Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: μ μΈμ κΈ° / EVILIVE.
EVILIVE is a 2023 Korean crime drama about a mild-mannered middle-aged lawyer who becomes convinced by a beautiful tall mob boss that he is tired of being nice and does want to go apeshit.
I'm going to try real hard not to do the "[guy who has only seen Beyond Evil, watching a second Korean drama] this is giving Beyond Evil vibes" thing, but you have to admit up front that comparisons are inevitable. Both of them are tight, emotionally charged dramas with a lot of blurred lines about right and wrong, and both star the absolute acting powerhouse that is Shin Hakyun playing against a gorgeous younger man who sexually threatens him a lot.
However, EVILIVE makes Beyond Evil look warm and fuzzy. The series is tight, violent, messy tale of what happens when bad choices are the only choices left to make, but you lean real hard into them anyway. So especially if you're a fan of Infernal Affairs, The Gangster, the Cop, and the Devil, and/or other homoerotic East Asian crime-and-punishment media, let me give you five reasons why I think this ten-episode series is worth your time.
1. Daddy's home
But which one of them is Daddy??? Well, that's part of the fun. See, one of the characters is older and more composed, but also clearly the economically and hierarchically subordinate of the pair; the other is younger and has spent more time obediently submitting to his crime bosses, but has all the money and wields all the power in any room he walks into (and also uses every inch of his 6'2" frame to do it). So whichever one you think deserves that title, you're right.
Watching Shin Hakyun in a couple other things, I realized how often he's cast as a sniveling, pathetic, nerdy boy-man -- and he makes good use of that experience here. His Han Dongsu starts off as a wet paper towel of a person. They put that handsome fellow in the worst possible haircut a Korean man is allowed to have by law, frumped him up in some ill-fitting suits, and left him out in the rain for a couple scenes. It'd be criminal how much they nerfed his hotness if you didn't know from the start he's got a glow-up coming.
And it's a perfect contrast to the tall, lanky, and always slightly underwashed Seo Doyeong, played perfectly by Actual Runway Model Kim Youngkwang. Equal parts sleepy-eyed and vicious, Seo Deoyeong is a perfect handsome thug. He too looks like a lion who asked a good fairy to turn him into a beautiful Japanese lesbian, only his good fairy missed slightly, but the results were still pretty great.
And oh boy, does he want to fuck that old man in half.
There is a lot going on in this show, but the core dynamic is the weird dance between these two as Seo Doyeong opens the door to the criminal underworld and Han Dongsu makes the choice to step through it. The Korean title translates roughly to 'Villain Story,' so you know from the start this is going to about one guy looking at another and going, I can make him worse. And then he does.
I know there are those of you reading this right now who like it when those boys get rough with one another. I am here to tell you that EVILIVE does not disappoint on that front. If you consider stabbing someone a love language, this to you will be romance.
2. The TENSION
And I don't just mean the sexual tension, though, as my previous point noticed, there sure is a whole lot of that.
EVILIVE is not an easy feel-good funtime show. The very first scene (a flash-forward) involves seeing a character get stone-cold murdered by another character. This show features Legitimately Bad People Who Do Legitimately Bad Things. You may want some of them to get away with it because you like them for other reasons! But you know that geting away with it gets less and less likely every time you see them do yet another Legitimately Bad Thing.
The general shape of the plot is that a deeply stressed normie man who has been repeatedly fucked over gets a chance to strike back against the people and organizations that fucked him over by going to work for a violent mobster -- because all the systems that were supposed to help him are deeply corrupt and run by people arguably even worse than said violent mobster. So you don't even get the moral high ground of saying that Han Dongsu should have done things the right way because, motherfucker, he tried. He tried doing things by the book, and all that got him was a bunch of debt and humiliation. Worse, it got his loved ones a bunch of debt and humiliation to go right along with his.
Yeah, you notice I call him "normie" up there, and not "normal"? Han Dongsu is not a normal guy. Maybe he was, once, a long time ago, but life broke him very badly. Now he's trying to do what all the nice people say he's supposed to do, all the while being a bottled-up rage monster beneath the surface.
That's where Seo Doyeong comes in.
I do think the back half of the show is unevenly paced, to the point where I don't think it should have taken your full standard sixteen episodes of a regular-sized Korean drama, but I definitely think it should have gotten more than ten. The show kind of handwaves over months-long stretches of time that I very much would have liked to see play out, especially to watch Han Dongsu and Seo Doyeong bounce off one another some more.
If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I would say that you would have to fast-forward over those stretches, because if you did show the extent of those boys' interactions during those periods -- enough to give some later events in the show the gravity they deserve -- things would quickly get unsustainably gay.
All right, all right, I know I'm calling things gay again, but how gay is it?
