GABDONGI EPISODE 10

When last episode ended, Maria was about to let Tae Oh die.

Maria has a change of heart this episode.  As she is not a psychopath, she cannot let Tae Oh die. She is conflicted, though, and cries over the phone about her predicament. Mu Yeom, however, makes the call to an ambulance. Maria later plays into the hands of inmate Ho Soek, who has been released from the asylum but fancies himself Gab Dong. Maria, thanks to a warning from Mu Yeom through a phone call, escapes Ho Soek's clutches before anything can happen. Later, we see her in session with a hypnotherapist, trying to glean more details about Gab Dong from her time as a child. But she can't do it. It was a bit eerie, because the half-formed images in her mind reminded me of...Profiler Han?!? I must be imagining things.

She seems particularly attracted to psycho-killers, not just Gab Dong. The one skittish inmate Ho Soek thinks he's Gab Dong, but his lack of confidence tells me otherwise. I wonder what it is that drives Maria to such morbid fascination? Hasn't she ever heard the phrase "If you play with fire, you're likely to get burned?"



Mu Yeom is caught in the middle of all this. Later, he stakes out both the pay phone that Tae Oh usually receives calls on as well as the white taxi that nearly sped Maria to her doom.

Mu Yeom has become the cops' MVP. He's able to flit from clue to clue without much prompting or deliberation, which is frankly amazing. He is the only reason Maria isn't dead, but he is not in time to save Ji Wool's mother. He's driven by more than the initial investigation - it's become personal.  The lives of two people close to him have been threatened more than once. I have a feeling that he has set himself up as watchdog for both Maria and Ji Wool in spite of themselves. They keep trying to hint that Mu Yeom is all-out crazy. Will this resolve itself once Gab Dong is captured or killed, or are we going to see him locked in a rubber room by the end?

Apparently Tae Oh comes from a chaebol family. The huge article on the front page lets us know his family is well-connected, and this is definitely a blow to their reputation. They set him up in a VIP area of the asylum. Of course, he can still direct activities over the phone. Now it makes sense how he could have digs that put to shame the houses of most well-to-do people. His family's lawyer is attempting a coup, trying to make life difficult for the cops. 

Ji Wool, like Maria, is seemingly attracted to serial killers. She comes into contact with Tae Oh yet again while delivering chicken for her mother's restaurant. She admits to Tae Oh that she still keeps thinking he's not guilty. Despite the fact that he kidnapped her and was going to kill her if Mu Yeom didn't agree to kill for him. Um, yeah.  This gal has some issues.



Chul Geon is now being grilled by the police that he once led, his failure to capture Gab Dong spurring the investigation.  He handles it with grace, laughing at the special investigators who have been assigned to his case. When he is alerted to the fact that the cops think they've already found Gab Dong,  he grabs the file -- they think Ho Soek is their man. We don't see too much of Chul Geon here.

Park Ho Soek is the nervous inmate in the asylum. Now a free man, he proclaims to Mu Yeom that he is Gab Dong , calling the pay phone he's called quite a few times before. Mu Yeom is on stakeout there. After that, Ho Soek calls Tae Oh.  He tracks down Maria and lets her in his stolen taxi. After she gets out, Tae Oh stows away in his cab, and tells him he wants Ho Soek to strut his stuff as Gab Dong. He gives Ji Wool's mother a ride, and she is only saved by Mu Yeom's timely intervention.  Ho Seok looks way too nervous to be Gab Dong, though. I have a feeling that Tae Oh has something on him, and he's going through with a murder to protect someone he loves. But we usually see Tae Oh actually blackmailing someone, and in this episode, that scene is strangely absent.




Is it weird that I'm more interested in the villains here than I am the heroes? The only other person I actually have an interest in is Ji Wool, and that's mainly because of her crazy energy and her webtoon (which she gave up anyway as she seemed too spooked by comments), not to mention her adorable crush on Mu Yeom. The rest of the characters are surprisingly not that complicated, able to be described with a couple of adjectives in a short sentence. But the enigma of Gab Dong is at once compelling and frustrating, because you never know exactly who it is. Tae Oh commits similar murders, but is clearly talking to another person at the asylum, who he considers to be Gab Dong. And I don't think it is Ho Soek, either. And Tae Oh is a weird guy; you never know what he's going to pull next, or what's going on his head.

It's not that I dislike the show, quite the contrary. But when you're rooting for the bad guys more than the good guys, then maybe something got a little twisted. Maybe the writers did too good a job of characterizing their villains. Maybe they decided to simply focus on what the characters do rather than their politics, their loves and hopes and dreams. True, Maria's not hard to look at when she's all dolled up in bangs and miniskirt, but that's not enough to keep watching the show. But I will keep watching, because it keeps making me ask questions. And as long as the twists are compelling, I will stay tuned.

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