The Diary
In episode 2 of this two-part special, Mouse: The Predator starts to fill in the blanks surrounding Jae-Hoon and his psychopathic tendencies. We cut through time, across various days, as Jae-Hoon records his thoughts. This journal continues through time, as Jae-Hoon decides to put on a mask and be good from now on. That mask comes in the form of Ba-Reum. After killing for the first time, Ba-Reum comments how good this makes him feel. He likens himself to a higher being and decides to do God’s work for him. Each of the different murders see Ba-Reum leave a diary entry for himself, referencing back to the fairytales and the Seven Deadly Sins. There’s a fair amount of repetition here though, which I won’t bother typing out if you’ve been reading these recaps over time! However, this is slightly helpful for a more consistent and solid timeline. All these killings link across to Han-Kook, whom Ba-Reum decides to judge after his TV appearance. He tries in vain to convince Han-Kook to show hatred but the boy refuses to do so. These killings are also part of Ba-Reum’s diary too, which could be a vital clue going into the last set of episodes. The big takeaway here is that the Head Hunter knew about Ba-Reum from the very beginning. Ba-Reum toys with Moo-Chi during the investigation, intentionally leading him astray with Chi-Kook. He also tests his investigative work too, struggling to hold back a maniacal grin the entire time. This entire series of events include Moo-Chi heading up to the rooftop and finding the bloodied uniform. One thing Moo-Chi did get wrong though is the hand movements. It turns out Ba-Reum is ambidextrous (able to use both hands.) The rest of the scenes play out like normal until we come to Ba-Reum’s surgery. There’s still no clear clue how Seo-Joon actually got into the hospital and started this whole event though, but we do see him working. The bird incident when Ba-Reum awakens after, seems like a brief side effect before Yo-Han’s part of his brain kicked in. We then jump forward a year to the moments before Ba-Reum jumped to his doom. He repents for his actions and eventually helps Moo-Chi and the others with the investigation. It’s not enough and Ba-Reum continues to despair, unsure how to make up for the pain he’s caused.
The Episode Review
Part 2 of Mouse: The Predator fills in a few blanks but aside from the Head Hunter’s knowing glance and a couple of straightened timeline additions, there really isn’t a whole lot else here. This stop-gap between episodes does confirm Jae-Hoon is Ba-Reum but doesn’t really explain his family set-up that well Unless I’m missing something of course, what happened to Jae-Hoon’s family? What about his Mother? His siblings? It also doesn’t help that this special 2-parter has also brought more niggling plot issues to the fold. If Bong-Yi did slash at Ba-Reum’s arm, where is his blood? Was it wiped off the knife? Did any of his blood splash across the floor? And why didn’t Moo-Won shout out Ba-Reum’s identity on TV? It initially seemed like a masked man killed Moo-Chi’s brother but this two-parter has confirmed that he never had a mask on. Still, Mouse is one of those shows that keeps you gripped until the end but there are undeniably a lot of plot holes cropping up that are difficult to look past.
