'Mask' Borrows A Page From 'Beauty And The Beast'

A dutiful daughter is given to a monster to pay off a debt incurred by her father. That's the plot of the fairy tale "Beauty and The Beast" but it's also in a way the starting point for the drama "Mask," which is doing well in the ratings.

The third episode reached 8.6 percent in the viewer ratings, edging out the Hong Sisters comedy "Warm and Cozy" and "Masked Prosecutor."

In "Mask," Soo Ae plays Byun Ji Sook, a dutiful daughter to an unworthy father. Her dad has run up so much debt he can never afford to pay it back. She tries honestly to help him by working hard but there is no way she can ever pay back what they owe. As a result she is harassed, threatened, becomes implicated in a murder and almost dies.

The monster or beast in this story is the troubled heir Choi Min Woo, played by Joo Ji Hoon.

Her father never meets the monster or promises her to him as the father does in the fairy tale. But because of her attempts to escape his debt collectors she is roped into pretending to be Seo Eun Ha, the daughter of a presidential candidate, and Choi Min Woo's fiancée. Choi Min Woo seems like a monster. For the first few episodes viewers suspect that he killed his Seo Eun Ha. He certainly fears that he tried to although he cannot explain why.

But Choi Min Woo is less an actual monster than a man with enemies that try to turn him into a monster. Psychotropic drugs may be involved here, as well as Choi's psychiatrist, a man hired by his enemies to instill false memories that make him seem crazy.

Choi Min Woo is so tortured by what he thinks he has done that he is irritable and tries to keep people at a distance so he cannot hurt them.

Now that Soo Ae is trapped in his castle aka mansion she will come to see that the monster is really not a monster at all. With any luck she will be able to turn him back into a prince and save her family.

But curing his nightmares is not all she will have to do. There are more monsters in this castle. The place is a nest of vipers. Yoo In Young and Yun Jung Hun have already done an excellent job of making viewers hate them. Someone in the mansion killed the real Seo Eun Ha. Was it really Choi Min Woo? Or was it his sister, played by Yoon in Young, who is jealous of the affair that Seo Eun Ha was having with her husband, played by Yun Jung Hun?

Are you watching this drama? What do you think?