#e11

Nam Sang Bae: I will give my life and do everything for you.

They did this? They just straight up did this? They intentionally set it up so, amongst other things, I am invited to compare the guilt that Nam Sang Bae felt then to the guilt Han Joo won feels now and the spoken (and unspoken) promise that they will do right by Dong Sik? Sang Bae said he will give him his life and Joo Won will promise to go to hell? And I am supposed to be normal about all of this?

Lee Dong Sik: Foolish man.

And in that context, the speech Nam Sang Bae gives to Dong Sik after Lee Sang Yeob death has a new duality because on one hand, this is advice to Dong Sik (and to the audience) given by his deceased father figure, so there are very strong implications that this is supposed to be an important life lesson for all of us, but “Living is hell” goes very much against what the ending of the series is ultimately about. 

I know apparently they weren’t sure yet as where the show was supposed to go, but considering the rest of the writing (and Mad Dog, because it’s impossible for me to really talk about the writing in Beyond Evil without taking into account Mad Dog a bit) I think Kim Soo Jin played with the idea in her first draft as it can be seen in the casefiles, but the show we actually got is a quite different thing (and many of the ideas she played with in the casefiles were also ditched pretty soon). 

Like, just this scene here - Nam Sang Bae buys the lake house to fulfill his promise that Dong Sik will be able to “live and breath” in a place where the air is good, in direct contrast with Park Jeong Je who “lives and breathes” in hell because of his guilt. And sure, you can argue that he does so because Dong Sik is innocent, but Nam Sang Bae doesn’t buy Dong Sik a house, he buys them a shared house because “My Dear Dong Sik” is his family now. That’s the entire point of that “If you are sorry, why are you here” exchange from last episode. Nam Sang Bae might claim life is hell, but he also wants Dong Sik to be happy. I don’t doubt that for Nam Sang Bae, because of his guilt, life is partly hell but I think what is more likely that his speech comes from a place of love and also desperation - he’s afraid of the depression Dong Sik is sinking in, he’s desperate to shake him and bring him home to get better. (And we know he felt guilty about saddling Dong Sik with Lee Sang Yeob, just before he died).

The cold and the depression that Dong Sik again shares WITH HIS MOTHER and the words he eventually lives by are those of HIS MOTHER. 

The series does some very interesting thing in contrasting mothers and fathers when it comes to Dong Sik and Joo Won.

Oh Ji Hwa: Lieutenant Han, do you want to pour a drink? [...] Everyone: Army stew! Army stew.

Beyond Evil is a show about grief and the way they way they grieve Nam Sang Bae here does stand out because, in a way, it’s good grief: it brings them closer, it’s the push that Joo Won needs to finally meet the group as one of them rather than an outsider, and they are able to mourn Sang Bae while still remembering the good times they had together. 

I love the Army stew scene for many reasons, but I also love that the show pays attention to keep Joo Won in frame: of course, he’s one of the male leads and we see it from his perspective, but also here we are able to see his regret - not his guilt: his regret that he never got to know Nam Sang Bae. It’s another side of grief that is very well captured here.

*puts Literature major glasses on* 

And of course, the presence of blue cheese in the army stew works as a perfect metaphor for Han Joo Won, who not only is a city boy from the country side but distinctly aligns himself with Western culture due to his tastes and personal upbringing: as the metaphorical blue cheese, bitter and with a pungent odor that should be paired with wine, he too can be absorbed in the melting pot of the Army stew to bring a new touch to a traditional, working class stew that the characters choose to drink with makgeolli instead. The first one to try it, after all, is Lee Dong Sik. Coincidence...? I don’t think so.

*puts Literature major glass off*

Nam Sang Bae: We’re all neighbors now, so we all have to eat and live well together.

I’ve written before about the particularities of the people of the Butcher shop being identified always as “the people of Manyang” despite being quite explicitly composed by a small minority of outcasts and outsiders that are very much not one of the people of Manyang, that have tried to leave the neighbourhood only to be dragged back by what Manyang did to them. I think this speech in this context is particularly significant: it comes across differently if we consider that he was the exception and very much not the rule.

