We feel like the makers of The Good Bad Mother have missed one crucial element about the relationship between Young Soon and Kang Ho: that intentions do not excuse consequences. It was Young Soon’s noble intentions that had pushed Kang Ho to the point that he did not have a life outside of his studies. Did Young Soon not realize what she had done? In what she claims is a second chance, she once again pushes Kang Ho into the water. Her intention is to make him walk, but won’t the trauma of it stay with Kang Ho once again? We are finding it hard to blame Young Soon because she wouldn’t have done it if she herself wasn’t running out of time. Additionally, considering everything she has been going through, it is hard to view her actions simply through the lens of responsibility, but we feel compelled to look at the necessity of it all. We suppose it is one of those situations where it is wiser to withhold judgment and let things take their own course. Here is a recap of Episode 8 of The Good Bad Mother.
Spoilers Alert
Does Kang Ho Learn To Walk Again?
Picking up directly from where Episode 7 left off, Kang Ho is on his feet, supporting his mother so that she is not hurt. She comes to consciousness, and when she finds Kang Ho standing, she takes the rope off her neck and points out his regained ability to walk. Awareness of his legs makes Kang Ho collapse, but he is more upset by what he has witnessed and simply leaves the house. He runs into Mi Joo outside and starts crying, saying that he has been abandoned. Mi Joo reassures him that his mother would never do that to him, and that is when Young Soon comes looking for Kang Ho. She takes him back home and tells him that she did that because she is sick and does not want to be a burden to him. This is the moment when we have to remember that Kang Ho’s mind might have reverted to his childhood, but the emotional intelligence of an adult is still stored there. He questions his mother about whether she thinks of him as a burden since she takes care of him. It is an emotional moment for both of them, which leads to a reconciliation, and Young Soon asks him to try and stand again. But when he fails, she pushes him into the water so that he can try to stand up to save his own life. Of course, it is not as simple as that, but repeating this many times over, along with sufficient physical therapy, helps Kang Ho walk again.
The villagers are still unaware of this development, and they buy a new wheelchair for Kang Ho as a way to cheer up the household after the loss of their pig farm. But when they reach Young Soon’s house and find Kang Ho on his feet, it is cause for celebration. Even the two detectives living under disguise in the village are invited to the feast. They haven’t had much success with their mission to find something incriminating against Oh Tae Soo, but when they are in Kang Ho’s house, one of the guys finds that all of Kang Ho’s belongings are in the shed. They go there later and steal the DNA evidence of Oh Tae Soo having an illegitimate family, but the Assemblyman doesn’t care about it since his family is dead, and this is just a piece of paper that he can claim is fabricated. Song Woobyeok sends back the men to find something more concrete. Meanwhile, Ha Young is buying her new wedding dress, and she remembers when she was similarly shopping with Kang Ho the day before they left for his mother’s village. He had made a call to someone to take care of a baby. This is why Ha Young easily believed her father when he lied that Kang Ho had an illegitimate family.
Back in the village, Ye Jin has developed a crush on Kang Ho ever since she saw him looking all tall and strong on his feet. As for her mother, Sam Sik proposes to her, but she turns him down since both of them are broke and have huge debt, which means they would never be able to have decent lives.
What Did Young Soon Find In The Photograph?
Young Soon has reassured Mi Joo that she will never again try to take her own life. But that doesn’t mean that she stops preparing Kang Ho for the eventuality. She takes pictures of them together and then just of herself. She teaches him how to behave at a funeral and also updates him on life skills, like how to go to the bank and how to take care of pigs.
One day, she gets a call from Kang Ho’s old house’s security guard. When she visited Kang Ho in Episode 1, he refused to see her. It turns out that later that night, he visited the security guard and handed him a letter to give to his mother when she visited his house the next week. How did Kang Ho know that his mother would have to come again soon? Did he know that he was in danger, or did he have any other plans? These are the questions that Young Soon is grappling with, especially since something about the letter is a little off. Kang Ho said that he was “living with the memories of his mom and dad”. But Kang Ho’s father had passed away even before he was born; therefore, the words don’t make much sense. At the end of Episode 8 of The Good Bad Mother, Young Soon has an epiphany when she sees the picture of Kang Ho as a baby, where she has taped the photograph of her husband. When she checks behind that frame, she finds an SD card. Young Soon realizes that Kang Ho must have left it there when he visited her for the termination of her parental rights. The next episode will tell us what is on that card.
Final Thoughts
Of course, it was impossible that Kang Ho was ever evil. With half of the show done, it is finally time for the secrets to unravel. This means that his decision to cut ties with his mother was not a cold, calculated one but an act done to protect her, much like his breakup with Mi Joo and, as we suspect, his reluctance to help Sam Sik. However, the person we feel bad for in the midst of it all is Ha Young. She was manipulated by all the people she loved, and that is hard to recover from. But for now, the coming episodes will tell us what Kang Ho’s ultimate game plan was, and we just want to see the pieces fall into place.
