“The Good Bad Mother” (나쁜엄마)

By Jae-Ha Kim
Substack
June 11, 2023

☆☆☆½
Jin Young-soon (played by Ra Mi-ran)
Choi Kang-ho (played by Lee Do-hyun)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

Like “Our Blues,” “My Liberation Notes” and “Reply 1988,” “The Good Bad Mother” is a slice-of-life series filled with quirky characters who are overly interested in each other’s business. They support one another, are jealous of each other’s children and talk smack about whoever’s not there. But if an outsider dares to do the same, hell hath no fury like a neighbor scorned.

Ra Mi-ran, who was so good as Ryu Jun-yeol’s mother in “Reply 1988,” portrays Lee Do-hyun’s good, bad mother here. She’s reunited with her “Reply 1988” castmate Choi Moo-sung (who had played Park Bo-gum’s father) — who chews up the scenery as a high-level thug who is responsible for her nuclear family’s misery.

After Young-soon’s husband dies, she is left with no options but to work and prepare for the birth of their son.

Her neighbors had initially shunned her because they didn’t want “filthy pigs” ruining their countryside. Never mind that the samgyeopsal (grilled pork belly) they enjoy eating isn’t possible without pigs. But when the widow goes into labor in one of their homes, and another woman gives birth to a baby girl a few minutes later, these villagers are bound together for life. They collectively refer to the baby boy as “우리 강호” (our Kang-ho). And, of course, the baby girl Mi-joo (Ahn Eun-jin) and Kang-ho will be connected throughout their lives, romantically and otherwise.

Young-soon had been orphaned as a young teenager and had to give up her dreams of becoming an artist. When she sees that her own child inherited her talent, she forbids him from drawing and pursuing art. The only way to be treated like a respectable human being is to become educated and attain power, she tells him. She goes beyond the Tiger Mom narrative to ensure that he is always the top student at school. But this comes at a price. Young-soon doesn’t allow Kang-ho to eat a full meal, because doing so would make him sleepy, which would cut into his studying time.

Throughout the series, viewers are privy to Young-soon’s battles. On the one hand, we feel bad for her because it is difficult to raise a child and run a farm by yourself. But she also hits her child for not studying enough and doesn’t encourage him to do anything else. Just study. Yes, she has a goal for him that could ultimately make his life easier. But the boy, who was born after his father died, needs more than straight A’s to fulfill his life.

When she yells at him for having taken Mi-joo — who had been hit by a motorcycle — to the hospital instead of taking his college entrance exam, he rebels and vows to never see her again. Of course, those are heated words spoken during a traumatic time.

But the next time we see the mother and son together is when he visits her farm with his fiancée — and tells his mother to sign the relinquishment papers so he can be adopted by Song Woo-byeok (played by Choi Moo-sung). Of course, this adoption is just a formality, because Kang-ho is 30 by this point and too old to be adopted. And Woo-byeok is too old to legally adopt a “child.”

Young-soon is heartbroken, but feeling she didn’t do enough for him, she relinquishes her rights and says, “This is just paper. I’ll always be his mother.”

Returning home from his mother’s house, Kang-ho survives a horrific auto crash that leaves him paralyzed and with the mentality of a 7-year-old child. The one good thing about it is that Young-soon has the opportunity to raise him again and correct her mistakes from earlier years. She’s befuddled when her son refuses to eat. When she finally gets it out of him, he parrots back the words she said to him throughout his school years: if he eats, he’ll get sleepy. And if he gets sleepy, he can’t study. This is her ah ha moment, where she realizes that what she did for his own good… what she did to better his life so that he wouldn’t end up poor and powerless like his parents… all of that contributed to a miserable life for him.

This scene drives home that how we were raised and what is ingrained in us from childhood — the good and the bad — manifests in our lives as adults.

By the end of this series, we will have experienced hope, subterfuge, death, true friendship, a new beginning and an oh-so-satisfying revenge arc.