Yoo Jae Yi: What should we do about this person? [...] Park Jeong Je: People close to him disappear one by one.

I’m putting these two conversations side by side because they are very much about highlighting how Joo Won now isn’t only considered one of them, but one of them that can be trusted with Dong Sik specifically, which is a wholly new level of trust.

Jae Yi’s speech is probably the most interesting one, since Joo Won goes to her to ask for the forgiveness he would never dare asking Dong Sik and to ask if Jae Yi would be okay: she quickly shuts that down, because she and Joo Won have had their moments but they aren’t particularly close, so she doesn’t want all of that, especially since there is a lot of “I don’t think I am really the person you want to talk to right now” going on - but, despite everything, Joo Won is close to Dong Sik and he clearly cares about him in some indefinite way, and he is somewhat good for him,  and now that Joo Won has proved that he has a heart and he can be trusted to be good for Dong Sik… Jae Yi decides to make it happen.

I think we have all talked about Park Jeong Je here to death, but I really like that Jeong Je doesn’t just show trust and care to Joo Won (because Yoo Jae YI vouched for him, because he knows he and Dong Sik have a special bond by now, because he’s one of them and they can recognize each other's pain, because Joo Won is acting like a person now) but again he goes further by guiding him through Dong Sik’s thought process, just in case he needs it - he’s symphatising with Joo Won as someone who has the honour of being close to Dong Sik and just in case he doesn’t fully understand everything (because Joo Won and Dong Sik have known each other for like a few months) he’s willing to fill the blanks.

…And of course what Jeong Je is saying here is what Joo Won threw back in Dong Sik’s face many episodes ago when he said he was a serial killer who used attachment as a weapon, that it was his fault that everyone he loved died…

Han Joo Won: That’s why I want you to do this investigation with me.

And that’s the push, that’s the chance Joo Won needed to be open and honest with Dong Sik.

Lee Dong Sik: That’s your role.

And that’s the chance Dong Sik needed to be honest back! Sure, at this point Joo Won knows perfectly well that Dong Sik is carefully using a lunatic, emotional persona while being very logic, calculating and even cold underneath, but this has been one of the key elements of Dong Sik - he refuses to let people get involved, and part of that is refusing to admit that there is anything to be involved with. It's mostly out of selflessness but there is also the perversion of that selflessness, where he’s keeping people at distance to keep them safe whether they want it or not.

And now instead he is being open, letting Joo Won make his own choices.

FIRST SHOT OF THE GANG GETTING ACTUALLY TOGETHER FOR REAL AND THEY GAVE JOO WON A HOT DRINK TOO. 

And of course the biggest proof of acceptance of all, which is sincerely repeating his words. This rewatch really hit home to me how much of his life Joo Won spent being unheard and now it’s like people are listening, and they are listening enough to copy him (the face Dong Sik makes at Joo Won when Ji Hwa repeats his line is so much, it’s carefree, it’s happy, it’s clearly affectionate). 

Oh Ji Hoon: With Jae Yi Noona. Yoo Jae Yi: Me?

My controversial Jae Yi’s hot take is if we had to pair her with a guy, it should have been Ji Hoon. This is not just because I think it would be extremely funny for someone to be like okay, time to talk to the small simple looking guy because his mean girlfriend is getting on my nerves, and then he smiles and verbally eviscerates you– I think they have an interesting dynamic as the two young people who had very big dreams of a way better and bigger life somewhere else and then instead found themselves back in Manyang.

Especially because Jae Yi hasn’t abandoned that dream, she’s just figuring out now what she wants to do next and Ji Hoon here acknowledges that by inviting her along. He’s getting her actively involved, she’s inviting her to do something new and exciting and fun rather than just staying at her butcher shop. 

(My other hot take is that it would be fun to throw Kwon Hyeok into the mix, either platonically or romantically. Yes, the three of them. IF we had to do this, which we absolutely don't have to. )

Yoo Jae Yi: Recently I've been on many interviews to get a job but didn't get any.

