The Good Bad Mother

I was expecting something more

This is one show that I am not sure how I want to rate it because objectively, it's a well-made show. But, subjectively, it just didn't resonate with me like I thought it would. So, I am going to quickly list my pros and cons about the show and put more thoughts below.

PROS
- Outstanding acting performances from cast 
- A promising premise for a show 
- Loved the humor included to offset the more emotional moments 
- The episodes didn't drag and the series didn't overstay it's welcome (in other words, it was the right amount of episodes/time length)

CONS
- To me, the story wasn't as strong as I thought it would be 
- There was an unnecessary character in the series that I feel wasn't needed at all
- The development of the story line involving the "villains" wasn't fleshed out enough for me and the mother's justification for the treatment of her son didn't work for me either. It only made me more frustrated at her. The development of the healing arc between the son and mother felt disjointed to me even after finding out everything at the end of the series. The villagers didn't really interest me either but they made me laugh. I'll give them that.

Lee Do Hyun and the twins were truly the highlight of this series for me if I am being honest. If they weren't included, I don't feel like I would rate the show what it is now. Every time they were on the screen, they put a smile on my face due to their acting, delivery, and overall performance in the show. 

The show's premise is promising focusing on the healing journey between the mother and son and I was excited from watching the trailer so I went into this drama very excited. The first few episodes grabbed me but from then on, I started to feel meh about the story lines and the direction that the show was going in. I wanted this show to have that spark that grabbed me and left me wanting more but for most of the series run, I wasn't really feeling it.

I could see why people do love this show immensely because it includes some outstanding performances from well-known actors, has some teachable life lessons, and like I said earlier, is an objectively well-made show but it makes me sad to be more of a negative nancy and say that I didn't enjoy it like I thought I would but can appreciate what it aimed to do. 

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Good Enough

Korean Drama " The Good Bad Mother " is a family melodrama.

The drama has a bittersweet story, with many twists and a lot of emotional scenes. The mystery-criminal case was a nice addition to it as well, as it kept things interesting when the melodrama started flaking.

But the highlight of the drama is its performances. The two main leads, especially, were great at handling their characters, with their chemistry supporting the melodrama. The rest of the cast did a good job as well.

And even though there were some eye-rolling tropes, the all-around result was quite satisfying and the comedy element was smooth.

So, overall, eight out of ten.

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Go for it

I loved this dram and everything about it I loved it.
This drama made you compelled to think that why was the male protagonist doing so ? Is he actually become wrong person because vengeance ? Why was he doing wrong ? Definitely he was going to regret ? May he has the negative role ? Then why was his mother so cruel with him ? Sometime I thought that he was doing correct to ignore his mother because she was cruel with him all the time so sometime I thought that he should not behave with his mother like this. All the answers of my questions was get in the last few episodes . They way gradually all my answers I was getting, it made me connected with drama. I love the chemistry between the leads . I wanted to see their marriage and their happy life.
All the actors were good .
Go for it .

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Heartwarming but also confusing

I’ll keep this review shortish but I just finished this show after dropping it midway through when it was airing.

Overall the first 60% of this show (8 episodes) is incredibly weak to the point you could literally watch episodes 1 and 2 then skip everything else until episode 9 and it would honestly improve the show. It starts of with one of the best first episodes I’ve seen in a K-Drama, pulling at your heartstrings and setting the tone for the show but then soon after the vibe completely switches and it feels like it’s a comedy all of a sudden.

There’s no meaningful plot or character development in the first half and while the plot finally gets going after episode 9 the character development does not. They did a good job showing how Kang Ho’s mom abused him growing up, something I’m sure a lot of kids can relate to, but then she does the same when he’s disabled which okay, fair enough maybe there will be a redemp….nevermind there isn’t. Both Young Soon and Kang Ho never truly have a heart to heart to reconcile the abuse which he was receiving pretty much until the end, the show even attempts to justify it as if throwing a disabled person into water every day isn’t horrifying. The trauma and mental health issues don’t get resolved and instead they move onto the “she’s terminally ill” plot to garner sympathy.

As the show went on the villagers grew on me but they were so bad the first half, random plots where they “turn” against her and some side conflicts which were so unnecessary to the actual story. This is a large part of why the first half sucked.

I think the tough part for me with this show is the title likes to imply that the mom is deeply flawed, and while they do show these flaws they try to justify them or downplay them which is where the huge issue arises. The more interesting part for me was the criminal aspect of the drama as well as Mijoo and Kang Ho’s interactions and relationship. Up until the horrible court scene at the end they actually wrote a better crime plot than 99% of crime dramas.

