The Good Bad
Mother
나쁜엄마
jtbc (2023) 14 Episodes
Family Melodrama, Revenge Drama
Mature Audiences, Grade: A
Korean Drama Review by Jill, USA (Some Spoilers)
OST Instrumental "I Love You"
Composer Ha Geun Young
As I finished
this highly rated jtbc Korean drama, I kept wondering
why they titled it The Good Bad Mother (2023),
when the mother character featured in the story, played
fascinatingly well by veteran actress Ra Mi Ran (Black
Dog, The
Suspicious Housekeeper, film The Last
Princess), started off on the bad side but then
transformed into a good mother, with the help of God.
Shouldn't it have been more correctly entitled The
Bad To Good Mother? ;)
In
general, I feel this drama is a difficult story to
watch, with deep underlying themes of family abuse
and revenge, particularly early on; therefore I
would not recommend it for minor children. I do
think it showcases substantial character growth for
most of the characters, however, and that is what
Korean dramas excel at. Unlike so many American
television shows, in which characters pretty much do
not grow as people during the length of the story
but remain rather one-dimensional in nature, Korean
entertainment is far more realistic, dynamic and
less static: the way the characters are at the
beginning of a story is not how they will be
by the end. Most of them improve dramatically as
people, and therefore become much more rewarding and
inspiring to watch.
I think young actor Lee Do Hyun as the male lead gave
another exceptional performance here (although I
still love him the best in Youth
Of May); he had to depict a myriad of
wide-ranging emotions and aced his every scene,
whether it was sad, scary, or even occasionally
comical. For me his character here was far more
hypnotic to watch than his character in The
Glory. Other actors in that series
were constantly stealing scenes away from him. Not
here! In every scene he was in his vulnerable
expressions captured your attention away from all
the other actors, even if he was just standing
still and not trying to distract you. In a very
short time he's become an Actor whom you want to
watch in every new series or film he is in!
The
Story:
A farmer named Choi Hae Sik (Cho Jin Woong from
Signal)
falls in love with a neighbor lady who is an
artist, named Jin Young Soon (Ra Mi Ran), and
proposes marriage to her, holding one of the
cute little piglets from his animal stock at the
same time. He is a very kind soul and Young Soon
happily agrees to wed him. Their sweet married
time together is brief, however, for a tragedy
is right around the corner. Because the Olympics
are being held that year and rumor has it that a
parade will pass by Hae Sik's farm, a
never-do-well construction magnate named Song
Woo Byeok (Choi Moo Sung) shows up with his
thugs and "asks" Hae Sik to sell him his farm,
saying that Korea shouldn't be embarrassed to
have the Olympic parade pass by such a messy
looking farm. But Hae Sik has a backbone and
says "no", whereby late one night this magnate
and his thugs set fire to the farm, destroying
all the buildings and killing most of the
animals.
Hae Sik hires a prosecuting attorney named Oh
Tae Soo (Jung Woong In, the bad guy in I
Hear Your Voice) to fight Woo Byeok
but, unknown to Hae Sik, his own attorney had a
backroom deal with Woo Byeok to destroy the
farm! The two of them even privately conspire to
murder Hae Sik and make it look like it was a
suicide. All this evil was not really planned
because of the Olympics' parade, that was just
an excuse, but because they desired to obtain
the land for themselves and were in partnership
to get it.
Poor Young Soon is devastated by the loss of her
husband. She doesn't even have the right to kill
herself since she is now pregnant. She decides
to move away from the area and start a new life,
with some of the money Hae Sik had left her. She
takes a few surviving pigs to another village,
creating her own pig farm in a place called
Jouri Village. She believes the best way to
honor her late husband is to continue doing what
he loved doing the most in life: pig farming!
