#oh and the story between ran joo and her mom made me cry so much :(((

[lenteur]

random thoughts about castaway diva, episode eleven

(read more because i always get carried away lol and this post might contain spoilers)

We're starting this episode with woo hak making me angry. Why are you contacting mok ha when the whole family agrees it's best to leave her out of the messy situation with mr jung? WHY???

... I take back what I just said. At least he's helping her with the press conference so I guess he's not that bad.

The whole press conference scene had me on the edge of my seat. So many conflicting feelings. Mok ha not following the script and trying to defend ran joo no matter what. Yoon ran joo just keeping her head down and accepting any accusation thrown her way. Eun mo rae seeming to side with mok ha and wanting ran joo to pursue her career so she feels better about being compared to ran joo (a desperate has-been singer who can no longer sing). All of that feels like a lot.

Talking about ran joo, it's frustrating to see her deny all of mok ha's wishes because it descredits the chunsam island singer. I understand she's trying to ease the tension but still, part of me feels like it's unfair to contradict mok ha like that. Because, in the end, mok ha will also be ridiculed for her statements.

I don't think it was a good idea for mok ha to participate in the press conference but I commend her will to defend those around her.

I'm glad the reporter let the truth out because now ran joo knows she was manipulated into signing the termination contract. I mean, she did it on her own will but had she known lee seo jun thinks of her that way, she might have thought twice before signing it. I wonder if there's a way she can nullify the contract? I feel for ran joo because she's been through a lot and there aren't many people on her side.

YES RAN JOO!!! Tell him how he would be nothing without you. He deserves it. He's trash, not you.

When I'm telling you I feel for ran joo, the fate of a tree metaphor is what I'm talking about. She's always given and hasn't taken a lot. People are taking her for granted. They milked her fame until the last drop and now she's treated like trash. I really wish there was a way to make her get her revenge. She doesn't deserve that treatment.

The scene between ran joo and her mom = saddest scene of the drama. I shed so many tears 😭😭😭 I'm relieved ran joo knows why her mom calls herself that and that they could talk to each other. This scene was beautiful 💖

MOK HA FINALLY CONFESSED HER FEELINGS TO KI HO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Dae woong (i think that's his name) woke up. I hope his story can make mr jung guilty of at least one thing (if he's innocent for the family case).

Lee uk is a good man. I keep repeating myself but I want everyone to know how amazing he is. He's ready to go to prison to defend the family. He's even saying if he could turn back time, he'd follow the mom sooner. I'm so happy the mother found someone so caring after spending years with mr jung.

I was so happy when the judge called mr jung following his family stalking.

I'm so happy the judge decided to believe the real victims instead of siding with mr jung. And dae woong could give evidence of the accident to the judge. Karma came and bit you in the a$$ mr jung!!! HAHAAHAHHHHAHAHAHA

Seo mok ha helping ran joo and her mom <3 She's one of the best people on earth. So kind and thoughtful.

YES! Ran joo wants to keep singing!!!

I'm relieved ran joo could read great articles about her to her mom. About a song that just got released (and not some old song).

So yoon ran joo sold 20 million albums a long time ago? Please make her magically appear during the shares meeting so everything is nullified 🙏🙏🙏

Justice was served for the family and yoon ran joo. I couldn't be any more grateful.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? We got a happy ending for everyone finally and you have to ruin it with mr jung st*bbing lee uk? I can't believe it.

I'm giving this episode a 9/10

[thekoreanlass]

First Impression

I had my own share of doubts at Angry Mom before starting watching it. You must already know I am a romance story fanatic and that’s one big reason why I skipped this drama for two years. I can’t waste my time in something I have no interest on and it was just so clear when I read the plot that I won’t be getting any.

But people do mature in time–maybe in days, months or years and preference do change. At my twenties, through watching a ton of dramas per days, I discovered a good story and a good cast would let me live even without the romance as long as there’s consistency, great acting and good pacing then why not?

Doubts aside, as I felt I was ready to watch this drama, I told myself I’ll have an open mind and wouldn’t expect too much. Kim Hee Sun is a seasoned actress–her character at the center of the entire story–and I don’t have any doubts with her, but I don’t know her enough to trust the high school student character would fit her, but this bad ass woman had me surprised in her performance as Jo Kang Ja (also Jo Bang Wool). To say, it was outstanding with a lot of heart.

The story

Angry Mom tells the story of an ordinary mother, Jo Kang Ja (Kim Hee Sun), who discovers the bullying her daughter, Oh Ah Ran (Kim Yoo Jung), is going through and with a determination of a parent wanting to protect her child at all cost, she decides to solve everything in her own hands when she learns no one is going to help her and she can trust nobody in this world to help her protect this child.

