Big Mouth: Episodes 1-2 (First Impressions)

by Dramaddictally

Lee Jong-seok is back! And seeing his pretty face on my screen after a three-year drama drought is enough to have me in a tizzy. Unfortunately, his flawless face doesn’t stay unscathed for long as he’s reentered dramaland with Big Mouth — a noir crime thriller that features an underdog lawyer, a murder amidst the upper class, and a case of false identity. The show is darker than I was hoping for, but the conflicts seem real and the stakes are high, making it more watchable than I imagined.

Editor’s note: Coverage will continue with weecaps.

 
EPISODES 1-2 FIRST IMPRESSIONS

We enter the fictional city of Gucheon in the rain as a truck dumps bars of gold into a hole in the ground and then pours concrete over them. PARK CHANG-HO (Lee Jong-seok) narrates over black-and-white urban scenes that this city is rotten to the core. The wealthy love it (because they’re corrupt) and the rest don’t fight the injustices because they’re too busy trying to earn a living. Chang-ho is one of these people. His goal is simply to become successful and live happily with his family. The catch? He’s a lawyer — just the type of guy who should care about social justice.

As we lay our Gotham-like scene, a chorus of news reporters gives us details about the city’s most notorious resident: Big Mouse. He’s a con artist wrapped up in every form of organized crime who has also swindled investment capital from a group called NR Forum (we’ll come to learn this is a secretive elite organization). No one knows who Big Mouse is but he’s obviously the city’s most wanted criminal.

The drama’s action begins when we meet GO MI-HO (Yoon-ah), Chang-ho’s wife, who points out the couple’s sky-high debt and the fact that they can’t afford to eat out at expensive restaurants — like the one he’s taken her to for their three-year anniversary. They eat anyway, but Chang-ho gets called away to meet someone about the murder case he’s handling. Before he leaves, he quips, “Congrats on marrying me” (and every woman everywhere sighs dreamily).

On his way out, a staff member hands him a drink to go, which he happily takes and starts sipping (who in their right mind would accept that?). Of course, it’s drugged and causes him to crash his car.

We then slide back seven days to see what led up to this event and also get some backstory on our couple and their personalities. Through their daily morning routine, we learn that Chang-ho is kind of a doofus, screwing up everything from his alarm to his tie, while Mi-ho has everything under control, scolding Chang-ho and setting straight everything he messes up. This plays out on a larger scale as well, as it turns out the two are in debt because Mi-ho saved a nest egg that Chang-ho took without her knowledge and got scammed out of — so Mi-ho’s anger is rooted in more than his little mess-ups.

Chang-ho’s blunders aren’t confined to his marriage either. Behind his back, his clients call him Big Mouth because he talks a big game but loses 90% of his legal cases. Recently, Chang-ho took money from a loan shark, which he can only pay back if he wins his next case. So, when he loses that case, he’s out of favor with his clients, the loan sharks, and his wife — who says she wants a divorce. The tone of the scene tells us that Mi-ho doesn’t really want a divorce though, she just wants to be able to pay their bills, and it’s clear the debt is tearing their marriage apart.

Just as Chang-ho is about to succumb to depression, Gucheon’s Mayor CHOI DO-HA (Kim Joo-hun) calls to ask Chang-ho to take a case. It’s the murder case that we heard about in the first scene — the one Chang-ho leaves his anniversary dinner to attend to. The case is related to Gucheon Hospital: a doctor was murdered (found in the trunk of a car) and three upper echelon people are the prime suspects. Mayor Choi called Chang-ho on behalf of the three defendants precisely because Chang-ho has lost most of his cases — they want an obedient front man because they’ve already planned out their trial and bought off the judges.

However, the mayor is playing both sides. He tells the defendants he’s hiring Chang-ho on their behalf but tells Chang-ho he wants to find the missing dashcam from the car to get to the truth behind the murder. The mayor’s excuse is that the suspects helped get him elected, but now they are making demands and he wants to get rid of them.

Chang-ho initially refuses, not wanting to be involved in such underhanded business. But Mayor Choi (after handing him a stack of cash) tells Chang-ho the case will make him famous, and then he can take whatever cases he wants. Chang-ho says yes, but develops his own plans to play double agent.

Chang-ho goes to visit the suspects in prison and finds them in a hidden room for wealthy inmates. They’re drinking wine and smoking cigars on comfortable couches. All three men talk down to Chang-ho who placates them by acting grateful to be hired. Before leaving, he places a bug in their room and finds out the wife of one of the suspects has the dashcam. He also learns there is a fourth (unnamed) accomplice.

Chang-ho and the mayor both go see the wife, who appears afraid of the mayor (and makes me think he’s the fourth person). However, when Chang-ho asks her who the other accomplice is, she names GONG JI-HOON (Yang Kyung-won) — the president of a media conglomerate and long-time friend of the three suspects.

Chang-ho watches the footage, which shows the suspects collectively kill the doctor inside the car in what seems like an accident. They wanted to almost kill him while trying to coax him to withdraw an unspecified paper.

We reach the present where Chang-ho totals his car and goes to the hospital. While unconscious, he thinks about how unlucky his life has been — his only luck is that Mi-ho has always been by his side. In other flashbacks, we see that she’s the problem solver in the relationship. Once, when the tenants upstairs refused to fix a leak, Mi-ho went up and caused a ruckus until they paid for repairs (and the tenants? Shoutout to Start-Up with cameos by Kim Do-wan and Yoo Su-bin).

Before Chang-ho can leave the hospital, he’s arrested for drug use. And after all the divorce talk, Mi-ho is still by his side. When push comes to shove, she tells him to trust in their bond and hold on.

But he has to hold on longer than expected. When the police come to search Chang-ho’s law office they find billions of won in the ceiling, along with guns, drugs, and gold bars stashed in the walls. Short story: he’s on his way to the most hardcore prison in Korea. Also, with that stockpile, he’s believed to be the wanted criminal Big Mouse.

In prison, Chang-ho learns he was drugged by the three inmates he was supposed to represent (they want the dashcam). He’s taken to their underground lair where he’s beaten and tortured. (Not gonna lie, it’s rough to watch. Uri Jong-seok!) At the last minute, Ji-hoon calls and orders him not to be killed — if Chang-ho is Big Mouse, he needs him alive to get his swindled money back.

With everyone a double agent and nothing as it seems, Mi-ho sets out to clear Chang-ho’s name, getting hired at Gucheon Hospital to uncover why the doctor was murdered. But the thought of Mi-ho in danger worries Chang-ho so much, he plans to kill himself to remove her from harm’s way. Realizing he’s in a place full of murderers, he decides to get one of them to kill him instead. He’s so overzealous in his mission to anger a murderer, though, he accidentally gains the fear and respect of the other inmates (this is actually kind of funny).

There is a lot going on in this drama and I hope it develops larger social themes since the setup is great with an everyday couple taking on societal elites. I was a little misled by the promos, which made me think there would be an actual mistaken identity. Big Mouse and Big Mouth are spelled the same in Korean as a transliteration from English, so I thought the nicknames sounding the same had something to do with how they got mixed up. Turns out, not at all. Chang-ho was framed! (I mean, assuming he’s not actually Big Mouse.)

Still, I like where they are going with the relationship dynamics between Chang-ho and Mi-ho. Early on, I was worried about how much the male characters were patronizing her, but we already know she’s the thinker in this story. It leaves space for Chang-ho to grow while Mi-ho outwits everyone, and our leading couple can (hopefully) come out on top as a team.

 
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