The Good Bad Mother season 1 episode 9 recap & review

Open Go TV / May 25, 2023 / Reviews

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The ninth episode of The Good Bad Mother explores Kang-ho’s past from his point of view. The episode is now streaming on Netflix.

Recap

The villagers find out that Ha-young is marrying someone else and decide to keep this from Young-soon, but she already knows.

Young-soon and Kang-ho together view the contents of the SD card. They figure out the password and get access to the files on it. The files seem like a journal that Kang-ho has been keeping.

When Kang-ho was in college, he got into a fight with a student who had fabricated his grades. He was the son of a judge, and if Kang-ho had not apologized to him, he would have gone to prison and would not have been able to give the bar exam.

Young-soon had forced Kang-ho to beg for forgiveness from that student. That day, Kang-ho realized why he had to go to law school and become a prosecutor.

In Kang-ho’s files, he mentions how he tried to get information about his father’s trial and investigation when he was a student, but he could not get that. He also mentions how Mi-joo made his life better and how he was happy with her.

Kang-ho kept investigating his father’s trial on his own and even met witnesses who gave questionable testimonies. He found out that Chairman Song threatened the witnesses into changing their testimonies, and Oh Tae-soo did not raise the questions that he should have.

As he could not tell Mi-joo about his father’s case, his relationship with Mi-joo suffered. Kang-ho also came to know that his mother wanted him to be a painter when his father was still alive, but after everything that happened to his father, his mother only wanted him to be a powerful man.

Kang-ho finally became a prosecutor and got the power his mother wanted him to have. He could then get his father’s case records, and it was Oh Tae-soo and Chairman Song’s names that were everywhere.

To get justice for his father, he left Mi-joo, even though it hurt him a lot. He did not want her to find out how much he loved her, as he wanted her to move on and forget him.

He then stalked Ha-young and started dating her, and his attempts to ingratiate himself with Chairman Song were also successful.

Problems arose when Assemblyman Oh refused to accept Kang-ho as his son-in-law. He was also breaking ties with Chairman Song to distance himself from his dirty work in order to become the president.

He then met Assemblyman Oh’s secretary, Hwang Soo-hyun, who was pregnant with Assemblyman Oh’s illegitimate child. Kang-ho promised to protect her and her child. In return, he asked her to give him Woobyeok Group’s confidential files.

Kang-ho had to distance himself from his mother because his plans would have put everyone close to him in danger. He never killed Hwang Soo-hyun and her son but sent them to the Philippines to keep them safe. He even made all the arrangements for them to live comfortably.

In one of the files, Kang-ho apologized to his mother for severing ties with her, but he thought he had to avenge his father’s death. More than that, he had to avenge what these men had done to his mother’s life.

He had always known how hard it was for Young-soon to be a bad mother to him, but she did it because she thought it was necessary to make Kang-ho a powerful man. Similarly, it was hard for Kang-ho to sever ties with her.

Kang-ho failed to take Assemblyman Oh and Chairman Song down because he lost his memories after the accident. He does not remember any of his plans now.

After going through all the files, Young-soon asks Kang-ho to forget about revenge. She does not want him to destroy himself for revenge but wants him to live a good life. She takes all the evidence that he had collected and burns it. Kang-ho finds his ID card and hides it from her before she burns the rest of his belongings.

Meanwhile, Sam-sik comes across an expensive handbag his mother had kept hidden, and a man discovers a body in the ocean. The bag that Hwang Soo-hyun was carrying the night Kang-ho sent her away is seen lying next to the body.

Review

This episode lets the audience get to know the person Kang-ho used to be. It gives them reasons to root for him by showing them that he was never a power-hungry man as everyone believed him to be.
While Kang-ho’s truth was not as big a twist as the show had tried to make it, Kang-ho understanding how hard it was for Young-soon to be a bad mother was unexpected. He was always able to see the side that his mother tried to hide from him.
The episode does not just focus on Kang-ho’s past, it also shows how losing so many loved ones can change people. The episode makes the audience sympathize with Young-soon and understand her past actions.
While the whole episode was a recollection of past events from Kang-ho’s perspective, the ending was quite intriguing. The ending made it clear that Young-soon will not be able to get Kang-ho to put the past behind him.