Suddenly the timid mother who strives the hardest to make a home, goes back to being a high school student with the aid of her best friend, Han Gong Juu (Go Soo Hee), to solve the mystery behind the bullying of her daughter, Ah Ran. Kang Ja pretends to be Jo Bang Wool, a 19-ish student who causes a lot of trouble on her first day back at school.

Because Kang Ja is just so angry and desperate at whoever laid their hands on her daughter, in her school uniform, she unleashes the badass-ness she once had as a gangster girl during her teens and attacks Go Bok Dong (Jisoo), who she has strong suspicions of that has something to do with the beating and psychological trauma Ah Ran received, knocks down her new homeroom teacher, Park No Ah (Ji Hyun Woo), during their childish brawl and challenges the almighty student president, Hong Sang Tae (B1A4’s Baro).

The school is turned upside down and suddenly every secret kept starts to come to light once Kang Ja starts her own investigation.

However, as Kang Ja, digs deeper into the center of the main issue, she discovers something even darker going on in the place that should be nurturing and protecting her child and all the other students–school. 

What sets this drama apart from others?

  Many would underestimate this drama and say that because it doesn’t have the kind of love story they are looking for that they will just skip it, or because it’s just too dramatic and hard too watch that they’d rather begin with something light and go back to this later only to forget about it or because it centers the story of a mom that it’s boring.

I’m admittedly in one of those categories before I decided to give this drama a shot. However, once I started, this drama has given me something that others don’t. That I can say Angry Mom is not your typical drama.

Though there’s this thought that came to me, for sure the drama sounds too ambitious to position a mom as the heroine and put her in a mission to save the school and its students from corruption. That’s just like telling a mom to carry the world in her shoulders and save the day like superman. I am a bit doubtful about that idea and how they were going to roll it out at first; it just seems too unbelievable, so k-drama, so fictional that you can’t trust yet how the production team will manage to pull off such a thing we think ‘impossible’.

But when it happened, to say the least, I became an instant fan of the drama.

The impossible became possible and to top it, Kim Hee Sun manages to rock the high schooler look when she dons her uniform, though the look isn’t perfect. She pull off the image and that’s what matters. Plus, she doesn’t look awkward in it and Kang Ja just looks like a real problematic high school student with anger issues and a nosiness that only aims for righteousness among the students and school.

And thanks to maternal instincts we don’t just discover the bullying happening in Ah Ran’s school but also uncovers the continuous corruption, unfair treatment to the students, bribery, power struggle, deception, cover ups, apathetic attitude of those in power towards the weaker people and many other issues or controversies that others are afraid to talk about so openly.

Bullying is quite profound in high school k-dramas (so, it’s a serious issue), but it has never been discussed as bravely and as serious as Angry Mom did. We talk about it but that is only superficial compared to what is really happening in real life. Through this drama, I am able to see the struggles of the bullied, the victim’s parents and the bullies. They are all so deeply scarred by their past and present that there is a perpetrator and a victim.

However, compared to that, it is more even problematic how teachers could use their authority over students unjustifiably, negatively affecting the morale of teachers in general (ex. Do Jung Woo taking advantage of Yi Kyung’s naivete and even impregnating her). How people of power could use money to buy their positions, their grades or other people. How ordinary people always lose against the rich because they don’t have the means or the connection to win over such an opponent. How the welfare of others is overlooked because the person of authority prioritizes personal gains than the greater good.

These issues are so prominent in this drama that it gives some reality to it and not just pure fiction and acting. Props to the production team for this kind of direction they took for the plot because it made it even more believable and it draws more connection to the viewers.

Not many are brave to tackle the taboos of society, especially of their own country. It is truly a risk to talk about those ugly things, because it may either give a negative or positive effect depending how it was positioned by the media. However, on a positive note, it educates us what is truly happening around us and helps us understand why and how they are happening, what we can do to counter them, which is what this drama did.

Although in the beginning, life is so hard for Kang Ja–she has a falling out with her daughter, a useless husband, an old school mother-in-law, powerlessness, no significant connections so whatever–she bravely stood to fight for who she loves. Though it’s quite impossible for a mother to get back to school without being caught faking her records just by looking at her, she does this fearlessly and crosses troubled waters prepared.

And though it seems impossible to solve the bullying case of her daughter, which is far from being just that trivial, Kang Ja always finds a way to get intelligence on her nemesis, with the help of Gong Joo and then later of Teacher Park No Ah and Go Bok Dong. She smartly plans her next moves with her allies and gets back at them ten times of what they did. And at times when we all think she’s going to get caught, someone saves her from the trouble.