HER ARC. HER CHARACTER ARC. THAT SHE GETS TO HAVE. THE DREAMS SHE GETS TO KEEP, THE THINGS SHE NOW GETS TO TRY.  <3

Oh Ji Hwa: To meet his father personally? Lee Dong Sik: Yes, why?

“I’ve had Han Joo Won for a day and a half, but if something happened to him, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself”

I love how Dong Sik’s attitude here is rooted both in his instinctual desire to protect people he sees as unfairly maligned and in his genuine affection for Joo Won. He immediately postures when Ji Hwa raises her doubts - he has no problems explaining why he trusts Joo Won, but he first gets protective on his behalf despite Ji Hwa having extremely legitimate doubts.

Andì his defense is entirely emotional/personality based: he doesn’t bring Ji Hwa like, evidence, which he actually could, he simply says that Joo Won isn’t that kind of person and she trusts him on that because after all Dong Sik would know better than her.

Kwon Hyeok: Oh, I see.

WHAT DO YOU SEE HYEOK, THIS HAS FUCK ALL TO DO WITH YOU.

We don’t give Hyeok enough credit for always being on top of everything when Han Ki Hwan and Han Joo Won are always throwing him in the deep end of like, the fucking ocean, and expecting him to swim.

I do like however that this is again about performance - with Hyeok as an audience, Han Ki Hwan is able to control and manipulate the situation in a way he couldn’t if it was only him and Joo Won.

Han Ki Hwan: You don't care who the boss is. You jump around without fear, then fall.

Han Ki Hwan has some very interesting relationships with both Nam Sang Bae and Lee Chang Jin which are ulteriorly complicated by the way both men are specifically related to Dong Sik and the relationship between Dong Sik and Joo Won being very much the basis of the show.

Like here, it’s very on the nose - Sang Bae hasn’t sold out his principles and values for the sake of a career, so he eventually ended up back where he came from, etcetera etcetera, and Han Ki Hwan, like Joo Won, is not as smart and clever as he thinks he is and is eventually caught because he doesn’t really understand people NOR HAS ANY INTEREST OR INCLINATION TO LEARN.

The series doesn’t really address the fact that the Han family in the casefile are described as being generations of policemen, but it does explain more why Han Ki Hwan is like he is - and actually, wouldn’t that mean that he’s the police equivalent of a chaebol? Born knowing he would get hired in his father’s company? I’m sure he worked very hard at becoming a Police Commissioner, but didn’t he receive a HUGE leg up if that is the case, just like Joo Won immediately started in the elite division of Foreign Affairs? 

He did after all need Kwon Hyeok to give him very obvious advice like “stop leaving calling Lee Chang Jin from your personal phone because that's going to leave a paper trail”.

Which makes him trying to give Nam Sang Bae any kind of advice a really arrogant move here.

Han Joo Won: I’m not siding with him because he’s my dad. Lee Dong Sik: I know you aren’t.

Thank the Maker Joo Won was sitting down alone in the peace and quiet of his car before Dong Sik accidentally rocked his world. At least now he can sit for a few minutes with all of that. I know you aren’t. Absolutely insane. 

Kang Do Soo: We’re not dumb.

“Polly felt questing eyes boring into her. She was embarrassed, of course. But not for the obvious reason. It was for the other one, the little lesson that life sometimes rams home with a stick: you are not the only one watching the world. Other people are people; while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you.”  - Monstrous Regiment

Yoo Jae Yi: You and your wife took really good care of me.

There is such a banality in the evil of Jo Gil Goo that is kind of fascinating to watch. The show will go into more details during the next episode, but they already plant the seeds here: Jo Gil Goo might have done a small thing, but it was a small thing that ruined and hurt and betrayed people he knew and he even cared for, cared for deeply,  and even when Nam Sang Bae died for it, he just kept quiet. For money. 

Han Joo Won: Lee Dong Sik was arrested as the suspect for that one reason, that he was the owner of the guitar pick?

And this is just the start, Joo Won, so better strap in. You’d have to stop the world to stop the feeling.

Do Hae Won: How long has it been since you asked me to buy you a meal? It’s just the two of us.

Does she love him, does she love him not…

Lee Dong Sik: Tell me. You bastard.