In 2017, South Korea was gripped by the murder of an 8-year-old elementary school girl in Incheon, a gruesome affair where the victim was lured into the murderer's apartment, strangled to death and then dismembered. When the victim's mother asked the perpetrator what the hardest thing was for her now, the answer shocked and angered the entire nation. Instead of expressing sincere remorse or guilt, the murderer said that the weather was nice now and she regretted not being able to see the cherry blossoms. It turns out that the murderer was born with the MAOA-L gene, otherwise known as the "psychopathic gene", which is commonly found in psychopaths. As we know, symptoms of psychopathy include being unable to feel empathy or close attachment to others and exhibiting extreme boldness, not fearing potential consequences for their actions. This explains why the aforementioned Incheon Elementary School murderer was unable to empathise with the victim's mother and couldn't understand the grief felt by the family because she's a psychopath.
This is a central idea in Mouse, with the screenwriter having used the above real-life case as a backdrop, and creating a scenario where psychopathic murderers can feel the pain of their victim's family and remorse for their own actions. Starring Lee Seung-gi (A Korean Odyssey, Vagabond) and Lee Hee-joon (Steal Heart, Legend of the Blue Sea) as male leads JEONG BA-REUM and GO MOO-CHI respectively, the drama follows two police officers whose lives are changed when they encounter a psychopathic serial killer and together, they'll try to uncover psychopathy's secrets. An important question raised in the drama is if a foetus still in a mother's womb is found to possess the psychopathic gene through genetic testing, should it then be aborted to prevent the birth of a potential serial killer? On that troubling note, let's get started.
INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)
Usually the first episode of a K-drama introduces us to our leads and sets up the drama's premise. Mouse on the other hand goes a slightly different route, choosing instead to give us a look at the philosophical dilemma that'll become prevalent throughout the drama, which I'll touch more on later. The extremely long first episode, which had a runtime of 1 hour and 25 minutes, generally bounced around different points in the past, all with the purpose of giving us some background to the screenwriter's intent. We start in the year 2000, where we see a kindergarten class admiring a large black snake at a zoo. While most of the children are in awe of the reptile, one boy (Seo Woo-jin) slips a live rat into the enclosure, with the snake attacking its newfound prey. This scares off the rest of the children, leaving the boy to watch the two animals duke it out with a sinister expression on his face. 5 years later, we see the same boy (Kim Kang-hoon) enter an empty church, where he asks a stained glass Jesus if he seems different because everyone says he was born different.
This time we head 10 years in the past (1995) and things start to get important here. We're introduced to the case of the Head Hunter, a serial killer who brutally murders his victims before severing their heads. We get our first taste of this brutality when a homebound young woman is asked for help by a small girl, who says that her father has been injured in a car accident nearby. After being led to the site, the woman opens the car door to check on the supposedly injured driver, only to be attacked and killed by him, all while the young girl looks on. The woman's headless corpse would be found a week later, yet another of the Head Hunter's victims. A year later, Korean scientist Daniel Lee (Jo Jae-yoon) holds a lecture in England on his discovery of a gene present in psychopaths' DNA, citing Charles Manson and Ted Bundy as examples, and suggests that soon they'll be able to predict whether an unborn child will become a murderer based on the presence of the gene in them.
Daniel gets called back to South Korea by the President, who desperately wants to end the Head Hunter's killing spree, with the government having a hearing as to whether they have the right to force a mother to abort her foetus if they're found to have the psychopath gene. Daniel presents his findings that only 1% of those with the gene actually become murderers and in truth, this gene is also indistinguishable from the self-explanatory "genius gene", meaning that if the government decides to pass the proposal, they could also be killing future geniuses. His tests have a 99% accuracy of weeding out psychopaths, with the remaining 1% being geniuses, and ultimately, the forced abortion proposal is rejected. That evening, Daniel heads to his good friend Seo-joon's (Ahn Jae-wook) house, where he meets him and his heavily pregnant wife Ji-eun (Kim Jung-nan). They seem to be the picture perfect couple, with the husband doting on his wife, and while Daniel is still happy for his friend, he seems to hide a little sadness when he sees their wedding photos. Turns out, Daniel's sister Jennifer was Seo-joon's first love but she died 7 years prior in a random mugging.
At the same time, a family of four visits a campground in the area, with the father asking another driver for directions. Although the campground is closed due to snow damage, the family chooses to stay anyway. However, things turn out terribly when they're attacked by an unknown figure, with both parents being killed and in a bid to save his younger brother Moo-chi by distracting the killer, older son Moo-won gets caught and savagely beaten, although Moo-chi escapes physically unscathed. In the hospital later that night, detective Park Du-seok (Ahn Nae-sang) arrives to talk to the completely traumtised Moo-chi, demanding to know if he saw the face of the killer. Du-seok's daughter was one of the Head Hunter's victims many years ago and has been on the hunt for the killer ever since, hellbent on finding out what happened to his daughter. The detective gets increasingly frustrated at Moo-chi, who stays completely silent out of fear, and yells at the boy which only scares him even more. As he's dragged away by his colleagues, Moo-chi sees something on the wall that makes him scream, pointing at something while identifying the killer.