I gave this show a 7.5 for picking up strong in the last several episodes which is honestly the opposite of your average K-Drama. It could have been greatly improved by taking a more serious tone, similar to My Mister perhaps, and having more character development for the mother.

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Wonderful

The Good Bad Mother is one of those rare dramas that captures your heart right from the very start and doesn’t let it go till the final credits are rolling around before your eyes. It virtually covers every emotion, humour, joy, grief, horror and finally deep satisfaction until you feel like you’ve been on a roller coaster but you loved it that much you want to get back on and go through it all over again. It’s a true work of art and everyone involved put their heart and soul into making it the remarkable production that it is. I can’t recommend it more highly so do yourself a favour and watch it 10/10 ♥️💫♥️

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Messy motherhood messaging

The majority of the drama is painting a very three dimensional portrait of Young Soon who endured loss her entire life and to cope with the trauma of her husband's mysterious suicide after they had been abandoned by everyone they trusted, she raises her son to be a weapon of revenge without a specific aim at a person, but rather at the entire Korean justice system, which is a lot of weight on the shoulders of a man let alone a little boy. Instead of filling her son with warmth and understanding, she isolated him from finding joy with her, within himself, or in anyone or anything else, so he'll be single mindedly focused on becoming a powerful prosecutor. She's very lucky that Kang Ho is a born artist who is empathetic and observant and can see the glimpses behind her abusive parenting tactics and realizes the true targets he needs to hunt down for justice for his family who he played in a long game. Those are his true strengths that kept him from hating her for her behavior, which he has every right to no matter her intention as he still carries the emotional scars she inflicted on him. She herself realized the harm she had done only when she was forced to reflect on them after his accident left him with the mindset of a seven year old and he refuses to eat because she always forced him never to be full at meal times so he can stay awake to study. It's shocking he got to grow as tall as he did without much food. The majority of the drama sees Young Soon trying to fast track his physical and mental recovery before she herself succumbs to her stage four stomach cancer. The drama misses out on showing Kang Ho finding himself through his interactions with various people and memories. It was so disappointing that the memories from his 18 year old self when he kissed Mi Joo after saving her from the creep who was harassing her at the hair salon did not move up his mindset from 7 to 18. It's creepy that Mi Joo kept kissing a man with the mind of a 7 year old and he was able to be taken advantaged of by the village thief and loser Sam Sik. Instead of organically unlocking his memories in a meaningful way, of course Kang Ho recovers them after more severe head trauma from saving his mom and Sam Sik from the burning pig farm. Lee Do Hyun did a fantastic job portraying both the Kang Ho who is suffering from the mental regression and the pained adult enacting the 35 year revenge plan which required some difficult to outsiders to understand methods including keeping innocents in jail to save their lives and to cozy up to the company chairman.

He got to experience agency and happiness during his college years with Mi Joo who volunteered to help with the household chores and expenses while he studied. He broke up with her because there's something he can only do himself and offered to tell her why as he reached the time when he had to start his revenge plan, but she refused and kept her pregnancy a secret from him so as to not interrupt the plan that she didn't want him to tell her. She trusted that Kang Ho is doing something so important that he would leave someone he loves to do it. That's an intense trust level that she has with him, but also partially learned behavior from her mom in staying the man she loves no matter what. Sadly her mom's situation was staying in a toxic relationship with her abusive, cheating husband until he died just so her daughters wouldn't be fatherless, a insult that is levied at Kang Ho and also his seven year old twin children Ye Jin and Seo Jin who Mi Joo lies to that their father is a nail salon owner in the US. The twins are the creepily precocious kind, but Ye Jin is smart enough to tell Mi Joo to just get divorced from the man who clearly doesn't care about them and they'll live a good life without them. It's really awful that the drama makes this smart observant 7 year old man crazy and spending the majority of the time obsessed with marrying the guy she doesn't know is her biological father. That's not cute, it's just weird. It's also a big misstep in not showing a scene of Kang Ho finally introducing himself to the twins as their father and Young Soon as their grandmother, having a scene of their family finally formally together before they have the final celebration with the extended village family. There was time that rightly showed the love hate sibling like bond between Young Soon and all the villagers, but shortchanged the bond between the direct family members. Lion the pig also disappeared even though the pig was in the main opening sequence for every ep and was part of the story for so long. Could have shown her giving birth to the piglet that Kang Ho uses to propose at the end or something. Kang Ho also loses his job as a prosecutor and it looks like he becomes a pig farmer like his parents, with no mention of Mi Joo settling her major financial problems after being scammed by her former work best friend. They could have even thrown in a line to tie that up.

