A terrible accident almost kills our hero, but in a stroke of luck, he is given a second chance at life. However, things have changed, and our heroes must learn to navigate this new world together. As our bad mother slowly repairs her relationship with her son, she realizes just how much she did not know about him and must decide what to do going forward.
EPISODES 3-4
Last week, I thought Ha-young was an innocent bystander who got caught up in Kang-ho’s revenge, so imagine my surprise when Tae-soo goes to the hospital to comfort his crying daughter only to whisper in her ear, “Good job.” (My jaw dropped.) All those coincidences — her driving, losing the scarf, parking on a ledge — were actually deliberate choices to stage the accident, but the deviousness of Tae-soo doesn’t stop there. In order to cover his tracks, he has the truck burned and the man killed.
However, Tae-soo is not the only villain around, and Woo-byeok proves to be a cunning foe. He sends his men to find the hit-and-run driver, and with a bit of leg work, they uncover Tae-soo’s nefarious plans. With enough incriminating evidence to ruin Tae-soo’s career, Woo-byeok has the man’s life in the palm of his hand, so Tae-soo reveals his own trump card: Kang-ho knows what they did to his father.
Woo-byeok feigns ignorance as he listens to Tae-soo prattle about their past and then smirks. He knew from the beginning who Kang-ho was, but the difference between him and Tae-soo is that the latter only sees Kang-ho as a threat while Woo-byeok recognizes the usefulness of a tool.
Despite Tae-soo’s attempt to kill Kang-ho, our prosecutor survives the crash though it leaves him with a spinal cord injury and retrograde amnesia. After watching her son lie unconscious for months, Young-soon is grateful to see him wake up no matter the state and takes him back home with her.
At first, she tries to keep Kang-ho’s condition a secret from her neighbors, but in such a small town, nothing stays hidden for too long. Soon, everyone hears about their predicament, but rather than judge, they bring her food and medicine. Touched by their generosity, Young-soon says that their kindness will make her weak, but the village chief tells her that nothing can replace a mother.
Regaining her strength, Young-soon resumes her care for Kang-ho and tackles her first big hurdle: his refusal to eat. No matter what kind of food she makes, Kang-ho closes his mouth and turns his head away. The neighborhood doctor tells Young-soon that certain patients lose the will to live after their accidents, but his explanation offers no solutions or peace of mind.
As the days go by with no change in sight, Young-soon grows frustrated with Kang-ho until she finally explodes and shoves food in his face. She yells at him to eat, and Kang-ho looks up at his mom with tears pooling in his eyes. For the first time since his accident, he speaks up, “You get sleepy when you’re full. If you’re sleepy, then you can’t study.”
While Kang-ho repeats those words over and over again, Young-soon realizes what she did to her son and breaks down. She tells him that she just wanted him to be happy and apologizes for what she did. She begs him to eat, and Kang-ho takes a bite of food.
After that incident, Kang-ho starts to improve drastically, but Young-soon is not satisfied. She plans to have her son back to his old self no matter the method, and thus, her bad parenting habits kick in again. She uses hunger as a motivator to make him practice his motor skills, and in the end, Kang-ho manages to feed himself through sheer willpower. Though I should be happy seeing him get better, the emphasis on results regardless of the means leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Besides Kang-ho and his mom, the show reveals what happened to the other two from the original baby trio, and as it turns out, life has not treated them well, either. Mi-joo is a single mother of twins with the father nowhere in the picture, and to make matters worse, her business partner scammed her and left her with a mountain of debt.
As for Sam-shik, the ring he received in lieu of a paycheck at his work turned out to be stolen, and unfortunately, he ended up in jail for larceny. After serving his time, Sam-shik’s first course of action is to trick his mom for some cash and visit Mi-joo (some things don’t change). Still a rascal, Sam-shik lies to Mi-joo about making an honest living as a fisherman when, in reality, he works as a server in an illegal gambling den.
While Mi-joo unsuccessfully looks for her old business partner, she is reminded of a happier time from her past with Kang-ho. After her accident, Mi-joo and Kang-ho drifted apart, but sometime later, she ran into him at a restaurant where he worked. As they reconnected, Mi-joo discovered her purpose in life and wanted to invest in Kang-ho’s future.
