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@nrllee, I’m transferring your post here. 🙂 Thanks, @nrllee.
My thoughts from Ep1 of Good Bad Mother
(Piglet roaming the meadows and running free)
(VOICE OVER)
There are 2 animals that are useful from their head to toe. Do you know what they are? Humans and pigs. Everyone thinks pigs are dirty and smelly. But that’s not the case. They not only do their business in one place, but they also only sleep where it’s clean. They often bathe in mud to cook themselves and get rid of bugs. But humans started to lock them up in tiny pigsties (piglet runs into a fenced area). The pigs couldn’t bathe in mud anymore. So they began to rub their bodies in their own excrement. That’s how they grew dirtier and more aggressive. Isn’t that so sad?(Episode begins) THE GOOD BAD MOTHER
A proposal (with a piglet and a ring attached to a ribbon round its neck) 😂. By a shy tall good hearted piggery owner (Hereby referred to as Daddy Pig) to a just as kind lady YongSoon (Mummy Pig). 🐷
A runaway piglet. They both chase it down through the streets 😂
Piglet ends up in a crowded pork belly restaurant 😂. Father is grilling pork belly on the BBQ, daughter spots cute piglet and refuses to eat the pork belly. 😂
The happy couple get married and run a piggery. They are blissfully happy and are expecting their first child.
Disaster strikes in the form of the Seoul Olympics. Conglomerate thug used the torch relay as an excuse to acquire the land the piggery is on. Sets fire to piggery in an attempt to drive the Daddy and Mummy Pig out. Daddy Pig’s quest for justice results in…
A Miscarriage of justice. Evil Prosecutor for the arson case is on Mr Thug’s payroll. Daddy Pig digs up dirt on Mr Thug’s shady past and tries to convince Evil Prosecutor to take his side. Mr Thug kills Daddy Pig and pretends he’s taken his own life. Evil Prosecutor hides the truth from Mommy Pig. Mommy Pig decides to take the money that Daddy Pig had been saving up and moves away to another little town to start a new life and her own piggery there.
Town folk are initially incensed about a stinky piggery in their sleepy little town and conspire to drive pregnant Mommy Pig out. The tide is turned when her waters break and the village is required to help her through the birth process. They bond. Her son KangHo is born. Followed closely by the birth of a girl (MiJoo) by another villager. And just like that, the fates of the 2 babies are tied for life. Born on the same day, same hour and under the same roof.
Watch out for the lady whose face is always in a face mask 😂. She says the most insensitive and inappropriate things and has no filter. I wouldn’t be surprised if we never get to see her real face for the whole drama.
The babies grow up. And we see MJ always defending KH. KH is forced to study by his mother who wants him to become a Prosecutor in the big city to escape the country life. She is relentless. And drives KH to refer to her as “Bad Mother”.
We are introduced to another character (son of another villager) called SamSik who seems to have a crush on MJ. But she only has eyes for KH. In High School, the pair are accidentally locked up together in a sports equipment room by SamSik (who didn’t know MJ snuck into the room after KH) and they bond.
End of Ep1 KH is ready to sit for his University entrance exam. MJ was there to cheer him on with gifts and her presence. It looks like they are a couple. She isn’t careful and is hit by a passing motorcycle as she waves off KH. KH misses the exam to rush her to the hospital.
When he returns home to his mom to try to explain what happened, he is horrified that she blames him for missing the exam. He finally snaps. Telling her she’s suffocating him to death. That she’s been forcing her decision on him all his life. That she’s inadvertently pushing him to turn into the very person who killed his dad. Fine, he says, have it your way. I will become that person.
By the end of Ep1, KH has achieved that dream. He’s a prosecutor. We see him in court. He’s approached by the widow of a labourer who died and she hands him her husband’s phone which has evidence pertinent to the case. He takes the phone and assures her he’s onto it. After she leaves he dials “WooByeok Group”. Then heads to WooByeok Gallery and we see him bow to Mr Thug (Conglomerate Chairman Song) who killed his father.
Episode ends with an aerial view of the gallery. Looking down, it looks like KH (little piglet) is in a concrete cage. Driven into this sad state of affairs by his mother’s relentless pushy behaviour. The little piglet has turned “dirty” and aggressive. Isn’t that so sad? 😢🐷
Who else is watching the show?
Enjoy the show!
Thanks @pkml3! We (@Fern, @nrllee, @OAL, @Kelley, @GB) are watching this show, at least for now… for the redemption arc… I don’t have high hopes of seeing much of piggy again.
I want to believe that Ep 2’s scene of KH being despicable is a ‘blind’ or a red herring, and that there was a more honourable decision made. Otherwise I kind of write-off KH. Even as anti-hero, he becomes too black.
Thank you, @packmule3. Welcome back. I hope that you are enjoying a beautiful Spring where you live.
I’m only on episode 1 – I got distracted with family and home things last night. I’ll try to keep caught up, since this is ongoing.
I am interested in this because it seems to address parenting styles, transformations due to circumstances, and what can or can’t be resolved from past actions.
@packmule3 thank you for opening the thread.
