Letter #137: The Frog

Good morning, Erin.

I had a teacher in college who always told us not to stress out if we had writer’s block. “Lower your expectations,” she told us, encouraging us to just write something and trust that there’d be something to salvage from it, regardless of how good it was. It was her version of the old “writing is rewriting” adage, hoping to get us to realize that we’d never get anywhere thinking we had to create a perfect, finalized product from the first moment we set pen to paper. 

Which is a funny thing for a guy who clearly has never truly learned that lesson to mention, I admit, but I bring it up because what struck me today was how similar that sentiment is to something I have long-tried to adhere to in my everyday life (though almost never to great effect): the Zen concept of the “beginner’s mind.” Essentially, the idea is to approach everything in life without preconceived notions.

I should also be stricter about my diet. Since I’m listing really good ideas that I can’t seem to quite follow through on. 

But what about watching The Frog? Was that a good idea I actually followed through on? Or am I going out of my way to produce a segue from today’s preamble?

All this and more as we discuss the eight-episode Netflix series, The Frog. 

1. Cards on the table: if you’re watching this series, you’re watching it for Go Min-si’s performance. She is pure electricity every single second she is on screen—and that there are parts of this show that aren’t connected to her is criminal. 

1A. That is, this feels like an excellent two-and-a-half-hour movie that’s been turned into an eight-hour miniseries, with huge chunks of the story sort of Pulp Fiction-ed into this greater, artsy, “thematic” narrative that surrounds (what seems to me to be) the real story: a psychopathic woman invades a widower’s rental vacation house and refuses to leave. Everything apart from that is so tangential to the story as to be unnecessary, making much (if not all) of it feel contrived, pretentious, and…well, whatever. Which I really feel was not the feeling they were going for.

1B. Which is not to say that I disliked everything else, exactly…but I can’t say I was happy to sit through any of it. One functional narrative excuse aside (introducing the rifle into the story)—which could have been done any number of ways to achieve the same ends—none of the non-main story plot/character stuff matters, and it’s obvious that it doesn’t, which makes it that much harder to sit through. I even liked the section following the bullied son in the present day, but…it didn’t help tell the main story, so what was the point?

1C. So, again, it’s all about Go Min-si’s psychotic woman, and that’s more than enough of a reason to watch. I hesitate to say her performance was iconic, given it’s a word that modernity has stripped all meaning from, but…it’s pretty hard to argue that her “Ahjussiiiiii!” isn’t going to live on forever in the collective K-drama consciousness.

She’s intense, nuanced, fascinating, and smooooooookin’ hot—which is an important point we’re going to talk more about later on, not just, y’know, me appreciating her looks. Everything about her is utterly—almost hypnotically—compelling; truly an “if she’s not on screen, you’re asking why she’s not on screen” character. I loved every bit of it and have newfound respect for the actress. And, if it weren’t for her, the show wouldn’t be worth the time, because, however well-written the character is, nothing in the main plot is particularly unique—not even her. Would it still be entertaining because of her? Probably. But it wouldn’t be special.

1D. In fact, I wrote the following in my notes about Episode 1: “all we have is tone. I’m not annoyed by this, but it is worth pointing out there’s nothing else, at the moment. (Well, apart from Go Min-si’s tank top.) There just seems to be a lot of “VERY TENSE BUILDUP!!!” and then…nothing.”

1E. …again, the tank top thing is going to be a relevant point later on. I’m not a total pig.

2. A total point in the show’s favor apart from Go Min-si, though, is the abundance of Hyundai logos. 

3. For such a short show, I recognized a whole bunch of folks:

• Ballerina Sister (Go Min-si) from Sweet Home as the psychopath

• Camellia Mom from When the Camellia Blooms as the police captain

• the pawnshop manager from Gyeongseong Creature as the thuggish friend

• Cute Lawyer from Extraordinary Attorney Woo as young police captain

• the daughter from Crash Course in Romance as the widower’s daughter

• one of the corrupt cops from Vincenzo as the police chief

• little-boy Seung-hyo from Love Next Door as the psychopath’s son

3A. We’ve got a vague mini-reunion between the widower’s daughter and the psychopath’s son, fittingly enough, because they were both in Love Next Door—though not even remotely at the same time. 