The old lovers rekindled their relationship, and Kang-ho got to concentrate solely on his studies while Mi-joo worked diligently as a nail technician to support them both. Their hard work paid off with Kang-ho passing the bar exam, and the two talked about their future together. Mi-joo promised to marry him once he saved her a third time, and Kang-ho told her that she made him want to live so he could be by her side.
Spring has arrived in the village, and Kang-ho can now travel outside in a wheelchair. He mostly plays with Mi-joo’s twins who see him as another seven-year-old and treat him as such. One day, when Young-soon leaves town to take care of somethings, the twins take Kang-ho out to play with the special ball they got from their mom. Unaware of his own strength, Kang-ho hits the ball out of the park, and the twins threaten to tattle on him.
Meanwhile, Young-soon stops by Kang-ho’s old apartment and workplace to retrieve his stuff. She crosses path with a protestor calling her son corrupt, so Young-soon confronts her. The protestor berates her for raising a horrible person and prays that he gets punished for his crimes. In the heat of the moment, Young-soon defends Kang-ho, but on the drive back, doubt starts creeping into her mind.
Her suspicions worsen when she finds gold bars amongst his possessions, and when she gets home, she takes her anger out on her son. She tells him that he is being punished for his crimes, and Kang-ho apologizes for something he doesn’t remember.
Seeing her son cry, Young-soon composes herself and takes him out to the farm where she shows him the pigs. Repeating the opening narration from Episode 1, Young-soon tells Kang-ho that pigs cannot look up at the sky unless they fall. She explains to her son that they fell, too, which means they are getting a chance to look at a new, precious world right now.
With their relationship mended, Kang-ho turns his attention back to his previous dilemma: the twins’ lost ball. While Young-soon goes to work, Kang-ho searches everywhere in the village and leaves a mess behind him. Noticing her missing son, Young-soon chases after him, but loses his trail when Kang-ho turns into the forest.
The sun sets in the middle of Kang-ho’s search, and the uneven terrain coupled with poor light causes him to fall out of his wheelchair. As he turns around to look up, he finds the ball stuck in a tree. Wanting to show off his success, Kang-ho goes to the twins’ house, but to his surprise, Mi-joo opens the door.
It’s odd. I came in prepared to love the villagers and the countryside, but instead, I find myself captivated by the villains and the revenge plot. While the villagers are sweet, they are a bit one-note. They play the same gags over again, and at the moment, I don’t feel a connection to any of them. They come across as background characters rather than meaningful individuals, and unfortunately, they don’t add much to the story besides a few laughs. There’s still plenty of room for growth, and hopefully, the addition of Mi-joo and Sam-shik will give all the villagers a chance to shine beyond their current roles.
On the other hand, I think the villains are fascinating, which is surprising since I prefer slice-of-life over revenge tales. Woo-byeok and Tae-soo, while predictable in their own right, are fun to watch because they serve a clear purpose to the story and bring actual tension. Both villains are menacing because they let their actions speak for themselves without the need to posture, and the show makes it clear that neither has any qualms about crossing legal and moral lines. The other aspect I like about the revenge plot is the hints we’re given about past Kang-ho. Everyone has an image of Kang-ho in their head — there’s Young-soon’s memories as well as Mi-joo’s — but none of these matches the prosecutor-version of Kang-ho. While I’m curious about Kang-ho’s future, I also want to learn more about his past because I don’t think anyone at the moment knows who he truly was.
The “healing” part of the show just started, and as expected, the mother-son relationship is still rocky. It makes sense that even after given a second chance Young-soon resorts to the same parenting tactics because her ideologies are deeply ingrained. She believes the ends justify the means, which is why she pushes her son to his limits.
Even though she witnessed firsthand the consequences of her methods, she still chose to fall into the same traps. She denies him food to make him want to feed himself, completely forgetting that her controlling behavior with food almost caused him to starve to death. It’s frustrating to watch Young-soon sometimes because it feels like an endless cycle of abuse with very little accountability. Is she learning the errors of her way or simply repeating her mistakes under new circumstances? I hope Young-soon grows from this experience to become a better mother because I believe her when she says that she loves her son. Like her comment about falling down, I want her to actually take her words to heart and look at her relationship with Kang-ho in a new light because she isn’t wrong; in the midst of tragedy, hope still lingers.