A mother who wants the best for her son and a son who wants nothing to do with her — as implied by its name, The Good Bad Mother depicts a complicated familial relationship filled with strife and tension. Blazing through two episodes of setup and exposition, the show presents a lot of characters and plot points this opening week, but with each answered question, a dozen more take its place.
EPISODES 1-2
The first two episodes of The Good Bad Mother span over thirty years, and there’s a lot to cover. But to understand the present, we must first look back to the past.
It’s 1986 in the countryside of Korea, and our protagonist JIN YOUNG-SOON (Ra Mi-ran) is a bright-eyed artist with a warm smile and a positive attitude. Life is good for Young-soon as her beau — a young pig famer named CHOI HAE-SHIK (special appearance by Jo Jin-woong) — proposes to her with a piglet, and they start their new family together.
However, the show wouldn’t be called “bad mother” if all was well, and soon into their marital bliss, tragedy strikes. Due to the upcoming Seoul Olympics, construction companies are razing properties, and we are introduced to our first major villain, SONG WOO-BYEOK (Choi Moo-sung). When Hae-shik refuses to sign over his farm, the construction company burns it down, settling the matter in the most brutal way possible.
While most people would have given up, our humble pig farmer has a backbone and a heart for justice. Unfortunately, the prosecutor on the case, OH TAE-SOO (Jung Woong-in), works for the construction company as well, and he betrays Hae-shik. Thus, Young-soon receives a call one night that her husband has died (a murder disguised as suicide), and she is left all alone in the world to take care of her unborn child.
The second half of Young-soon’s flashback begins anew in a small town called Jo-woo-ri which comes with its own slew of nosy neighbors. There’s the village chief and his masked wife (Kim Won-hae and Park Bo-kyung); the miller and his wife, a.k.a. Sam-shik’s parents (Jang Won-young and Seo Yi-sook); and the currently pregnant mother of two (Kang Mal-geum) with her good-for-nothing husband (special appearance by Lee Do-yub). Their first encounter starts off on a bad foot as the villagers threaten to close down the pig farm, but their fight gets cut short when Young-soon’s water breaks.
The once enemies band together to help their new neighbor, and our second protagonist CHOI KANG-HO is born. As the hullabaloo quiets for a moment, another wave of commotion crashes over them as our other pregnant mother gives birth to her third daughter, LEE MI-JOO. With that, the younger trio have all been introduced.
The rest of episode one feels more like vignettes strung together, and through three pivotal scenes, the show reveals glimpses of Kang-ho and Young-soon’s tumultuous relationship. The first occurs in elementary school when Kang-ho comes home after fighting with Sam-shik, and Young-soon punishes her son for cursing and tells him that his bully said nothing wrong. Adding salt to the wound, she forces him to stay home to study instead of going to the school picnic, and on the form to explain his absence, he writes down that he has a “bad mom.”
The second central moment happens in high school and revolves around our trio again. Sam-shik (Yoo In-soo) spots Kang-ho (Lee Do-hyun) slipping into the storage shed to study during break and locks the door behind him as a prank. Unbeknownst to both boys, Mi-joo (Ahn Eun-jin) was hiding there to surprise Kang-ho for their birthday, and the two of them end up stuck in the shed for the rest of the day. While Mi-joo writes “love” over again in her workbook while stealing glances at Kang-ho, he never takes his eyes off his notes.
When their families finally arrive to fetch them, they open the doors at the most inopportune time — she was choking and he was giving her the Heimlich maneuver. Rather than ask what happened or how they are, Young-soon berates her son for missing his supplementary class and brushes past him to grab his stuff. Inside his notebook, there is a drawing of Mi-joo, revealing to the audience that her crush isn’t so one-sided after all.
The third and final scene from their past is the day of Kang-ho’s CSAT (the biggest national test determining university admission). While Young-soon gives him the usual spiel (don’t eat too much since a full stomach causes drowsiness), Mi-joo tells Kang-ho to do well so they can eat lots afterwards. He smiles at his girlfriend as she cheers for him on the sidelines, but things come to a screeching halt when a motorcyclist crashes into her.
Mi-joo wakes up in the hospital and sobs when she sees Kang-ho there. She blames herself for him missing his test, but Kang-ho assures her that everything is alright. He gives her a kiss, repeating again that everything will be fine, but as soon as he gets home, Young-soon throws a bucket of water in his face.
She yells at him to get out and asks him why he would ruin his life for someone else. Kang-ho tells her that he doesn’t have a life of his own and feels like he is suffocating. Young-soon slaps him across the face and tells him that the only way to escape from her is to become a prosecutor. He accepts her deal and promises to make her dreams come true by becoming the same monsters that killed his dad.