3B.  What’s funny about my recognizing the dude who played one of the corrupt cops in Vincenzo is that I could tell I recognized him, but I couldn’t decide if he was the corrupt cop from Vincenzo or Ja-yeon’s abusive father in No Gain, No Life—at which point I said, “Wait, did this guy play both of them?” And it turns out…yes. Yes, he did. 

3C. Also, I’m obligated to point out that the daughter from Crash Course in Romance and Cute Lawyer from Attorney Woo are both so very pretty. (I’m #TeamCuteLawyer, though, if we’re taking sides.)

4. Both Go Min-si and Camelia Mom are sporting growing-out-my-hair-from-my-previous-drama hairstyles (from Sweet Home 2 + 3 and Miss Night and Day, respectively), which made me chuckle. And then wonder if literally anyone else had that thought. 

5. The psychopath is never in the same outfit twice—no matter if it's a dress or pyjamas or a swimsuit. It was Ms. Jong in Hotel Del Luna, but without the supernatural element to make it way less confusing. Because I was absolutely confused about where she was getting all these new outfits from when she only rolled up with one suitcase. Now, she could have absolutely just been continuously buying more and bringing them back to the vacation house while we weren’t looking—that’s a totally reasonable way to look at it (we do see her shopping for many different things, over the course of the show…though, notably, not for clothes), but it happened so many times that it just became increasingly difficult to believe and started to bother me a little for how ridiculous it was. HOWEVER…to the show’s credit, she does, at one point, pile all of her laundry in one spot—and it’s a frikkin’ mountain of clothes. So, it was not only a deliberate choice by the show to dress her differently every day but also by the character, which says a lot. It just says a lot a little later than I would have liked, I guess. 

6. …okay, if you’re reading this without having seen the show, this is probably a good time to set this aside—if you care about spoilers, that is. 

6A. Oh! But before you go…I hope you’re having a fantastic day!

6B. If you’re sticking around, though…I still hope you’re having a fantastic day! 

7. I kinda hate the police captain. She’s an all but extraneous character (though infinitely more necessary to the plot than the characters from the 2000s storyline), and her personal story—particularly her “it” powers—is wasted on a side character. She’s more annoying than anything else, particularly because, for all her supposedly great Sherlockian skills, she…doesn’t do anything for most of the show, despite clearly noticing that something is amiss. Is this because of the same “I’d rather not deal with this” attitude that kicks off the widower’s troubles with the psychopath? I HAVE NO IDEA. There are so many things in this show that could be at least thematically important (though not at all plot-relevant), but they also don’t seem to say anything, so…who’s to say. All I know is I didn’t like her—and I really didn’t like how close she kept coming to wandering into the main conflict and mucking with the delightful character dynamic between the widower and the psychopath. 

8. Though, relatedly, she does give us a primo example of why the “just shoot them in the legs!” argument for gunfights is silly: the police captain gets a scene on the practice range showing she is a 100% sharpshooter at nailing a suspect in the thigh—and then we see her put this into practice with the psychopath’s ex-husband when he threatens to shoot both the widower and the psychopath. And what happens after she nails him in the thigh? He still has the ability to wield his rifle and threaten everyone (and, adding insult to injury, eventually hobble off to escape). Now, admittedly, the dynamics of this situation are a little complex, but the principle is the same: she show him non-fatally in the leg…and everyone came away worse for it. Now, sure, I am totally in favor of no one needing to be shot, ideally, but…if it comes to that, you aim for center mass to put the threat down—permanently or otherwise. 

8A. Worse, perhaps, I think they specifically had her specialize in leg shots (whether this is standard Korean police training or not) just so the guy could still threaten everyone. Which…is just one of many things that happen solely so a subsequent thing has a reason to happen. 

9. Similarly, the cops and prison guards in charge of the serial killer’s “say goodbye to your dying mom” hospital visit could not be more incompetent. And it’s just so that the bullied son’s assassination plan can stagger into its “Plan B” phase without incident. Which was just silly—though not silly enough to outweigh the rest of the segment, which was my absolute favorite part of the show that wasn’t related to the psychopath.

