dangermousie | The Equator Man

In my not-so-humble opinion, TEM is the best drama airing right now (of the ones I've seen). Sure, I love K2H and enjoy Rooftop Prince, but TEM is just pretty much perfect (except for the soundtrack, which is toned down in ep 2 but still should be cut in half).

The performances are top-notch (especially from Lee Hyun Woo, who plays the younger version of Sun Woo, Uhm Tae Woong's character. That kid is going places) but even more interesting are the characters. I adore Sun Woo the way I don't often adore a character but I find Jang Il even more interesting, even if I don't like him much - take his crush on Ji Won - it is indubitable he's sincerely smitten, but he's smitten, in very large part, because she's an aspirational model - a rich young woman impeccably dressed and singing a song in English. It's not her, it's her status.

I am probably pushing similarities where they aren't, but in a way, Sun Woo and Jang Il remind me a bit of the protagonists of Mawang (my favorite drama of all time) - one is warm-hearted, immediate, prone to violence in just cause, and one a whip-smart, cold, calculating one who finds it hard to open up.

Only the roles have been somewhat reversed - in Mawang, it was the seemingly cold lawyer who was a wreck irreparably damaged by the horrific wrongs done to him and his family (and, in turn, made things only worse when he went for vengeance) and the warm-hearted cop was the perpetrator of the wrongs who has spent his life trying to right the past. Here, this is not the case - clearly, Sun Woo is the victim of the situation, doing everything, even some things that may damn his soul (the bargain offered by the Mob at the end of ep 2 was chilling) for a person whose father killed his (on orders of possibly SW's birth father? Eeeep, this is dark). And Jang Il's ambition and moral ambivalence are not a result of repeated horrific trauma as was the case with Joo Ji Hoon's character in Mawang - no, it's his hatred of poverty and desire for power, understandable but much less sympathetic.

Maybe it is more like Resurrection - I foresee Sun Woo going much darker once he finds out the truth - in Resurrection, Uhm Tae Woong's character morphed from a warm and loving man into a ruthless, ice-cold, terrifying carrier of vengeance who knew he was turning into a monster but could not stop. I wonder if his character here will experience the same trajectory.

Anyway, this is amazing, you should watch!