Fair enough after being in the slump for so long, right? Seeing the one doing the saving being saved isn’t so bad. Sometimes you can only be so strong, but you also definitely bend until you break. Because we’re all humans. We can’t always be perfectly fine.

So, in this journey filled with thorns and injustice, it is great to see tons of cheap comedy, sometimes kids falling in love unexpectedly with unknowingly 30-ish ajhummas only to break their hearts that they cry like kids, a warm relationship between a mother and daughter and also of a father and a son, in any form, in blood or water, of walls breaking and emotions being elicited out from a once rough facade.

Sometimes the drama is truly hard to watch because of how heavy the emotions are, but a drop of victory at every episode keeps it worthwhile. The emotions are so raw, built from true life possibilities that will make you think ‘what if it was me in her shoes?’ and make you cry your eyes out real hard.

I especially cried whenever Kang Ja thought of her mother and how she was always neglected because her mother always worked. There was never a day that her mother is out of business, so maybe that’s also one reason why Kang Ja grew up tough. She took care of herself and consoled herself through the hard times. Isn’t that just so lonely? Being on your own? I also cried when one of the trio died because of the poor construction of the cheaply funded new building in their school. And then there’s also this scene when suddenly Kang Ja’s husband died because of the same reason. And this scene when the students did a vigil in front of their school at night to mourn the loss of their classmates. Many things to celebrate, but there are also these points in the story that makes you feel so human, so vulnerable. The world is full of inevitable tragedies just like this that I am moved by the story this way.

But then, at the end of the road, there is always a beautiful rainbow awaiting us. And this is another thing I love about this drama. The end.

The last episode is so packed with court action, drama, crying, laughter, fluttering hearts and many extra emotions in one that I am utterly satisfied.

Finally, the three troublemakers of the story–Do Jung Woo, Director Hong and Minister Kang–are finally caught in their own trap. We see two sides to the characters, many of them peeling off a mask that gives us a glimpse of their true selves for a moment before the put on their masks again. Director Hong tries to run away again and get revenge at Kang Ja (which makes him really pathetic more than Jung Woo and Minister Kang by the way), but then Ahn Dong Chil learns of this and being Hong’s dog for so long in the past made him easily know what are his plans.

He secretly meets Ah Ran in an alleyway to tell her the truth about his identity and they have a bittersweet reunion that really pulls at the heartstrings when he starts to cry with Ah Ran. Who would have thought the devil has a heart? Only Ahn Dong Chil knows what he feels, but I really sympathized with him that time even though his intentions and his loyalty to whom was really hazy to me. All thanks to him opening up like that, that I forgot all hate I had for him throughout the run of the show. And what’s even better is that he helps save Kang Ja who he owes so much from after framing her for killing his brother, when he was the one who accidentally struck him.

Director Hong faces an inevitable death that he has put upon himself and no one knows how he dies even when he was found. Serves him right for being so evil, so conniving, so greedy and just the worst scum of earth in this drama.

His death serves as an end to a chapter of their lives and the beginning to another wherein everyone begins to hope again that from then on things are just going to get better even though we all know Director Hong, Jung Woo and Minister Hong are just one percent of the corrupt portion of the pie.

The ending scene shows us a picture of what happens to them after the tragedy that struck them once. Kang Ja returns to being a mom, this time much stronger, and is now the owner of a restaurant together with Gong Joo, who despite losing her club still remains positive and loyal to Kang Ja. Ah Ran remains in love with Sang Tae (this is really still a surprise to me with how their relationship first started and all). Sang Tae starts dreaming of becoming a prosecutor to uncover the truth behind the corruption that led his father to his death. Bok Dong still smitten by his noona crush. Teacher No Ah who became the most popular teacher at school due to his dedication, hard work, loyalty, heart of justice and just the fact that he cares for his students.

Everyone is happy in the end and even though the story is left a bit open-ended, that’s probably the most deserving open ending I have watched. I think it’s satisfying despite my OTPs ships’ sinking. Oh well, I totally signed up for this, so no hard feelings, right?

Plot, Direction, Music, Sequence

This is one of the most intelligent plots I’ve ever watched; it’s heartwarming, with a raw feeling to it, that leaves you thinking and feeling at the same time. You will definitely sympathize with the characters in the story and the scenarios are very relatable too real life stories.

Although sometimes things can look impossible, the direction was able to make it happen. The pacing and sequence is just right even though the music is sometimes not fit for the scenes. Nonetheless, the music they used are very cute and really easy to listen to. It makes the story more colorful and your heart flutter in your chest, because the lyrics are especially easy to understand.