10. This show has a really strange relationship with “show, don’t tell” storytelling, in that it seems to swap between knowing the audience is smart enough to follow along without having things spelled out, assuming the audience will always think the exact way they want the audience to, and believing the audience is too stupid to understand really obvious things. So, in a single episode, we will get excellent character writing that tells us a million details in a single line delivery, something really unclear or ambiguous that demands some level of explanation (if only because later elements will rely on understanding what they hope we are inferring) but is given no further context, and the clunkiest expository dialogue for things that they’ve either already implied or could very easily imply with minimal effort.

11. My favorite scene in the entire show is the widower third-wheeling the dinner date between the psychopath and the rookie cop guy—and how she only pays attention to him throughout. I was laughing so much, was so utterly delighted the whole way through. It’s genuinely one of my favorite scenes in any K-drama, bar none. (And then—oh my God—the toothbrush scene that follows! SO GOOD!)

11A. Relatedly: I’d say Episodes 4 and 5 (...and 7) are excellent. Episode 6 is mostly quite good. And everything else is spotty, at best. 

12. My second-favorite scene is the confrontation between the psychopath and the widower’s sweet, innocent daughter—and how she turns out to be a total Frank Miller character, once she realizes the psychopath is a psychopath. That is, she’s an absolute iron-willed badass and ice-in-her-veins tactical thinker in the face of imminent danger. And that it’s the lovely, delicate actress from Crash Course brilliantly amplifies the surprise, in my opinion. Such a clever casting choice. And I love that they never give you any context or explanation for why she’s like this—because I don’t think we needed anything more than just the natural confidence with which she dominated the situation. If not for the knockout drug, she’d have easily won the day. 

13. I know it’s TV and all, but…when the psychopath hardcore t-bones the widower in front of the police station, neither of their airbags goes off. That’s…worrying. 

14. DO YOU GET IT THE BLACK HAT IS A SYMBOL DO YOU GET IT GUYS HUH DO YOU

15. The thuggish friend of the motel guy from the early 2000s portion of the story is…I mean, is it just me, or is he really loyal to the motel guy? Like, I mean, he is protective in a way that I found, um, suspicious. By which I mean I wonder if I was meant to assume he was in love with the motel guy. I’m not trying to read into anything—I just thought his willingness to throw down with the guy’s wife was indicative of a stronger than normal dedication to his pal. But what do I know.

15A. Of course, he also went out of his way, later on, to help the son with his assassination plot—but I don’t think there’s much to glean from that, given that the thuggish friend’s elderly mother also wanted in on the plot. 

15B. …not that I didn’t also want to smack the motel guy’s wife, and I certainly wasn’t gay for the motel guy. 

15C. Also, in fairness to the wife, she admits she was being an unreasonable jerk to her husband. But also in fairness to the wife, I think she was written awfully, in the aftermath of the murder at the motel—insofar as the show does (in my eyes) a really bad job getting across to you just what it is about the whole thing that so traumatized her that she thinks she’s the only victim in the whole thing. 

15D. Now, initially, I thought we were going somewhere with this. Specifically, when she calls the police (and doesn’t say anything), she’s cowering at the front desk, looking off fearfully as she lets the phone slip from her hands. I assumed this meant that the serial killer had decided she was next and was approaching her—but then we saw her talking to the police in the next scene, and I was SHOCKED. “Wait, she’s okay?” I said, wondering exactly what happened in the intervening time since last we’d seen her. Did he just let her go? Did she manage to hide and avoid him altogether? Did either offer or, um, to put it delicately, go along with some kind of sexual favor in exchange for her life? What awful thing happened that sent her spiraling out of control, unable to share it with anyone else because no one would understand what she’d been through (her words)? When she kept lashing out at her husband, I figured she’d been raped in some fashion—but no. It turns out that she just found the mutilated body in the guy’s motel room. And she dropped the phone while cowering at the front desk because…um…? I dunno, it just feels like they either chose to shoot this in a strangely indirect way (that the show thought was actually much more direct), or there was supposed to be something much more personally traumatic in mind that they decided to pull back from after the fact.

15E. Point is, the instinct to give her what for for her treatment of her guilt-ridden husband probably doesn’t indicate some kind of latent romantic feelings, but actually doing it (or attempting to) sure feels like more than just bro code, to me. 

16. …dammit, the internet-downloadable version of the good episodes uses the closed caption English subtitles instead of the regular English subtitles. Ugh. Those translations just aren’t as good, y’know? 