Well, to some degree, only as gay as these things ever are. I mean, you know the genre, so you understand the inherent sexiness of busting the lip of a guy you have a complicated life-or-death relationship with. If one of them were a girl, there'd be no question about what we're looking at here. (See: the Butch and Sundance digression in point 5 of my Sand Sea rec post.) You pretty much can't create the intense dynamic needed to sustain this kind of story without getting into at least a little unintentional homoeroticism.
Except I don't think it's entirely unintentional, and for that, I'm going to point (again) to Seo Doyeong.
When we first meet Seo Doyeong, he claims to have a girlfriend -- but then we actually meet her, and she's everyone's girlfriend but his. He never shows any interest in women. He never mentions romantic or sexual histories with women. I don't think he even interacts substantially with any adult women, minus one critical scene. Actual Runway Model Kim Youngkwang playes Doyeong like he clearly has the 'fight' and 'fuck' sections of his brain cross-wired, and he is always spoiling for a fight.
Now, of course, we are getting into the murky territory of 'just because a guy doesn't express interest in women doesn't necessarily mean he's gay!' Which, you're right, it doesn't. But when said guy is spending damn near every scene looking like somebody's about to get their dick sucked, yeah, it kinda does.
Wait, did I say we weren't talking about sexual tension? Well, that's fine, because there's still lots of high-stress surprises left! I've already made allusions to some of the general shapes of the narrative, and I'll make even more before this rec post is through -- and I don't feel like those are spoilers, because you can know the trajectory of the story and still find yourself holding your breath about what's going to happen next. It's like Breaking Bad! You know he breaks bad! That's not a spoiler! It's in the title!
EVILIVE's plot exists in a tangle of warring organized crime factions, all the bosses and goons vying for power inside said factions, the politicians they've paid off, the lawyers who know all their secrets, the businessmen trying to maximize their profits through illegal enterprises, the corrupt law enforcement agencies trying to make the conclusions fit their preferred narratives... What I'm saying is, it's going to get messy.
Oh, and there's also the one honest cop who's onto them, so, you know ... good luck with that.
3. Baby brother. Baby.
Every tragedy needs collateral damage. EVILIVE's comes in the form of Han Dongsu's dipshit younger half-brother, Han Beomjae.
God's perfect failure to launch, Beomjae is an underachieving doofus who has some real computer smarts, but lacks the ability to get his shit together in any meaningful fashion. Dongsu has taken care of Beomjae pretty much their whole shared lives, and now he also takes care of Beomjae's precious daughter, Minhui, who lives all but full-time with Dongsu and his wife.
I like that Beomjae's not some perfect angel either. Pretty much the first thing we do is see him scamming a customer at his part-time job so he can earn some extra cash. He's sweet and earnest, but he's also absolutely capable of taking advantage of situations to get by. When he's lying to customers about the price of refurbished hardware, that's one thing. When the big brother he'd do anything for gets wrapped up with a mob boss, that's quite another.
The show is kind of fuzzy about what the age difference is between them. Shin Hakyun is nearly twenty years older than Shin Jaeha, Beomjae's actor, but we get one little flashback when we see the boys together as kids, and there they look like they're maybe five and ten. I'm going to call bullshit on the flashback and go with the actor ages, because to me it definitely makes a big difference in Han Beomjae's character if he's supposed to be thirty and has been managing being a single dad -- and mismanaging everything else about his life -- since he was twenty.
Beomjae's a gentle little disaster, a petty fuckup who's used to getting by on petty crimes and trying his best (which is not very good). He is not a bottled-up rage monster. He does not want to go apeshit. He wants a mild-mannered existence, scraping together what he can to make a, well, mostly honest living for himself. Unfortunately for him, he's wound up in a genre that doesn't reward honesty.
Shin Jaeha turns in a solid performance here, especially considering his part is more understated than a lot of the others. Most of the time, he's sharing the screen with at least one of two real heavy hitters, but he holds his own. At first, I thought Beomjae was going to be annoying and exhausting, little more than a burden on Dongsu, but he turns out to be wonderful -- and because this show is the kind of show it is, you know eventually that's gonna hurt.
4. It's just beautiful
Ugh, this is the point where I have to get mad about how few screenshots there are of this show to poach from the internet, because it's lovely. The folk behind the camera are quite talented, and shots are framed and lit so well.
Here, I'm going to do my best with what's out there.
I mean, yeah, this show gets a cheat in how Actual Runway Model Kim Youngkwang is so gorgeous that you can't really get a bad shot of him. But the camera knows how to lean into his menace so effectively that it uses his natural resources perfectly.
Also, the posters they did for the main three are stunning.
I actually think this beauty is not just an incidental charm, but a key feature of the show. As I've said a couple times now, this show is quite violent. The violence, however, is presented in a way that is both lovely and awful at once, so you have something worth looking at even during the brutal scenes that isn't just ceaseless human misery. This is especially important to me because I'm pretty squeamish about violence! While I had to look away from the screen more than once (scenes with severing and breaking fingers in particular), I always kept wanting to look back.
