Letter #80: Mask Girl

Good morning, Erin. 

I went into Mask Girl with very little idea of what I was getting myself into—deliberately so. Initially, I’d just wanted to see Nana in something new, having loved her in Glitch (and the interviews she did to promote it), and, because this was her next project, that was really all I needed to know marking this one on my calendar. 

Then, when the promotional material started coming out and assured me that this would be a psychological mystery thriller, I decided it was best to keep my distance from trailers as much as possible, fearing more about the plot would be revealed than I would want to have going into the series. 

Then came the buzz in the week or so before the release, and I started to get excited. 

And then the day finally arrived, and…

Hope is a dangerous thing, Erin. 

So…y’wanna hear a thing or two about the (spoiler alert) unmitigated disaster that was Mask Girl?

1. First things first: this is ABSOLUTELY NOT a psychological mystery thriller. The trailers and other promotional buzz is a lie. 

2. This is ABSOLUTELY NOT a tantalizing bit of social commentary. Everyone who tells you that is lying—or, if I were to be a sweetie and take these people at their word, everyone who tells you that is reading social commentary into what’s presented on screen. Because there’s certainly the elements you’d expect there to be for something with a layer (or more) of social commentary, but nothing is done with any of it. Beauty standards? Law? Always-online culture? Sure, it’s all there, but there’s never anything said about them—and I don’t mean that the show doesn’t tell us what to think (which is a good thing), but that the show doesn’t utilize any of it for more than justification for the next plot point to come up. 

3. So, if that’s what it’s not, then what is it? Well, it’s a ponderous, dull, too-episodic meander through a loosely-connected series of events that are—regardless of whether or not it believes it has a message—dripping in narrative pretension. There is no real story to speak of, and each episode moves at a snail’s pace, filled with needless character backstory to pad the run time and make token gestures at justifying the few of their actions that tie directly to the stream of cause and effect it pretends is a plot. 

3A. Because yes, the characters are the same and, yes, there is a steady stream of cause and effect, but, just as no one would ascribe narrative to a literal set of toppling dominoes, there is no real through-line for the show—though, to its credit, the series of events does come around to a neat, connected conclusion. 

3B. Of course, whether that conclusion needed the six episodes it took to get to that final episode conclusion is a debate unto itself. (My opinion: it would probably make an okay movie or a decent three-episode miniseries.)

3C. Essentially, this one is a miss in nearly every way. So miss it, if you can.

3D. No, seriously, I literally wrote “What the f*** is this show?!” four separate times in my notes. 

4. The lone saving grace to the series is the acting, with every actor—and particularly the different actresses playing the same character over time—giving a solid performance, regardless of how well or poorly written their characters are. That the cast can outshine this issue is a real compliment to them. 

5. And, really, there is maybe one interesting character and maybe two or three likeable ones. I leave to your imagination who they may be.

6. But what better introduction to our favorite segment of these letters—well, favorite apart from my too-long preambles…and hidden personal secrets…and—y’know what, it’s the list of all the actors I recognized, and you like that part, right?

• Nana, whom I know from Glitch, as one version of Mask Girl

• Ms. Kang from The Glory/Ms. Chu from The Uncanny Counter as a vengeful mother

• Creepy Pedo Teacher from The Glory as a cop (mini reunion party!)

• Mun’s spirit partner from The Uncanny Counter as Mask Girl’s mom (mini reunion party!)

• the blind ghost from Hotel Del Luna as a hostess at a bar

• the main dude from May I Help You? as an failed idol

• the coffee shop owner’s daughter from Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha as a bullied schoolgirl

• the bully kid’s dad from The Good Bad Mother as an office manager 

• the plump team manager from Secretary Kim as a cop

6A. Ms. Kang from The Glory as the vengeful mother is the standout performance, in my eyes.

6B. And be warned: if, like me, you were watching for Nana, she’s not in it very much. And, even then, she doesn’t have much to do. Aside from be gorgeous. Which she nails. 

6C. Like, I seriously felt bad for the blind ghost from Hotel Del Luna. She’s stunning—and then Nana walks in, and she all but fades into the background. Which is kind of the point, I know, but…still. 

6D. Looks aside, I want to give a little shine to the blind ghost actress. I was so happy to see her again (if you remember, I was quite fond of her in Hotel Del Luna), and I really look forward to seeing her in other things—assuming she’s in more things that I’ll see. Which I hope she is. I quite enjoyed her. 

6E. And the girl from Cha-Cha-Cha! I adore her. She needs to be in more things. (Yes, her and the three dozen other actresses I’ve said that about over the course of these letters.)

7. This show does its best to ugly-up the actors at all turns, even when they’re supposed to be beautiful. And golly gee do they succeed. (Except for Cha-Cha-Cha girl, who’s adorable no matter what.) I mean, they manage to make blind ghost look almost plain, and they somehow make Nana seem like less of a goddess. So, imagine what they did to the normal people!

8. …wait, I wrote “What the f*** is this show?!” five separate times? Wow. 

9. That said, there are a whole bunch of proudly displayed Hyundai logos, so…how bad could it have been, right?

9A. …is it weird that the two shows I’ve seen Nana in have both featured tons of Hyundais?

10. There’s a sequence in a prison that’s totally rad. It ultimately doesn’t matter to anything at all, but it was my favorite part of the whole show. 

11. I may have been overtired when this scene came up, but a bunch of kids are trying to get another kid to engage in some underage drinking, and I swear their chant to get her to drink sounds like “press-soo-rah,” which would be how they’d pronounce the English word pressure. Were they literally chanting that they were pressuring her into doing it, or does the Korean for “drink it!” just sound coincidentally like the pressure? Or, again, was I just overtired?

12. There is a fair bit of structural deliberateness to the “storytelling,” lots of repeating patterns and motifs, and quite a few clever details. I just don’t have the first clue what any of it was for, except perhaps to show that just about literally every character was a disgusting, horrendous person who both spread and deserved misery. And, even then, I don’t know what that accomplishes, narratively. 

13. I did cheer, at the end, but not for the reasons the show wanted me to. Just…FYI.

So…yeah. Not a good time. Not, like, 100 Days My Prince-levels of bad, but maybe only because it was shorter. And had Nana in it. But, yeah—not good. Like, I needed to retreat into some Japanese romcoms for a bit just to regain my composure. 

Y’know what is good, though? Behind Your Touch. I wasn’t going to watch it, and then I thought, “This is exactly the kind of show I would rebuff but then Erin would tell me to watch.” So I gave it a shot. And it’s a keeper. Very, very funny show. 

Anyway. Heart Signal 4 wrapped up, yesterday. But there’s still an after-show episode to come, so you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer for that. 

You’re devastated, I’m sure. But it will be worth the wait. Obviously. 

Hope you had a chance to relax, this month. One way or another.

—Daryl