Started watching “Stranger” (Secret Forest)…

… and so far I have no idea who the stranger is and where’s the forest?

In any case it is interesting so far though I’m not sure why our emotion-challenged hero feels the need to be so rude. It’s like the drama is predicating politeness on the ability to feel something as opposed to a learned social behavior that as an intelligent man he should certainly be aware of.

But our heroine is taking it in stride and not taking offense, which I’m not sure is a step forward or backward for womankind.

Also, so far they’re trying to make the case that the person they were trying to set up for the fixer’s murder was not the sticky-fingered and heartless cable TV repair guy but our hero… and I think the writers have already forgotten he arrived at the house with the dude’s MOM, so like, framing him would have been a little difficult. Just a bit.

At any rate, on to Chapter 3…

EDIT: I’m now part-way through Ep. 3, and can I just add how annoyed I am at all this chest-beating over the TV guy who killed himself in prison; they keep saying he was an innocent man, an innocent man my ass! Even if he didn’t kill the guy, he still robbed a guy who was dying in front of him and didn’t call 911, how is he remotely innocent. Even if the victim was already stone-cold dead, he still robbed his house and would have gone to jail for that. He was in jail for less time than he would have probably gotten for the robbery when he offed himself, so he still was serving the time that he deserved. There was no miscarriage of justice YET. Had he served all 22 years of what should have been a 3-year sentence for robbery, then you might have a case. IMO.

#bae-doona, #cho-seung-woo, #stranger, #stranger-secret-forest

Robin N 12:29 am on April 4, 2018

I’m so glad you’re watching this one. I was very wrapped up in the plot pretty early on, and the performances are very good. As for the title… maybe it’s a Korean play on the analogy “can’t see the forest for the trees,” but hey, how many other weird and inexplicable titles have we seen before?

Our rude prosecutor isn’t intentionally rude; that surgical treatment he had when he was a kid damaged the part of his brain that controls emotional response. He has no filters (for the most part) when it comes to behaving sensitively because he no longer knows what that feels like. And if I’d had tinnitus as bad as he did as a kid, losing empathy and the ability to make social connections would be a small price to pay to stop the pain. But I really like the performance from Cho Seung-won in this; he’s got such a piercing, intelligent gaze. Bae Doona is also (not surprisingly) very strong in this too. Her part could just as easily have been played by a guy, and I like that the connection they make is not a traditional one. They share principles and focus – not spit 😉 I read an interview with her in which she said that when she first got the script she didn’t see much of a role there for her, but it grew into something special.

BTW, the guy who plays the weasel prosecutor… what a switcheroo when you think of his noble guy role in City Hunter — and the head prosecutor too is one who mixes it up well. I didn’t connect him with the weak-willed dad in Strong Woman Do Bong Soo!

As for the guy who killed himself in prison — I have to say you’re spot on! He was no Snow White, he was an ex-con and he did rob the house even after finding a dead guy (and was he really already dead or just bleeding out?), so no boo-hoo from me either. And seriously, your solution to your problems when you have a wife and baby is to kill yourself?

I rewatched parts of it when they put it up on Netflix and should go back in and double-dip on those parts I skipped!
yenchan69 11:38 am on April 6, 2018

Yeah, killing himself because he felt so “WRONGED,” hahaha, like he hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Does he have not a lick of awareness that at least part of this sentence was his fault?? If he had shown up like a decent person and called 911, tried CPR, did all the right things, one can understand his outrage if suddenly his attempts to do a good deed ended with him being pointed to as the killer. But this weasel ignores a dying man in favor of looting his house and scurries away without even calling for assistance. It’s depraved indifference, and still he feels like he been done dirty. I swear to GOd. SO FRUSTRATING.. And as you said, kills himself and leaves his wife and baby to fend for themselves, useless piece of shit. Good riddance.

But speaking of this child’s problem with loud noises (I know you refer to it as tinnitus, but from what they showed he was experiencing pain from exterior noises and lashing out violently at the sources of that noise; what he has NOW (post-surgery) appears to be tinnitus). How curious that they would lobotomize him instead of starting with, let’s say… industrial grade earplugs? Or rendering him deaf? Instead they went straight for the brain surgery which could have left him a drooling idiot, hardly seems to be an appropriate course of treatment. 😛
- Robin N 1:10 pm on April 6, 2018
  
  I think it is a form of tinnitus from the initial problem, but it seems like he still has some residual moments of it. While external stimulae such as loud noises served as a trigger point for our hero as a child, that doesn’t rule out it being a form of tinnitus. It’s a very complicated disorder and there’s very little known about its causes, its manifestations, and treatment.
  
  I have age-related tinnitus, in a mild form, that is similar to the mild ringing you “hear” after you’ve gone to a concert where the music is too loud, but Craig has a more pronounced version of it. The only way to treat it is to learn how to live with it, by listening to competing sounds (e.g. white noise) or audio therapy, though some people have tried surgical removal of the nerves that control audio impulses. That seems to be the kind of surgery that he had, though how it would impact behavior is unclear. This seems to be a plot device of some kind. Ear plugs are useless because it’s not really a produced sound.
  
  My guess is that someone who deals with the more extreme forms of tinnitus would be always on edge because it could interrupt sleep and deprive them of any moments of calm. A loud noise or similar shock could trigger rage because the frustrations would always be close to the surface.
  
  As for the con for whom we have no sympathy… even if he feared calling in a murder because he’d entered a house without permission (who cares if the door is unlocked) and he had form as a thief, one can argue that he could have made an anonymous call or cooked up a story as to why he felt he had to enter the house, so yeah… I have as much pity for him as Shi-mok does (and I never had nerve surgery).

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Focusing on Asian and Spanish-language dramas and the people who make them

Started watching “Stranger” (Secret Forest)…