17. After the incredible third-wheel dinner the widower has with the psychopath and the rookie cop, the psychopath tries to spur the widower into action (i.e. staying out of anger) by making out with the rookie cop in front of him—in his own bed. It doesn’t work, the widower leaves, and the psychopath is seen resigning herself to having to follow through on the implications of extreme tongue-kissing. However, the widower does eventually turn around and come back (out of anger, like she wants)...but I am not sure what we’re supposed to think has happened in the interim. I think we’re supposed to think the rookie cop and the psychopath f***ed—but, when we see them, they are both fully dressed…but also she is in the bed with the sheet pulled up just above her bosom like in a cliche Hollywood post-coital scene. 

See? Weird. (He’s cropped, here, but trust me he’s fully dressed. Just as fully dressed as when she was sort of grinding on top of him, the last time we saw them. Which…logistically, you don’t need to remove all of your clothes for sex, obviously, it just seemed…strange, no?) You know I’m all for implying things like this, rather than lingering on the details, but this took me out of the scene, a bit, is what I’m saying. 

18. Which might be the best segue for the big topic for today: what was up with the psychopath and the widower, exactly?

18A. Short answer: I can’t say for certain—potentially because there isn’t anything up with them beyond the surface stuff. She’s murdered a little boy; he’s sort of covered for her murdering the little boy; she sort of blackmails him into letting her stay at the vacation house and make it her own because she loves it there; and she wants the two of them to stay there because she feels she can be herself in front of him (since he both knows and has seemingly given tacit approval to her darkest secret). He feels guilty for not reporting the murdered boy, he hates that this woman has sort of subsumed his life, and he wants to get rid of this problem (i.e. her) permanently—though he doesn’t quite know the best way to do this. He wants out, she keeps escalating to keep him bound to her, and they duke it out. Simple as that.

18B. Except…

18C. The biggest moment, to me, is in Episode 5, when the widower has made his big move: he leaves and doesn’t come back. He doesn’t answer the psychopath's calls. She putters around the vacation house, bored, constantly looking at her phone—and when she thinks he’s come back, she goes sprinting like a puppy to greet him…only to find that it’s guests he’s rented the house to, forcing her out of the rental because, of course, she doesn’t have any kind of paperwork saying that she’s renting the place since she’s been blackmailing her way into staying. The important detail being that, as much as she says she loves the vacation house and wants to live there forever, she’s obviously more attached to him than anything else. She may very well love the house, but she knows he loves the house and won’t leave it—which means, if she can keep it, she can keep him. Everything she does from this point is reacting to him trying to stay away from her. (Now, in fairness, she gets him to agree to sell the house to her, and she’s thrilled—but we never get to see what the practical side of this was going to be, so I don’t know if she thought he was going to stay on the property (in his separate house/office) or if she didn’t care or wasn’t thinking far enough ahead or what.)

18D. Add to this that he tries to drown or choke her to death—repeatedly. Like, he gets closer and closer to finishing her off each time…and that doesn’t seem to bother her very much. She never comments on it, and she barely ever puts up a fight when he does it. It never quite gets…sexual…but there’s something about him trying to kill her that she finds appealing, and his first outburst seems to get the ball rolling on her more active desire to keep him around. 

18E. Plus, she’s always trying to get him to admit he thinks she’s special. And always asking him to dinner. 

18F. Now, it’s time to finally come back to Go Min-si being smokin’ hot, in this. I’ve always known she was attractive, but I was never especially enamored of her, my attention always much more focused on four other ladies across the seasons of Sweet Home than on her. And yet, in The Frog, she’s about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. And she’s not, like, trying to be sexy—she just is. The character and, as such, the performance is inherently alluring, inherently seductive, inherently sexy. She is meant to drive you crazy, to stir the animal instinct you try to keep in check, to push you into fighting harder to repress your base emotions and, in so doing, feed them…until your inhibitions collapse and you just let loose—in fiery rage, in cold violence, in mindless lust. And again, it’s not that she’s acting sexy or dressing in a particularly sexy fashion (she looks good in her outfits, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t generally flash skin or anything; like, I mentioned her tank top in the first episode being a distraction—and it was—but it’s not like it was at all skimpy or tight; it’s just that there was something about her that made the tank top eye-catching), it’s just her: her energy, her obvious lack of inhibition hoping to coax out your repressed desires—whatever those may be. And in the case of the widower, it would seem those desires that surfaced were an alternately cold and furious violence…much like her own. One might even consider calling it their love language—were this some manner of love story, that is. 

