min-woo's sister Choi Mi-yeon was electrifying. I spent the entire drama fixated on whether or not she was a villain, and I never really got an answer. Not that this was a bad thing. Real people are like this, complex and hard to untangle. I still haven't decided whether she was a fundamentally bad person, or someone just driven a little insane a love she desperately wanted to preserve. Either way, it was a fantastic performance given by Yoo In-young, who always manages to always make me feel sympathise for the twisted women she likes to portray.

  Thank goodness the romance was there to keep Mask grounded. I actually wasn't expecting romance when I started Mask, and was pleasantly surprised with how the relationship between Min-woo and Ji-sook developed so naturally into one where they loved and depended on each other like real married couples do. Min-woo believing she was Eun-ha made there interactions even better, because he developed from someone who whole-heartedly despised her, until the person who loved her most. Funnily enough, since this romance was part of a suspense drama that took itself very seriously, I didn't expect the main couple to become as cute as they were. I have to say, I liked Su Ae far more here than in the Man Living in Our House.

To conclude, Mask was an intense and electrifying melodrama with a soft central romance. But ultimately, it was about humans - like Seo Eun-ha said, everyone wears a mask. Whilst the ending was kind of an anti-climatic and occasionally story lines were dropped, I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish.