Big Mouth: Episodes 7-8

Big Mouth: Episodes 7-8

by Dramaddictally

Side characters move the main events this week with disillusionment, betrayal, and redemption, showing the meek may be holding the highest hand — possibly giving us some foreshadowing. Also, our hero gets to change clothes for the first time in three weeks, but the straitjacket doesn’t befit him any better than the jumpsuit.

 
EPISODES 7-8 WEECAP

For everything that happened this week, it seems like nothing really happened. We get long fight sequences, run-on action scenes, and more CGI than my zero-tolerance threshold can handle. But there is one crucial thing we have to discuss: the relationship between Chang-ho and Jerry. If anyone else is feeling like me, Jerry just became the most likeable character in the whole show — and then they took him away from us! Sheesh. We just got to know the kid.

Jerry’s death follows a sequence of events mounted by disappoints between Jerry and Chang-ho. It starts when Chang-ho films the prayer room where he leaves tarot cards for Big Mouse. In a regular exchange, Chang-ho would leave a card in a Bible and return later to find the card replaced with a new one that tells him what to do next. So far, all his communications with Big Mouse have happened this way. On camera, Chang-ho sees Jerry enter the room and flip through the Bible. Chang-ho then deduces that Jerry is Big Mouse, using all the information we’ve already noticed about him: his inner-wrist tattoo, his love of Big Mouse, and, well, the name Jerry.

Chang-ho gets Jerry alone and calls him out (and I’m thinking, “If this dude is Big Mouse, how is it a good idea to confront him alone?”). It’s not how it seems though. Jerry is crushed by the accusation. Worse, after he saw the tarot card, he realized that Chang-ho is not Big Mouse but only communicates with Big Mouse. Since he has always looked up to his hero, Jerry is slump-shouldered, asking Chang-ho how he can meet the real Big Mouse. Chang-ho keeps playing his role and I sense disgust from Jerry when he says that Chang-ho lied and promised to fulfill wishes that he can’t make good on.

Right after this altercation, Chang-ho watches his video footage of the prayer room again and notices that after Jerry leaves the room, the video jumps ahead thirty minutes. Someone has edited the video and Chang-ho knows it must be Big Mouse. The weird thing is, only four people knew about the camera: Chang-ho, Mi-ho, Mi-ho’s dad, and Chang-ho’s friend/lawyer (Clue #1). The next tarot card Chang-ho receives is “the fool” — indicating he messed up by trying to deceive Big Mouse. At the same time, Mi-ho receives “death” flowers, which are notably the same ones that Chang-ho sent to Ji-hoon’s wife as a threat (Clue #2).

While Jerry and Chang-ho are avoiding each other, Ji-hoon helps Jerry get released from prison by paying his victims to agree to settle (also paying for his sister’s school and his grandmother’s nursing home). Jerry feels indebted and goes along with it when Ji-hoon asks him to give Chang-ho a tainted energy drink that will cause food poisoning. Unbeknownst to Jerry, this setup is so that Ji-hoon can take Chang-ho out of the prison in an ambulance and kidnap him.

By complete luck of timing, Mi-ho is able to intercept the kidnapping when she and her father go to visit the prison just as Jerry is leaving the gate and tells her: “Follow that ambulance!” From here on out, Jerry is portrayed as a sweetie at heart who feels guilty for what he did to Chang-ho. And while Mi-ho gets Chang-ho taken to a hospital for treatment, the abduction happens anyway when he’s released. Chang-ho ends up in a mental institution that plays out like the torture scene in Orwell’s 1984 if it were a CGI Kubrick movie. Uh, I know I was complaining about the prison setting but this is not really what I was hoping for.

While Chang-ho is tied up in bed and hallucinating, the first thing he envisions is unmasking Big Mouse only to discover that it’s himself (Clue #3). After days of torture and a forced confession about where he hid the money he stole from NR Forum (which turns out to be sort of correct because they find a gold bar buried in the location he stated), the mental hospital goes up in flames. Jerry runs in among the firefighters to save Chang-ho, getting him to safety with a fancy new car and a set of all black clothes. (And everyone else locked in the hospital? Apparently no one cares about them.)

Jerry causes a distraction so Chang-ho can flee, and we later see him leaving the roadside on a stretcher covered in a white sheet. Although we’re halfway through the show and we only got a wide lens on Jerry in these episodes, his disappointment in Chang-ho and his guilt in betraying him felt like the most authentic emotions we’ve seen in this drama so far. I’m sad to see him go.

On the flashy new cell phone that’s in Chang-ho’s new vehicle, he gets a text to go to the W (actually, I like this PPL) where he finds clothes, cash, cards and everything one could need to look like a mafia boss. But, en route to the hotel, he gets stopped at a roadblock where police are looking for him (he is a fugitive now after all). The cop that shines a flashlight in his face, looks at the photo of the wanted Chang-ho, and lets him pass anyway. We see the officer has a tattoo behind his ear of the symbol that Big Mouse uses on all of his communications (Clue #4 — and here is where I start getting a serious Fight Club vibe).

The other character I want to talk about this week is Hye-jin. She has a lesser part but it’s powerful nonetheless. Mi-ho and her investigation team go to the beach where Hye-jin is hiding to try to persuade her to cooperate with them and give them Dr. Seo’s research paper. Hye-jin finally agrees but when Mi-ho gets in touch with Chang-ho, he says to let him handle things with Hye-jin from here on out.

In what turned out to be my favorite scene, Chang-ho has Hye-jin call Ji-hoon and tell him that she has the research paper and she’ll trade it for divorce papers from her husband. The move took a lot of guts, and I have a feeling Hye-jin will be the next to die (that’s how this show’s going so far). As the trial for the VIPs is getting underway, we end the week as Chang-ho appears on a livestream of an alternative news show as an informant, claiming to be Big Mouse.

Up to this point, one theory circulating has been that Chang-ho is Big Mouse but he doesn’t know it, maybe because he has some kind of split personality. While I found it plausible, I didn’t want it to be the case. These episodes were tailored for us to believe it’s true. I labeled some clues throughout the weecap (and there are certainly others) but of course now we have to question whether the clues are red herrings or the show is really predictable. For me, the idea that Big Mouse has this army of followers helping him — even tattooed with his symbol — felt so very Project Mayhem that, from here on out, I will believe that Big Mouth is Big Mouse.

 
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Big Mouth: Episodes 7-8
Source: Buzz Pinay Daily