The adaptation of the webtoon Mask Girl was a big deal in South Korea, to the point where the identity of the actress who plays Kim Mo-mi during the first few episodes was kept under wraps until she was introduced in a big press event. So there’s obviously pressure to get this one right. We just care if the first episode was good.
Opening Shot: A girl gets ready to go out on stage and dance at a talent show.
The Gist: Kim Mo-mi (Lee Han-byul) always loved dancing in front of an audience. But as she got older, she got told in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t pretty enough to be a performer. One of those people was her mother.
In 2009, the 27-year-old Mo-mi is working a boring accounting job, but she still dances in front of an audience; this audience happens to be online, and she dances behind a mask on an online livestream as “Mask Girl.” Mo-mi’s sexy nighttime performances are very popular, and she has a lot of followers giving her “heart pangs” and encouraging her via the site’s chat feature.
At work, Mo-mi gossips with her friend Yoo Sang-sun (Kim Ga-hee) about how their young, pretty colleague Lee A-reum (Park Jung-hwa) shamelessly gets coffee for their piggish male colleagues, and they speculate she got plastic surgery. The only one in the office who seems to treat A-reum professionally is their boss, Park Gi-hun (Daniel Choi), one of the reasons why Mo-mi is totally in love with him. One big flaw: He’s married.
During an after work drinking session, one of Mo-mi’s harassing male co-workers shows Mr. Park the big new thing: sexy livestreams. When they mention Mask Girl, Mo-mi literally does a spit take. They share a cab and when his wife calls, he tells her he’s alone. That sends Mo-mi’s head spinning, and as Mask Girl she asks her followers if that’s a positive sign.
The next night, she comes back to the office late at night and catches Mr. Park kissing A-reum. She’s so distraught by the affair that she goes online as Mask Girl and strips naked, getting her suspended from the livestream.
She strategically spreads the news about the affair around the office, which gets both Mr. Park and A-reum in trouble. She even brings Mr. Park back to her place after encountering him falling-down drunk near her office. Then she gets a work email that says the sender knows she’s Mask Girl.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Mask Girl gives us similar vibes to the series The Client List.
Our Take: Based on a Mae Mi’s webtoon of the same name, Mask Girl feels like a show that could go just about anywhere, and that’s a welcome thing. We appreciated that, while the story is due to take some twists and turns, we’re given a good opportunity to get to know Mo-mi in the first episode, and see both sides of the actor who plays her in the first episode.
Why did we say that in that way? Because Lee Han-byul is one of three actresses who plays Mo-mi during the course of the series, and the least well known of the three. Nana plays her after she decides to have plastic surgery, and Go Hyun-jung plays the present-day version of her. We’re actually glad to know this, because it shows that the story is going to go in some interesting directions, and we’re not sure if any of that has to even do with Mo-mi being found out to be Mask Girl or not.
But the episodes are structured to introduce us to other people, and then the story returns to Mo-mi. We meet Ju Oh-nam (Ahn Jae-hong), Mask Girl’s number-one fan, Kim Kyung-ja (Yeom Hye-ran), whose life intersects with Mo-mi, and Kim Chun-ae (Han Jae-yi), who is in a bad relationship with a K-pop star. We have no idea at this point how they will intersect with Mo-mi, but we’re certainly interested in finding out.
But let’s come back to Lee Han-byul’s performance in the first episode. She does a great job of embodying both Mi-mo’s complete lack of self-esteem in her everyday life with the sexy confidence she has as Mask Girl. We hope to see more of her before Mi-mo transforms into the other two women who play her.
Sex and Skin: When Mi-mo goes “the full monty” on the livestream, we see her bare behind.
Parting Shot: On the live stream site, Mi-mo chats as Mask Girl with her biggest fan. On the other side, we see Oh-nam sitting at his computer, on the other side of that chat.
Sleeper Star: Not sure we’ll see more of Kim Ga-hee as Mi-mo’s work buddy Sang-sun, but we liked her character’s ability to call out her co-workers’ harassing behavior.
Most Pilot-y Line: There’s an extended scene where Mi-mo accuses someone on the subway of groping her, and then the two get into a fight at the police station when the guy questions why he’d ever touch her. Not sure why the scene was so long, besides being somewhat of a comedic break.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Mask Girl is intriguing because we have absolutely no idea where the story is going after Episode 1, and we want to find out.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.