Also! This show is set in 2008, which means it's got a cool recent-past vibe to it. Pretty much everything looks modern, except all the technology and cars are just out of date. It's a neat effect.
5. It resists an easy moral
Ah, we're back to Beyond Evil! You knew it was coming. Anyway, Beyond Evil ends -- and I'm saying this in as unspoilery of a way as possible -- with the people who did bad things getting punishments suitable to the level of badness they did. It's a show that skates the edge of copaganda but avoids it because of its steadfast belief that power and privilege should not insulate you from the consequences of your actions. Through this belief, it creates a story about a fantasy world in which power and privilege do not insulate you from the consequences of your actions.
Ha ha ha oh boy that is not EVILIVE's take on things.
EVILIVE exists in a world of extensive corruption and collusion between organized crime, politicians, and businesses -- and that world is very real. I remember when the South Korean president declared martial law last month, which prompted an immediate oh hell no response from pretty much everybody in the vicinity. A lot of non-Korean people were asking online how a country whose citizens seem so cool and action-oriented keep electing a bunch of absolute shitbags. And the answer seems to be, the whole system is jaw-droppingly corrupt, which means all the candidates are shitbags. You must be this shitbag to play. There is no non-shitbag option.
So it's not like Han Dongsu and Seo Doyeong are inventing some new kind of crime here. This is not the tale of how two bad dudes disturbed a pure and perfect ecosystem. It's a story about how, when presented with the choice of becoming the abuser or staying the victim, the "moral" choice is not the easy one.
I don't even think you can draw an easy conclusion about "oh, back when he was poor, at least he was happy and had friends!" because no he wasn't! His lack of money created so many problems for him and everyone around him! He has moments of happiness and togetherness, but they are vastly overshadowed by the grinding horror of his day-to-day life and the way it keeps him from being able to provide for or protect his loved ones. And he's haunted the whole time by the knowledge that the reason everything is so fucked up in the first place is that, once upon a time, he tried to do the right thing.
The real villain of the show is poverty, with a henchman of how it's so much easier to join a bad system than it is to challenge it. If anything, I wish the show had been a little more upfront about that, because I think that it's subtle about it to the point where it's easy to take away a shallow 'wow, bad things happen to people who do bad things!' lesson. That's not what it's saying. Yes, bad things happen to bad people, but sometimes good things happen to bad people. Actually, frequently good things happen to bad people, because the bad people do the things that make enough money to keep the bad things from happening to them. And bad things happen to good people because the good people don't have enough money to keep the bad things from happening to them. And if you're going to end up suffering either way, why not choose the way that also lets you live in a really nice house?
...I mean, okay, I guess there is at least one easy moral here, and that is DON'T GAMBLE ONLINE, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, JUST SET YOUR MONEY ON FIRE, IT'S FASTER
Ready to play ball?
For some reason, EVILIVE is not available on your regular streaming services. MyAsiaTV was how we were watching it, except that between episodes eight and nine (argh!), whatever external site they were hosting the videos on went kablooey for me. I'm leaving the link there because maybe it'll work for you? However, in searching for a replacement, I found that this DailyMotion account has the episodes as well, and has had them uploaded for over a year now, so perhaps that's a more reliable source. Whatever works for you!
In both cases, the subtitles are absolutely fine -- definitely some hiccups and typos here and there, but on the whole they're fine. They are, however, bowdlerized to the point of hilarity. You get scenes where these blood-covered gangsters are stabbing one another, and the subtitles have them yelling things like, "You jerk!" Which adds to the experience, but maybe not in a good way.
Anyway, watch it, then come back here, and we'll go together to see what AO3 has in the way of fix-it fic, okay?
OH. OHHH this is going to be their thing. The forehead to forehead almost-kissy-nuzzling. Ugggh UGHH this is like my favourite thing. They are such a pair of teases.
there is actually not nearly enough discussion about the costume choices in only friends. like yes i know there was actually a lot of talk about it but itβs not enough cause like what do you mean when mew entered his revenge era he started dressing like ray and what do you mean when ray finally got with mew he started dressing like sand. what do you mean raymew went as harley and the joker for halloween, a famously toxic and self-destructive couple. what do you mean sand almost made out with someone dressed as the same person he was dressed as before ray stopped him. what do you mean nick started dressing like top to get boston to like him and it WORKED. WHAT DO YOU MEAN
No because I just know first lowkey wanted to kiss his forehead right there and then the way khaotung's smiling while resting his head on first's shoulder π₯Ί
The On1y One has managed to capture the true essence of a 300k slow burn, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, only one bed, grumpy x sunshine trope fic that you find at 1 am and get really into. Next thing you know it's 5 am, you cannot put the fic down, you keep on clicking on "Next Chapter" to find yourself right in the middle of the story and what do you see? There's no "Next Chapter" button. The fic was last updated 4 years ago. The author's note says they'll be back soon. So, you hold onto that hope, click on subscribe and then fall asleep.