Characters & Relationships

Jo Kang Ja (Jo Bang Wool) is my favorite character of them all. Truly, Kim Hee Sun has outdone herself by portraying Kang Ja as a mother and also as a student who craves for love from people around her secretly. What I truly like about Kang Ja, though, is how much she is willing to give to protect Ah Ran. This selfless love has transformed her into an even better individual–as a mother, as a daughter, and as a person–who is much stronger than any opponent.

Her charms come out naturally without her even trying that Park No Ah feels the need to protect and her and also the reason why Go Bok Dong falls in love with her without her even trying to smitten him. The relationship among these three is so cute that I’m a bit sad that she doesn’t end up with anyone.

My second favorite is probably Han Gong Joo. Her undying loyalty to Kang Ja and her being in character as Bang Wool’s mother still warms my heart and alternately send me rolling to the floor in laughter. She’s a tough chick full with hidden slapstick comedy to her.

Ah Ran should also be one of the center in the drama, but even if she grew up from her thorny daughter character and became stronger like Kang Ja, I think we aren’t shown much of what kind of person Ah Ran is besides being her mother’s daughter. I’m not saying, however, that Kim Yoojung did a poor job in portraying Ah Ran, but maybe her character wasn’t just explored too well.

This is just like how it was already late in the drama run when we see Sang Tae‘s walls start to shatter. He goes from Mr. I am rich so better follow me to a boy who only craves love from someone. He’s a real softy inside, but has the loyalty of iron to his father that he stood by him until the end.

These two starts dating towards the end of the story which is a total surprise considering how much Ah Ran didn’t like Sang Tae in the beginning because of rumors of him making her an outcast in school. But anyway, no matter how abrupt and premature is the build up for their relationship, it is good to see they are together. It’s cute and it just brings back memories of puppy loves.

Park No Ah, on the other hand, shows his wimpy, pushover self in the beginning. Just because he is kind, honest and idealistic that he is always being tested and pushed aside by those above him in power. However, No Ah’s character gradually grows from that phase to an improved version of himself as he fights along Kang Ja’s side to protect the kids from those evil minions who doesn’t even give a care at all.

No one any longer believe the teachers to protect the kids, but No Ah is like the light that showed them not everyone can be evil. Still, there are still so many good people in the world you can meet that will carry you to the top and won’t bring you down, who will be there for you, care for you, hug you and protect you just like a parent does to his child.

His presence only goes to show that the rich, powerful or those in position aren’t really the strongest people out there. In fact, they are people who knows how to love that are the strongest.

Go Bok Dong is another favorite of mine. I think Jisoo played his character so well that Bok Dong is overflowing with charisma. He’s tough and prickly on the outside, but has the heart of a kid that only wants to be cared for and is easily moved by Kang Ja’s motherly way of doing so, that he helplessly falls for her. As someone watching this kid cluelessly fall for an ajhumma, I laughed so hard whenever he acts so impulsively out of jealously and I also felt sorry for him when he found out he’s way out of Kang Ja’s league after all. Indeed, Bok Dong is cute and naive, but not once did I hate this kid. He’s like a puppy that I’m tempted to ruffle his hair. Haha.

A bonus character that also left an impact would be Ahn Dong Chil. Because despite of how hateful his character is that I want to crush him with my own hands, in the end Dong Chil became a bad person because of the struggles he went through. However, this tall wall he built around him collapses upon meeting Kang Ja and Ah Ran, and makes him human again. Someone that can feel and cry.

Overall

I truly enjoyed this one despite the inevitable flaws in relationship build up. Just like the friendship Ah Ran and Sang Tae built without my knowledge and their sudden relationship status change from friends to couple. It is a bit unsupported that you will sometimes think, ‘are they really together now?’. There’s also the teasing, barely-but-there love triangle between Bok Dong, Kang Ja and No Ah that was spoiled to the end.

I would love to see if Kang Ja can end up with No Ah because that’s more plausible than falling in love with a high school student, but I guess, that’s not just possible since the theme of this drama doesn’t focus on that kind of love, but the love of parents to their children and children to their parents. So, I am not that disappointed by the wasted ships. My ships sank but so what?

The drama is great that way, even without the ships.

So, if you want something different, away from your usual chick-flicks, I recommend you see ‘Angry Mom’. It’s kind of angsty, with a bunch of melodrama, crying and thought provoking issues. But hey, who doesn’t want something to cry over on every once in a while? Plus, it’s so heartfelt, so raw you can relate and sympathize to.

Rating this, I’ll give it a 4.7 out of 5 for pulling at my heartstrings.

  Backtrack: Review on ‘Angry Mom’ First Impression I had my own share of doubts at Angry Mom before starting watching it. You must already know I am a romance story fanatic and that's one big reason why I skipped this drama for two years.