Soon after she sets up her new farm Young Soon
suddenly meets her new neighbors all at the same
time, when they unite together to complain to
her about the pig smell rising into the nearby
atmosphere from her farm. These pesky new
neighbors include the village chief, Son Yong
Rak (Kim Won Hae) and his weird, constantly
masked wife (Park Bo Kyung); the local miller
(Jang Won Young) and his wife Park Sung Ae (Seo
Yi Sook); and another currently pregnant mother
Jung Gum Ja (Kang Mal Geum) with her lazy
husband (Lee Do Yub) and nosy mother-in-law (Lee
Joo Sil). However, the fight that results
abruptly ends when both Young Soon's and Gum
Ja's water breaks. They all enter Young Soon's
home and both give birth naturally on the floor
together! (What a scene!) The neighbors
immediately become close to Young Soon and they
all develop into long term friends who help each
other out on multiple occasions.
As the years go by
the two babies, Young Soon's son Kang Ho (Lee Do
Hyun) and Gum Ja's daughter Mi Joo (Ahn Eun Jin,
lovely performance) become the best of friends
and then high school sweethearts. Neighbor Park
Sung Ae's son, around the same age, Sam Sik (Yoo
In Soo) also has a crush on Mi Joo but she only
has eyes for Kang Ho. Poor Kang Ho does have
some emotional scars deep within his heart,
however, that hold him back from committing to
Mi Joo 100%, stemming from his often tempestuous
relationship with his mother Young Soon. She
tells him from a a young age that he should live
for studying, not friendships or romance; she is
often downright cruel to him, and tells him he
should aim to become a prosecutor as an adult
and find out who murdered his father Hae Sik.
Not once did Young Soon believe her husband
committed suicide when he had loved her and
their unborn baby so deeply.
So Kang Ho studies
very hard, eventually graduates college and law
school, and finally becomes the prosecutor his
mother dreamed of. During this time he had
secretly carried on an intimate relationship
with Mi Joo, who had opened her own nail salon
to support herself, but when the time comes for
him to concentrate fully on taking down the two
men who had killed his father, he breaks it off
with Mi Joo, who then grieves and escapes to
America for a few years, informing everyone that
she was marrying an American man (who does not
exist). While in America Mi Joo gives birth to
boy-girl twins named Seo Jin and Ye Jin, who are
obviously Kang Ho's children.
Kang Ho deliberately cozies up to the two evil
men who murdered his father, Song Woo Byeok and
Oh Tae Soo, but it is rather doubtful they trust
him completely. Oh Tae Soo is aiming for
political office, his goal is to become
President at any cost. He orders Kang Ho to get
rid of his secret mistress and their
illegitimate baby, and Kang Ho stages a death
scene for them. Then Tae Soo and Woo Byeok
conspire to get rid of Kang Ho permanently, like
they did with his father. Tae Soo's adult
daughter, Oh Ha Young (Hong Bi Ra) wants to
marry Kang Ho, and when they are both in a car
together and Kang Ho falls asleep, Ha Young
loses her scarf out an open window and parks the
car on the side of the road to retrieve it. The
next thing she knows another vehicle plows into
the car with Kang Ho asleep inside. He isn't
killed, however, but is unconscious and
paralyzed from the waist down. When he comes to
in the hospital his mind is that of a seven year
old boy and he only recognizes his mother. Young
Soon finally realizes how cruel she had been to
her son while he was growing up, causing him to
become almost as evil as the two men who had
killed his father. She prays to God to forgive
her and aims to become a totally loving mother
to Kang Ho, with no strings attached. The kind
of mother she should have been to him all along.
Then Mi Joo and her
twins return to Korea, complicating the family
situation all the more. Will Kang Ho remember Mi
Joo? Will he ever learn that he was once a
prosecutor, and that now he has two children?
Will he regain the use of his body or be doomed
to live in a wheelchair for the rest of his
life? Will the two evil men who killed his father, and almost destroyed
his life and his mother's, ever receive their
comeuppance?
If you love a solid
family melodrama, with lots of twists and turns,
an intriguing screenplay, and exceptional
acting, then definitely put The Good Bad
Mother on your Korean drama queue. You
certainly won't fall asleep on this series, I
can guarantee you that! It is riveting! Enjoy!