Transliteration: The actual title of this series is “Bad Mother” in Korean. I’m not sure why Netflix felt the need to add “Good” in the title.

Meta moment: In Episode 13, a thug refers to his hotel as “sweet home” in English. “Sweet Home” is the name of one of Lee Do-hyun’s previous K-dramas.

Cute child actors: When Mi-joo’s twin kindergarten-age children Ye-jin (Ki So-yu) and Seo-jin (Park Da-on) are introduced in the series, you won’t have to think too long before guessing correctly who the father is. The child actors are so cute and good in their roles. One of the things I didn’t like, though, was when Ye-jin — who has a huge crush on Kang-ho — tells her mom that she’s going to skip dinner because she has to be slim in order to look pretty in her future wedding dress.

Who’s that?: A huge shoutout to Yoo In-soo, who is almost unrecognizable in every role he tackles (the undying quasi zombie in “All of Us Are Dead” and the heir to the tony Songrim clan in the “Alchemy of Souls” franchise). Here, he plays Sam-sik, a petty criminal who grew up with Kang-ho (who he was unfavorably compared to) and Mi-joo (who he has always been in love with).

Is he a she?: One of the peripheral characters is a villager who shows up at the gatherings. And I wasn’t sure if they were a man or a woman. They had a ponytail, wore what appeared to be women’s clothes, and a tiny bit of makeup. But no one made a fuss about it. The character was just allowed to be.

The white actor: Andrea (played by Joshua Newton) was the best white character I’ve seen in a K-drama. Young-soon hires him to help take care of the farm. I honestly don’t know if he’s simply a bad actor or if he was directed to act like the stereotypical white actor who can’t act well but gets a K-drama role because he’s white. I found him to be hysterical and charming. His best scene is when he tells Young-soon that Kang-ho left with a piglet to show Mi-joo. Feeling guilty for not having stopped him, Andrea shakes his head ruefully and dramatically says, “I deserve to die!” (K-drama characters often make this dramatic proclamation when they want to be forgiven for something they’ve done wrong.)

Airdates: Fourteen episodes (ranging from 70- to 80-minutes each) aired on JTBC from April 26 to June 8, 2023. I watched this on Netflix.

Spoiler Alert: Near the end of the series, it’s explained why Young-soon wouldn’t allow Kang-ho to go on school picnics. She said that as a child, she packed a picnic lunch of kimbap for her parents and brother. (She stayed home.) They died in an automobile accident. As a married woman, she packed kimbap for her husband. He later died. (His death was made to look like a suicide and had been orchestrated by Song Woo-byeok.) But he didn’t know any of this as an elementary school student. And on the school form where he had to write in why he was missing the school outing, he simply wrote, “나쁜 엄마” (bad mom).

After Kang-ho passes his law bar exam, Mi-joo jokes that she’ll let him marry her after he saves her a third time. (He had previously prevented her from choking on candy and then later took her to the hospital after she was hit by a motorcycle). He tells her that she shouldn’t be grateful to someone who saves her, but to someone who makes her want to live. Early on in Episode 4, he told her, “I want to live a very long time with you.”

When he breaks up with her, she is heartbroken. She is also pregnant with his babies. But she never tells him, because she doesn’t want to hold him back.

Though he loved Mi-joo and his mother, he deliberately turned his back on them because he wanted to convince the people he’s working for that these women meant nothing to him. He extracts himself from the lives of those he loves in order to protect them. Because his goal wasn’t to just become a prosecuting attorney for clout and prestige. He wanted to get justice for his father, who they had killed.

In the finale, Young-soon watches in court as her son (who has regained his memory) clears his father’s name and puts the murderers behind bars. And she gives her blessing to Kang-ho and Mi-joo to marry.

After celebrating her birthday, Young-soon peacefully dies in her sleep. (She had Stage 4 cancer.) But she died knowing that Kang-ho was happy.