Keeping his word, Kang-ho becomes a prosecutor and embraces the dark side of the law. He entangles himself with the very people that caused Hae-shik’s death, and with some underhanded maneuvering, he positions himself to become Woo-byeok’s son and Tae-soo’s son-in-law.
However, from the way Kang-ho meticulous plans his encounter with Tae-soo’s daughter OH HA-YOUNG (Hong Bi-ra) to the way he threatens Woo-byeok to adopt him, I get the impression that something else besides power motivates Kang-ho. Neither villain trusts him, and while it is unclear whether or not they know his true background, it is clear that their relationship teeters on a rocky foundation made of lies and deception.
In order to prove his loyalty to his new family, Kang-ho must deal with Tae-soo’s mistress and illegitimate child before the upcoming presidential election. He takes the unsuspecting woman and baby in his car, and after drugging her, he pushes the vehicle into the water. His expression remains cold throughout the whole thing as he watches a person (supposedly) die.
For the rest of his plans to work, Kang-ho needs his mother’s permission, and so, after years of avoiding his old hometown, he finally pays a visit with Ha-young. Unaware of her son’s true intentions, Young-soon holds a feast for the village, wearing new clothes and procuring a ring to impress her future daughter-in-law.
The villagers enthusiastically welcome Kang-ho with open arms, but he shuts down the festivities to have a private chat with his mother. He informs her of his intentions to get adopted by Woo-byeok and asks her to sign the papers. Dumbstruck by his request, she wonders how he could cut ties with his parent so easily, but Kang-ho points out that this is what she wanted all along. As the meaning behind his words hit her, she asks if he came up with the idea, and his silence speaks volumes.
As soon as Young-soon signs the paper, he walks out of the house, unable to stomach a single meal with her. Young-soon chases after him, desperate to give him something before he leaves, and places his favorite food in the backseat for them to eat later. However, during the drive, Ha-young complains about the smell, so Kang-ho stops the car and chucks the bundle into the river.
Noticing Kang-ho shake, Ha-young offers to drive, and he gratefully accepts. While he sleeps in the passenger seat, Ha-young opens a window because of the lingering smell, and her scarf falls out. She pulls over to retrieve it, and in that moment, a truck comes barreling down the road. It slams into the parked car, and Ha-young screams as she watches the car roll over the cliff with Kang-ho still inside.
So much happened this opening week. We got over a dozen character introductions and a dozen more plot hooks. The pacing definitely felt fast, and the choice to jump forward multiple times in one episode made it hard to keep up sometimes. The timeline for the second episode was also a bit confusing since the plot unfurled so quickly, and it felt like all of Kang-ho’s plans happened in a few eventful weeks, though I think it was actually closer to months.
It seems that the point of these two episodes was to give snippets of the story with the intention of filling out missing pieces as the show goes on. As a result, any initial confusion is expected (maybe even intended) to depict the fractured lives of Young-soon and Kang-ho. Even before his accident and its impending consequences, our mother-son pair have long been miscommunicating and distant with each other, and their relationship broke decades ago. They don’t know what is happening in the other’s life, and so, the show invites its audience to join them on this journey of reconciliation and understanding. The blanks are there not only to bring the plot to the present, but also as a representation of the character’s missing gaps in knowledge and memory — to reflect the state of its protagonists both presently and in the future.
Given the show’s title, I was prepared to see Young-soon be a terrible mom, but I was still caught off-guard by how “good” she was at being bad. Even though I sympathize with her as an individual, her treatment of Kang-ho is inexcusable. She hit him for calling Sam-shik a bastard and slapped him for saving Mi-joo’s life. She reacted impulsively and used violence to control her son. In her heart, she may want him to be a strong person who helps the weak, but her actions taught him to be a selfish jerk who lets injustices slide. As Kang-ho said, her dream is more about gaining power so she never has to experience the hopelessness she felt after Hae-shik’s death. But in her attempt to avoid the heartache of lost, she recreated it. There’s still a chance for her character to make amends, but it will be a very steep hill to climb.
Though there is a lot of ambiguity surrounding the characters and their stories, I find many of them fascinating and hard to pin down. No one quite fits into a box, and even the evildoers aren’t your typical mustache-twirling bad guys. It’s interesting to see two embodiments of the same core values through Woo-byeok and Tae-soo; both are painted black but in distinct shades. They are clearly involved in Kang-ho’s accident (I don’t believe for a second that it was coincidental), but I can’t tell which of them did it — possibly both. At least to Ha-young’s credit, I don’t think she was involved in his attempted murder even if I still think she’s a classist snob who is abusing drugs. Besides the mother-son bonding that is bound to happen, there something more sinister brewing behind the scenes, and I hope the show can deliver on all fronts.