We cut back to Seo-joon's home, where Ji-eun wakes up to find a family of snowmen in their yard. Earlier, when Daniel had told the couple about his genetic testing results, Seo-joon had said that he would terminate the pregnancy if his child was a psychopath but Ji-eun was undecided (this comes back real soon). Next thing you know, a fleet of policemen have arrived at their house with a search warrant and Seo-joon's arrested by Du-seok. The person Moo-chi had identified as the killer was Seo-joon, who's a neurosurgeon at the hospital from before. Initially, it seems that they're barking up the wrong tree as nothing can be found in the house but in all the confusion, Moo-chi (who had stowed away in a police car when Du-seok was getting the warrant) attempts to stab Seo-joon with a scalpel he stole from the hospital. When the child is stopped on his second try, one of the snowmen's head is knocked to the ground, with a black plastic bag falling out. Shock and horror, Moo-chi sees blood coming out of the bag and recognises his mother's hairclip. After his parents' bodies are found in Ji-eun's greenhouse, Seo-joon is further incriminated as the Head Hunter and he's dragged off by the police, with his wife having seen everything.
Seo-joon continues to profess his innocence, telling the press that he doesn't know where the snowmen in his yard came from, much to the chagrin of the victims' families. Ji-eun and Daniel wait outside the police station, with the scientist reassuring her that her husband couldn't possibly be a psychopath capable of such actions as psychopaths are incapable of loving others while Seo-joon clearly demonstrates love for her. Things take a huge twist as Ji-eun confronts Seo-joon as he walks out of the station, revealing that she took a photo of him building the snowmen and confirming that he was the killer. The game's up and Seo-joon reveals his true psychopathic self, with a flashback revealing that he was the driver who directed Moo-chi's father to the campground in order to lure them into his murder trap. A distraught Ji-eun asks why they even got married if he doesn't love her and Seo-joon evilly remarks that it was merely his desire to reproduce and produce another psychopath. He also reveals to Daniel that he was the one who killed Jennifer, purely because she aborted the child they conceived. This revelation destroys Daniel, who breaks down in despair as Seo-joon is dragged away by the police and is eventually sentenced to death.
Later on, Daniel conducts the gene testing for Ji-eun's child and unfortunately, he's inherited his father's psychopathy gene. Ji-eun is understandably heartbroken and wants an abortion, unwilling to give birth with only a small chance that her baby could become a genius. She meets another pregnant woman whose foetus was also found to have the gene but who chose to go ahead with the pregnancy to remember her late husband, who was a good person. Ji-eun on the other hand is more afraid that her son will end up like his truly psychopathic father and at this point in the episode, we're left to wonder about what will happen to her. We go back to the year 2000, where we see that Seo-joon is still awaiting his execution in prison and after finding out that Daniel has returned to Korea, he sends him two live rats as some kind of sick present. We also see the kindergartener from the start of the episode, who catches a rat and places it in the snake's enclosure.
Now we're reentering 2005, with the now-elementary school boy (who we now know is called Jae-hoon) continuing to exhibit strange behaviour, drawing terrifying portraits and even killing the class rabbit. When interviewed by his teacher, Jae-hoon states that he just wanted to see if the rabbit was pregnant or had just gained weight. Deeply worried about his mental health, the teacher notices that he keeps scratching his arm to the point of leaving behind raw skin and when questioned, Jae-hoon merely states that he's self-harming because he's annoyed at the people around him looking at him like he's weird but because he can't hurt them, he hurts himself. When she informs his stepfather that despite scoring at genius level on a recent IQ test, Jae-hoon's mental state is extremely worrying and recommends therapy for him. Offended by this suggestion, Jae-hoon's stepfather drags him home and slaps him before calling his mother to tell her what an embarrassment her son has been. We see that Jae-hoon has two younger siblings, brother Jae-min and sister Jae-hee, the latter of whom is presumably mentally challenged.