18G. Which…I mean…?

18H. And then there’s how the psychopath is a twisted mirror image of the widower’s dead wife: her love of the house, her affection for plants—even her haircut is the same. And, in…maybe Episode 3, the widower expressly has a dream in which his wife turns into the psychopath. One way or another, she is twisted up in his concept of his wife and his desire to hold onto her. So there’s absolutely something going on with that.

18I. …except not really. Or, like, there definitely is (or could be), but the plot pretty much comes down to them just duking it out over his wanting to be rid of her (and all that is associated with her) and her wanting to stay. So, even if there is this underlying complexity, it doesn't much matter to the ultimate point of the story. Which is a shame, either because they didn’t know what they had or because they did know but couldn’t tie it into the climax. 

19. In one of the more ridiculous subtitle translation issues I’ve seen, we discover the psychopath’s name because she’s an artist, and her name is written above the art exhibit—spelled out in English letters: “Yoo Seong-a.” However, before we see her name at the exhibit, the curator of the gallery sees her and addresses her—which the subtitle translates as “Yu Seong-a.” 

20. In one of the most contrived bull**** story beats I’ve ever seen, the rookie cop…okay, let me back up: when the widower returns to the house after the psychopath has decided to maybe-bang the rookie cop in the widower’s bed in front of the widower in the hopes it will make him force the rookie cop to leave so that she can be alone with him like she wants, the widower and the rookie cop have a big fight. The cops show up, everyone gets taken to the station—it’s a to-do. Afterwards, the rookie cop is given a stern talking to and told to stay away from the sexy girl because she’s trouble, and he doesn’t need trouble when he’s on the cusp of a big promotion. So, obviously, he ignores this warning and goes back to the rental vacation house. He wanders around inside, sees no one is there, and turns to leave. He notices it’s started raining, so he goes to look for an umbrella (...which would mean stealing an umbrella). He opens a cabinet and finds a backpack. Now, we in the audience know this backpack has video evidence of the psychopath leaving the rental house a year ago without the boy she brought but with a suddenly much, much heavier suitcase, as well as a voice recording the widower made of her confessing to killing the boy…but which also implicates him in cleaning up the mess after the fact. The rookie cop, on the other hand, should just think, “No umbrella…just a backpack.” Now, he opens the backpack—which would be okay if he was just looking to see if there was an umbrella in it. However, it seems more like he’s been watching the show along with us in the audience, and he knows that he’s stumbled onto the evidence he needs to put away a child murderer and her accomplice. Like, he reaches into the bag, pulls out the digital voice recorder, and looks at it like he’s been hoping all this time to listen to what's on it. Which apparently he does—because the very next scene is him wearing the backpack and running at a full sprint away from the rental house (and presumably towards the police station). I…have no idea why he thought he should listen to a digital recorder he illegally took from a closed cabinet in a house he’s trespassing on, but…I guess policing is different in Korea. 

21. …but that’s not even the best part! So, he’s running to the police station in the rain with the backpack on, and who should he come across on the first road that runs from the house to the town? Why, it’s the psychopath in her car. He knows it’s her, and he starts to back away—so she accelerates towards him. He freaks out and starts sprinting…in the road. He doesn’t jump out of the way or run into the trees where the car can’t follow him. He just runs directly in the smooth-surface path of the car that is trying to hit him. And, spoiler alert, he gets hit and dies. Like a total moron. 

21A. I mean, I know this guy has been thinking with his dick the whole time since he first met the psychopath, but…come on, man. 

22. And to wrap things up, when the psychopath goes to beat the widower’s injured friend with one of his own crutches, I shouted at the TV that she was holding it by the wrong end, gripping one of the sides that runs above the handle, and that she’d have a much easier time swinging it like a bat if she held the single piece at the bottom—at which point she stopped and did exactly what I said, much more effectively beating the man with his crutch. It was hilarious. 

And that’s The Frog. Whether you should toss it a kiss is up to you. 

I have a short week (I’m off on Thursday and Friday), and then we get an extra hour of sleep heading into Sunday. So…good things on the horizon. 

[quietly leans over and knocks on the wooden cabinet]

More soon.

—Daryl