The tone of the series is really all over the place. It would go to very dark desperate places like Young Soon contemplating murder suicide to hanging herself to motivate Kang Ho to stand to then the annoying antics of Sam Sik and the bumbling goons who bumbled their way into becoming cabbage farmers. The more serious of the goons becomes a major whistleblower for Kang Ho. Yet again the show was missing a scene where the goon hits the final straw with a hit ordered on him to get him to the whistleblowing point. It was at least a little amusing to see that they found their calling as cabbage growing savants, but Sam Sik was just awful the entire time. A spoiled son that ends the drama having transferred his obsessive infatuation to Ha Young who is serving time for having incriminated herself in order to bring her father down. She's an interesting character who was also spoiled and haughty but melted to Kang Ho's seeming care for her. She does have a soul being haunted by her role in Kang Ho's attempted murder and seeing how corrupt and murderous her father is. She doesn't deserve to have Sam Sik being foisted on her though. The gag that the village chief's wife always covered her face with sheet masks and face masks because she is a Japanese mob boss's daughter didn't go anywhere. Her skills and resources was entirely unutilized and her character was just used as a sight gag the whole time.

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To be a good mother is not that easy....

I really liked the storyline of this drama. It made me reconsider my relationshipp with my own mother, it made me think about how much we children often forget about all the sacrifices our parents made for us... In today 's world, it is really not easy to raise a child, to give him proper eductaion not just instruction.
Parents are not perfect, they were not born parents, they learn along the way, they make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes, most important we need to acknowledge our mistakes and ask for forgiveness.

I loved the courage of the mother, the warmth of the villagers, the unconditionnal love between two lovers....
And last take home message, at least for me, to archieve revenge is not an easy task, are we really ready to deceive or leave behind our loved ones just to archieve justice? was it worth it? maybe yes, or maybe no.....

I actually struggled to finish this drama, i got bored somehow in the middle and i had to forced myself to finish it, they were also some unecessary characters that could have easily been taken out without it affecting the drama, hence the 8/10.

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showing affection towards all living beings...

This show has a well written psychological foundation and covers many situations from every day problems to huge tragic events. The actors are fantastic and the storyline is well balanced between heartfelt episodes and action. The characters are convincingly developed. But what I really missed was the fulfilment of the trailer and the mother's description of humans treating animals in a bad way: if she has this strong intuition, why does she not make it possible for her pigs to roam outside? Is this a metaphor of her not liberating herself from societal constraints? How is it possible that she feels with them, even comparing humans and pigs, and not taking into consideration their situation where they can't even walk around? This I did not understand. I find here interesting aspects of critizicing urban lifestyles while maintaining so called traditional (industrial) behaviour.

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Wholesome

This drama was amazing, I really enjoyed it from beginning to the end. Although the story can be predicted at time.
Disclaimer: I’m mainly focusing on Kang Hong and his mother but there are also lot of other interesting characters, relationship, and events.

Story:
"The Good Bad Mother (2023)" is a heartwarming drama that delves into the complex dynamics of a family, exploring the relationships between the main characters and the challenges they face. At its core, it highlights the transformative power of love and the pursuit of redemption.

Cast:
Main Lead (ML) - Choi Kang Ho: A very complex character who is initially seen as cold and ruthless character, and holds a lot of resentment towards his mother but is kind, empathy, and hardworking man who is devoted to his family (parents) and wants to take revenge. He carries a burden from his past and struggles to reconcile with his mother's actions.
Main Lead (FL) - Lee Mi Joo: A compassionate and understanding woman who supports ML through thick and thin. She stands as a pillar of strength for Kang ho.
ML's Mother - Jin Young Soon: A flawed and complicated character who is haunted by the death of her husband and being powerless. Hence, she is forced to be very struck with her son. However, She seeks forgiveness and redemption but struggles to make amends.

Two Adorable Kids - Lee Ye Jin and Lee Seo Jin: ML and FL's children, who bring joy, innocence, and confidence to the show dynamic.
The rest of the character were also great and unique in their own ways. All of them were truly relatable characters. The good and bad mother was focus on all of the family in the show

Ending:
As the series progresses, the audience witnesses the transformative journeys of the characters.
Young Soon embarks on a path of self-reflection and seeks to make amends for her past actions (being super strict). Through her persistent efforts, she begins to repair her relationship with her son and becomes a source of support and guidance for him.

The drama concludes with a hopeful note, highlighting the power of forgiveness and the strength of familial bonds. It has a profound message about the complexities of motherhood, the capacity for growth, and the enduring power of love.

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