Jae-min sees his older brother pouring ammonia into their fish tank in order to spite his stepfather and tries to stop him from killing their father's favourite fish but Jae-hoon ignores him, picking up their pet dog Choco and warning the younger boy not to rat him out. When the stepfather returns home and finds his fish dead, he interrogates Jae-min, who refuses to say anything. The truth comes to light anyway though, as Jae-hee recites her brothers' conversation word-for-word, causing their father to rush out to look for Jae-hoon. He unfortunately finds Choco floating dead in the park pond and later drags Jae-hoon home to beat the life out of the son he's deemed evil. Later on, Jae-hoon brings Jae-min to Choco's burial site and asks him to say a prayer before kicking his distracted brother into a hole behind the grave, preparing to punish him for "tattling" despite being warned. Even though Jae-min wails that he's innocent, the older boy doesn't believe him and starts shoveling dirt into the hole. Before anything bad can happen though, their mother shows up and stops Jae-hoon, helping her younger son out of the hole and starting to choke Jae-hoon. She tells him that monsters like him need to die and through his blurred vision, we see that his mother is Ji-eun, revealing to us that Jae-hoon is Seo-joon's child and is a total psychopath just like his father.
Somehow, Jae-hoon is able to escape and ends up in the church from the start of the episode, where he prays not to become a monster. In a somewhat tragic voiceover though, Jae-hoon says that that never happened and we jump to 2019, where an unknown man stares at an evidence board of sorts dictating several murder cases and photos on his mantle indicate that this is a grown-up Jae-hoon. The episode ends on a very disturbing note, with a final flashback to 2005 Jae-hoon standing over his stepfather's body, pulling a knife out of his chest while his siblings hide. The psychopathic child then slowly walks up the stairs, where Ji-eun awaits.
Safe be it to say, I'm well and truly disturbed. This is one of the few M18 dramas I've seen and it might also be the most brutal. The first episode alone is filled with so much violence and blood, from the brutal murders of Moo-chi's family to the heartless acts committed by Jae-hoon as a child, it's no wonder that they had to preface the drama by stating that the child actors were counseled after. All that said though, I'm really really intrigued to see where this goes. While I enjoy me some more relaxing dramas, sometimes these kinds of super intense dramas are definitely worth a watch. As I've mentioned in previous posts, crime thriller dramas are generally quite well received by the South Korean public and Mouse is no different, with it breaking multiple records and receiving critical acclaim. The first episode is definitely a little confusing since not only does it barely introduce us to our leads but also jumps around a lot but it does help to set up the philosophical dilemma this drama's trying to answer.
The question of whether we should abort a foetus purely because of a genetic test that isn't even 100% accurate is a difficult one and is very similar to topics covered in Western media. If you're familiar with the recent Civil War II Marvel Comics event, you'll know that the central conflict there revolved around whether the heroes should be allowed to imprison someone for a crime they have yet to commit based off a character's inaccurate predictions and in many ways, this is functionally the same concept that the drama is exploring. Personally, I think that while it would be good for a family to know whether their children could be psychopaths, it's more important that they have the choice to raise the child their own way. Scientific studies have proven that when raised in an abusive or harsher environment, children with the MAOA-L/psychopathic gene were found to be more antisocial than those without said gene, so it's also possible that if raised in a nurturing way, children who are considered psychopaths at birth can become functioning members of society.
Allowing the government the right to force mothers to abort their potentially-psychopathic children is a very dangerous game and this is made very clear in episode 1 since only a small percentage of psychopaths become murderers. Couple that with the fact that these children could also become geniuses and we're playing with fire here. I'm looking forward to seeing how the screenwriter has woven this topic into the drama and I'm sure it'll continue to be as exciting as it is right now. Like I said earlier, we don't really know anything about our leads yet, although what we do know is that Moo-chi does grow up to become a policeman. We also haven't gotten a single look at Lee Seung-gi's character of Jeong Ba-reum, which is weird considering he's the male lead. That said, there were teasers for the drama that showed Jae-hoon growing up to become Ba-reum but there's no indication of that yet thus far. It's also weird since Jae-hoon very clearly demonstrates murderous tendencies while Ba-reum's described as a "steadfast police officer" but of course, it's still early on in the drama and we don't know much about any character at all. The drama also has two female leads in OH BONG-YI [Park Ju-hyun (Extracurricular, Zombie Detective)] and CHOI HONG-JU [Kyung Soo-jin (Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok-joo, Train)] but we've yet to be introduced to them so we'll see where we go from here.
The drama is a little longer than most, lasting 20 episodes plus 2 spin-offs and if episode 1 is anything to go by, it's going to take a while to finish each episode because of its insane runtime. Despite the fact that the drama's premise isn't exactly grounded in science, since there's no true concrete evidence behind whether psychopathy can be inherited as well as there being no real proof of the existence of the psychopathic gene, it still allows for a really interesting scenario presented to us. Apart from the obvious crime elements present throughout the drama, the philosophical undertones are definitely keeping me interested. It's been a while since this drama finished airing so I hope you'll join me as we continue watching Mouse.
Comments
Post a Comment