PRIDE: Goat Tongue Sate
Episode 2 of Devil’s Diner begins with a woman locking her husband out of the house. Sensing that something is wrong with her baby, she tries to go outside to get him to the hospital, but the man refuses to let her. In a final attempt, she forces the door open, causing her husband to fall down the staircase to his death—just as the baby starts crying, revealing that he is alive.
The scene shifts to years later, where the woman attends an award ceremony for her son, Tuan, at his company. We also learn that she has since become a wealthy business owner. During the event, she ends up arguing with Tuan’s boss over his negligence toward his employees.
Later, Tuan brings his fiancée home, only to realize that his mother is there. She immediately insults the woman and later tells Tuan that she will never allow him to marry her.
For a brief moment, things settle when Tuan receives a message about a bonus from his boss. However, upon visiting the office, he discovers that he has actually been fired. On his way back, he calls his fiancée, only for her to break up with him, citing his mother as the reason. Devastated, Tuan notices a diner nearby and decides to wait there in hopes of speaking with her.
As he waits, the bartender strikes up a conversation, subtly instigating his resentment toward his mother’s sharp tongue. He then presents Tuan with a goat’s head and asks him to cut out its tongue, channelling his anger toward his mother into the act.
Tuan returns home and ends up in a heated argument with his mother. He blames her for all his misfortunes, leading to her throwing him out of the house. Stumbling back into the diner, Tuan pleads for the bartender’s help.
By now, the bartender has prepared a goat tongue dish and offers him a deal: if Tuan can eat the entire dish—enduring his mother’s pain with every bite—he will achieve all his desires. However, if he fails, he will die, and his soul will belong to the bartender. Tuan agrees.
With the first bite, he relives how his mother confronted his boss upon Tuan’s unjust dismissal. With the next, he realizes that his fiancée had been cheating on him and that his mother had discovered the truth when she went to apologize to the woman.
With the final bite, he sees a memory of his mother—back when she had just earned her nail technician certificate, which later became the foundation of her business. He watches as she finds his father, drunk and moments away from killing baby Tuan. She manages to get the man outside the house. Tuan realises that to protect her child, she’d killed her husband.
Overcome with guilt, Tuan rushes home, only to find his mother bleeding profusely, her tongue cut out. He tries to take her to the hospital, but in her dazed state, she sees him as her abusive husband returning from the dead. In terror, she pushes Tuan from the upper floor, killing him—just as she had killed her husband years ago.
The Episode Review
Another strong episode from Devil’s Diner, this chapter delves into Buddhist teachings and the consequences of failing to adhere to them. The series continues to weave philosophy into short horror stories, a format that complements its themes perfectly.
However, one shortcoming in this episode is that the titular sin is harder to associate with the events. Unlike the previous episode, where greed was clearly the overarching theme, the execution here falls slightly short in emphasizing a specific sin.
Instead, the narrative appears to lean more toward the Asian philosophical concept of a mother’s unwavering love for her child. The horror, then, stems from the gruesome realization that the son had been, quite literally, cutting and eating his mother’s tongue—intensifying the gory psychological horror of the episode.
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