@GB I think the end of Ep2 with the truck of doom (was it an accident? It was strange for it to hit the parked car and then drive off without a thought?) and the accident, bad KH is probably no more. He reverts back to his 7yo self? And Mommy Pig gets a second chance at mothering him differently. That’s my hope anyway. Do you think KH seemed to be plotting revenge in Ep2? All his moves seem very calculated? In an attempt to sleep with the enemy?
I liked the FL MJ…until it was inferred that she left the care of her children (are they twins?) to her mother whilst in Seoul trying to forge a new life for them. I am not totally on board with her life decisions. It sounds like the father of her children left her? Wonder what happened there? Jury is out though. I will give her the benefit of the doubt for now.
@nrllee
Yes, it’s early days and the jury is out. For fun, we can make guesses based on insufficient evidence.
If the Truck of Doom (ToD) really aimed to hit the car, then it could not have come from Assemblyman because it was just by chance that his daughter left the car, at precisely the right time for it to be hit without her in it. However, if Thug has caught on that KH is not all that he pretends to be, ToD could have been sent by Thug. It’s hard to say if ToD’s disappearing without even stopping to check is a sign of a planned accident or of irresponsibly trying to get away without being caught.
Yes I expect KH to revert to his innocent childlike self and be extremely precious. He has the kind of look, which provokes women into mollycoddling him.
Should he regain some of his memories and grown up understanding, I trust that he will be shocked at what he had become. Bad Mother should definitely have learned from the past and become Good Mother, since she’s given a second chance.
I’m thinking FL’s children are twins too… they looked about the same age. It’s very common practice to leave children in the care of relatives/family while the parent(s) go out to make a living. Perhaps I notice it more in Chinese dramas, but I’m sure it’s rampant wherever the family of origin is in the countryside, but the jobs are in the city. It’s cheaper and easier to just rent a small room for self, than for the parent to juggle childcare, schooling, etc while renting a bigger place in the city for self and kids.
It sounded like she had the kids out of wedlock, if I didn’t mishear. The father didn’t bother to stick around or marry her. I’ll correct my failures in comprehension later. Somehow this is NOT one of those shows that I will re-watch, in order to check if I remembered correctly.
This series had better end with a good growth arc or I’ll be cross.
@GB I agree about not wanting to rewatching eps but I rewatched the last bit of Ep2 because I remember thinking when ToD hit the car, “how and why?” 😂. And I can confirm my second watch of the accident confirmed my thoughts. His fiancé had actually pulled the car partly off the road before she exited the car. There wasn’t much of the car left on the road. It wasn’t a particularly curved road with a blind corner either. There was no oncoming traffic on the other side of the road. There was plenty of time for the truck to swerve away to the other side of the road instead of clipping the rear end of the car that was sticking out into the road. And it was a hard hit. The truck driver would’ve known he hit something. Anyway it could’ve just been random or like you suggested, it could’ve been Mr Thug that ordered the hit.
Thanks for the clarification about MJ’s past. I guess we will probably get more details as the drama progresses.
I suspected that both Mr Thug and the Assemblyman thought that having a potential blackmailer in the family was a bad idea. If one of them ordered the ToD, you are correct: Ha-yeong was in the car and only got out by chance. Her distress over Kang-Ho seemed sincere. Unless the Assemblyman decided to give up on her as well, he and Mr Thug didn’t co-operate.
It sounded to me as well that Mi Joo’s twins were born out of wedlock and that she is no longer even trying to find the father. Her mother has woven some elaborate lies about Mi Joo which will certainly unravel. As for a grandmother taking care of the children, it is one of those things that happen when families are struggling. The children might well have to be at day care from early to late if they lived with a single parent. It’s not ideal, but it’s a way for parents to support their grown children as they try to get established and to keep the grandchildren safely within the family.
The tattoo on the leg of the lady with the face mask is interesting. She doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the villagers. She dresses like a ‘lady who lunches’ rather than a village housewife. She has a spotless purebred dog and makes constant pronouncements which sometimes seem like a voicing of what the others are thinking and other times seem diabolically negative. I wonder about her back story.
@Fern I love that the lady with the tattoo is always wearing a face mask. 😂😂😂. And she always says the most inappropriate things.
@nrllee @Fern I liked that last Panda mask she had on LOL with panda ears!!!!
I wonder if under the face mask, it will reveal whether all of that expense and trouble paid off! Yes, that panda mask was another level!
Seriously, I knew someone whose mother married a farmer so they lived in a rural community. I think she said that her parents’ romance got rushed into a hasty marriage. The mother dressed up and entertained her lady friends with afternoon card parties and luncheons while the husband and daughter worked the farm. It was drama fodder.
@Fern, I looked up the actress under the mask. She played the mum of Gye Hoon in “Link: Eat, Love, Kill”. That role was a ‘weak’ character with mental health issues (too?). I didn’t watch Little Women but she had a role there as well.
I imagine every time they take a rest from a shoot, she peels off the mask to ‘rest’ her face. LOL.
What fun, playing lady of the house on a farm. To be fair it should have been balanced with some farm work!
@GB @Fern yes to the panda mask 😂😂😂. I am expecting her to don a different mask each scene now. 😂
@nrllee,
I’m reposting your notes to a new thread. Thanks.
pm3