There was a lot more story in this episode than there was in “The Good Bad Mother” Episode 3. We had dreaded knowing how Young Soon would react when she learned about her son’s misdeeds, and this episode gave us the answer to that. Also, there is a nagging doubt that has been planted in our minds that is making us very uncomfortable about how much we are going to cry when we get the answer. As emotional as this week was, we know for a fact that the coming episodes are going to be so much more intense. Until then, this is how “The Good Bad Mother” Episode 4 goes.
Spoilers Alert
What Does Woo Byeok Know?
Oh Tae Soo is running for president, and the public is strongly in his favor. Song Woo Byeok sees this as an opportunity and approaches him with a video from the truck driver’s wife, clearly saying that if she is harmed, the evidence against Oh Tae Soo would reach the police. Oh Tae Soo cannot believe this card that Woo Byeok has against him, and he tells him that Kang Ho was never looking for family but for revenge. He knows that he approached Ha Young on purpose by fabricating a report to give him an excuse to meet her. Oh Tae Soo also reminds Woo Byeok that Kang Ho is Choi Hae Sik’s son. But Woo Byeok already knew this. He had run a background check on Kang Ho when he first started working for him. Woo Byeok is not too worried about Kang Ho since he believes that he can’t do anything, as even he has become as corrupt as anyone else.
Kang Ho’s And Mi Joo’s Past
In the past, Kang Ho and Mi Joo had met again when the former had started the process of giving his second bar exam. Kang Ho was supporting himself with a part-time job, and Mi Joo had just started a new job at a nail salon. Both of them start living together, and Mi Joo supports Kang Ho, asking him to focus completely on his career while she “invests in him.” They lead a beautiful life together, with Kang Ho claiming that it was Mi Joo who gave him the will to live. In the present day, we see that Mi Joo is in a tight spot after her partner, Son Young, betrays her and steals all the money. Her only option seems to be to go back home for the time being.
What Did Young Soon Discover?
Kang Ho has made fast friends with the resident twins, Ye Jin and Seo Jin, and they keep getting him into trouble. One time, while playing with him, Kang Ho falls off his wheelchair, and everyone is scolded by Young Soon and Mrs. Jung, the twins’ grandmother. Basically, Kang Ho has gotten really attached to his mother in a way he never was before. When Young Soon takes him to the hospital, she is temporarily out of his sight as she goes to get some medicine. That sends Kang Ho into panic mode as he looks for her. Young Soon teaches him, as one would teach a child, that they must look in different places for their mother and then call her if he still can’t find her. She even has a talk with him where she tells him that he is 35 years old and that he is temporarily 7 years old, as a miracle for them both to relive his childhood.
Sometimes we really feel something for Lee Do Hyun, the actor who plays Kang Ho. In one of his dramas, “18 again”, he played a 40-year-old man stuck in the body of an 18-year-old. In “The Good, Bad Mother,” he is playing a 7-year-old boy stuck in the body of a 35-year-old. In “Hotel Del Luna,” he was some thousand years old and stuck in the body of a firefly. We feel it is time for him to catch a break now. Either way, Young Soon has to go to Seoul to bring back Kang Ho’s things from his apartment and his office. On the way, she meets the people who have been wronged by him. Young Soon cannot believe that her son was a corrupt man who threw people under the bus in the pursuit of wealth and power. But when she is going back home, a slight accident on the road shakes up some of Kang Ho’s things, and she finds gold bars in the stuff. Young Soon is forced to confront the fact that her son might not be the morally righteous person she had believed him to be.
How Did Young Soon Deal With Kang Ho’s Corruption?
When she goes back home, Kang Ho is still the 7-year-old boy who misses his mother. But Young Soon is furious, at him and at herself, for teaching him nothing except how to pursue success. She can see that Kang Ho cannot differentiate between right and wrong and is a cold man, all because his mother stressed that the only thing he should do is study. Kang Ho is bewildered as to why his mother is so angry and just apologizes to her. Seeing her son in such a state, Young Soon’s heart melts. They both freshen up, and she takes Kang Ho back to the pigsty to tell him how humans and pigs are similar. They must take their downfalls as a chance to see life from a different perspective. That is what Kang Ho’s current condition means to her—a second chance not just for their relationship but to change the kind of man he has become.
At the end of Episode 4 of “The Good Bad Mother,” Kang Ho goes out looking for Ye Jin’s ball that he had lost while playing. He finally finds it after a whole day of looking. When he goes to their house to give it back to the twins, he finds Mi Joo there, who has come back to the village.
Final Thoughts
We would be surprised if everyone did not think that Seo Jin and Ye Jin must be Kang Ho’s children. But let’s think in reverse for a bit. The twins are seven years old, and Mi Joo is the same age as Kang Ho (35 years old), so she must have had the kids when she was 27–28 years old. Kang Ho must have been younger, maybe around 23–24, when he gave the bar exam. When Kang Ho cleared his bar exams, the couple was still going strong. Once Kang Ho got a job, there was no reason for him to listen to his mother, so he may have broken up with Mi Joo for some other reason and not Young Soon. But for Mi Joo to go to such lengths to hide the kids’ parentage from him, something very serious must have happened, and the coming episodes of “The Good Bad Mother” will tell us what. We are also curious if this had anything to add to Kang Ho’s intense dislike of his mother in his previous life. We can’t wait to find out.
