In the twenty-sixth episode of Monster<\/i>, WHAT THE FUCK!!! Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Monster<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of suicide, manipulation, grief<\/b><\/p>\n
This is all a game, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? ISN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T IT? Johan is up to something<\/i> here, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s manipulating multiple people into\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 what? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually fucking know! I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even imagine<\/i> an endgame at this point, and perhaps that is because Johan just likes to fuck with people for the hell of it. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 so much going on here, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna try to do my best to unpack it all.<\/p>\n
Schuwald<\/b><\/p>\n
First of all: Schuwald definitely<\/i> believed that Edmund was his son, and during the opening of this episode, we are casually told that Edmund was definitely lying about this. It happened so fast that I almost didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t catch it. I mean, I initially couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even tell why we were opening on these characters, and then I find out Schuwald hired a private investigator (whose name I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t catch) to investigate Edmund\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death. So, right off the bat, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s immediately possible that Karl is<\/i> Schuwald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s son, but Schuwald himself bought the con. He believes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Edmund, and the portrait of grief we get here is devastating. Schuwald has stopped eating, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s largely unresponsive throughout the episode, and he is drowning in regret. He never got to have a relationship with his son, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain part of his reaction is due to guilt over that. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even matter to him that the man he hired to investigate Edmund found out the truth about Edmund\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story. Schuwald can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even hear it! He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not in a space to accept this. That would mean he still has no relationship with his son, and he probably believes he never will.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Karl<\/b><\/p>\n EXCEPT HIS SON IS RIGHT THERE. As if that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tragic and awful enough, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a whole plot here devoted to Karl opening up about his feelings, first to Lotte, and then to JOHAN. And look, I totally get why Karl wanted to get to know Schuwald first before he revealed who he was. Guess who was that person for my siblings\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 adoptive mom? Me! They both were like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah, how about you meet her first and tell us what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Which I was perfectly fine with! I was curious enough myself to be the first of the three of us to meet her in person, but the impulse completely makes sense to me. And in Karl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case, this was a man who was rumored to be\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, a lot of things. His reputation wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly stellar, was it? So, Karl used the reading sessions to get a feel for who this man was, and Schuwald was, basically, exactly as Karl thought he would be: arrogant, obsessed with money, and not at all pleasant to be around.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve mentioned this before, but this is the perfect time to repeat myself as I transition to talking about Karl and Johan. I think it was a brilliant decision for this show (and the source material, if the pacing was the same) to give us so very little of Johan prior to this. This episode is the most we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen of him, and instead, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen his collateral damage. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen how many people he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s broken and manipulated, how many deaths are either done by him or through him. We know that he has flat-out ruined more lives than we can count or even know of.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n And now, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to befriend Karl. Look, I am convinced with virtually no evidence that Johan set up Edmund. Do I understand the reason why? Nope! But someone had to know enough about Karl to make it believable that Edmund was Schuwald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s son. Who else is an expert at manipulating people with incredibly personal information? IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S FUCKING JOHAN. So, combine these things together, and I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understandable why literally every<\/i> act of Johan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s caused me to shrink up in horror. When he reached for Karl to help him up the ladder? ABSOLUTELY NOT, DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T TOUCH HIM. Walking along the edge of the building? YOU\u00e2\u20ac\u2122RE A MONSTER. Asking him for more details about his time in foster care? HE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TRICKING YOU INTO VOLUNTARILY GIVING UP INFORMATION HE WILL USE AGAINST YOU LATER. He unnerves me when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing anything<\/i>. And that crying??? What the fuck, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all? Was that a real response or was he just trying to manipulate Karl further???<\/p>\n The same goes for the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153secret\u00e2\u20ac\u009d woods referenced in the title. In another context, Johan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s imaginative words to Schuwald would have been touching and loving. He helped this man see a place he loved that was no longer there! Except I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t compartmentalize Johan; I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see him doing positive things for someone for the sake of it. No, everything<\/i> feels like a fucking mind game, and it creeps me out. What is his deal here? What exactly is he trying to do? Is there some reason for his fixation on these people? Is it because Johan also<\/i> spent time in foster care? And we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even gotten to Dr. Tenma, who is on his way to Munich. How is that<\/i> going to complicate matters? The same goes for the private investigator! He now knows that Karl thinks he is Schuwald\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s son and that someone came with Edmund to speak \u00e2\u20ac\u0153for\u00e2\u20ac\u009d him. IT WAS JOHAN! It has to be!<\/p>\n This fucking show, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The video for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Secret Woods\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now OUT!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the twenty-sixth episode of Monster, WHAT THE FUCK!!! Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Monster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[699],"tags":[700],"class_list":["post-7439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monster","tag-mark-watches-monster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}