“The Good Bad Mother” Ending Explained- Episode 14 Recap And Review

“The Good Bad Mother” has concluded its run a couple of hours ago, let us take a look at its finale and explain its ending

“The Good Bad Mother” episode 14 recap

 The episode begins with Choi Kang-Ho paying a visit to Oh Tae-Soo to tell him he wants to catch Song Woo-Byeok who killed his father, he convinces him to testify against him to remove all suspicions that he’ll somehow connected to him. He threatens him and tells him he has his daughter.

At the hideout, Lee Mi-Joo questions Oh Ha-Young who is unsure she’ll be of any service because her father can pin the blame on her and call her crazy.

Assistant So Ji-Suk goes to chairman Song who is about to leave to the U.S. he cries and begs him, he’s upset he nearly got killed, then, he shows him he’s been recording him, chairman Song beats the living crap out of him. Then, Choi Kang-Ho shows up and arrests him on the spot for this. This was their ticket to arrest him.

Jin Young-Soon sees the news on TV and cries, the village people all cheer on seeing Choi Kang-Ho. Then, all of them go to the courthouse to witness the trial of chairman Song.

Choi Kang-Ho presents his claims and chairman Song pushes back against them. His assistant So Ji-Suk comes to testify against him but he plans on pinning this against him. Then, Oh Tae-Soo shows up as a witness. He claims since all the past crimes about Woobyeok Group had their prime suspects dead, he didn’t suspect it. He then pins the blame on chairman Song and says Secretary Hwang Soo-Hyun had his baby and he killed them both. chairman Song then gets furious and begins to act out, he curses at him for his deeds and says he’s covered up for him a lot.

Then, Oh Ha-Young shows up and testifies along her father. She says he made attempt to kill Choi Kang-Ho, he then pulls out a paper claiming she’s clinically insane and cannot be trusted. He asks for court to dismiss him. Through the trial, it then gets out that chairman Song killed Kang Ho’s father and coordinated with chairman Song to hide the crimes. It all gets out in the open.

Thus, Choi Kang-Ho brings out Secretary Hwang Soo-Hyun’s son saying she’s kept her baby safe and committed suicide herself. With DNA evidence, they can now tie the baby boy to Oh Tae-Soo. He gets angry and attempts to storm out with his daughter saying he doesn’t want to testify anymore. As he’s walking out, he gets arrested for his crimes.

After that, Oh Tae-Soo and chairman Song are taken into custody and their cases are being re-opened and investigated, they’re done for.

Meanwhile, at the village, they hold a birthday party for Jin Young-Soon who gives a heartfelt speech about her humble beginnings and thanks everyone for being there for her.

After the birthday party, Jin Young-Soon hands Kang Ho and Mi Joo rings she received for her wedding, blessing their marriage.

After the dinner, he comes to his mother’s room and says he wants to sleep next to her. He insists, she then asks him to sing her a lullaby which he does. But as he’s doing this, she passes away peacefully in her sleep next to her son who carries on with the singing while crying his eyes out.

At her funeral, its packed, he then gets off his place and sings as she taught him, he sings her favorite song and the crowd sings alongside him too.

A little while later

Jung Gum-Ja is in love with Baek Hoon-Ah and they’re now dating. Sam-Sik brings things in prison he stole from his mother, he says they’re now together and tells her two years will go by quickly.

So Ji-Suk and Mr. Cha are now working in the village and as they’re driving, Son Yong-Rak’s wife is being taken back to Japan and says goodbye to her husband, she’s finally now showing her face and speaking with an accent. However, as she enters the car, she feels sick, thinking she’s pregnant, she tells the men to tell her father she’s pregnant and not coming back.

Kang-Ho goes back to their happy farm holding Mi-Joo’s hands. She decorated the place and shows him the frames, he then sees the frame with his dad and opens it, he finds a letter by his mom who promised to be by his side always even in death.

He cries, and what appears to be his mother wipes his tears. He says his mother ruined the surprise he had planned for Mi Joo.

He then goes there dressed up and in a quirky way proposes to Mi Joo, he then shows her a baby pig he’s gifting her. She accepts even tho she calls the proposal childish. They run after the cute pig in the farm.

The end.

“The Good Bad Mother” ending- frequently asked questions

“The Good Bad Mother” episode 14 review- thoughts on ending

That was an ok ending… exactly like what I had expected which is not a good indication.

All of the previous worries I outlined in my premiere episode review were correct. The drama is very predictable in the sense that little is left for what could have been some good plot twists. Despite that, “The Good Bad Mother” is one of the most visually stunning, emotionally gripping kdramas of 2023, no one can debate that. And the performances more than do a great job at enhancing what is otherwise a very typical plot.

The ending feels very incomplete and its not because the mother died, that’s like the most expected outcome of this episode, its everything else besides it.

For starters, Kang Ho should have been punished in some capacity for aiding in Chairman Song’s crimes, even if the intentions were ok, many lives were destroyed and such as a result of his actions, they do not even bring up if he received any sort of disciplinary measure or not. Realistically speaking, a prosecutor doing this so publicly would bring backlash and I highly doubt any government would let this slide.

Another thing is the handling of Chairman Song and Oh Tae-Soo’s cases, this was my least favorite part of the episode, it was very much anticlimactic and lacked any sort of urgency in the handling.

Oh Tae-Soo walks there to testify and then brings out a paper as if he already knew, how did he expect this to go?  Also, Chairman Song shows little to no emotions in the case until Tae Soo showed up, the entire court scene didn’t feel as if everything was at stake. You could say, ‘well, it was a done case,’ but I wished it had been handled better in terms of writing specifically, it leaves a lot of room for ‘what ifs’ or ‘could haves.’

Also, on top of that, even if we ignore the court scene, they don’t even bother to clarify anything about them aside from their arrest, did they end up in prison? If yes, for how long and such, nothing, for a drama that centered heavily on the legal aspect of the entire debacle you’d expect a little more theatrics around the massive corruption of those two.

On top of that, pairing Sam Sik with Tae Soo’s daughter felt very expected but also very unnecessary… why?

Again, the ending follows very typical and expected plot points until the very end. I wished it had more weight to it is what im trying to say.

And again, I remembered, the mother’s abuse was also brushed aside and attributed to ‘love’ when some of the sh*t she done was plain cruel, nothing can even begin to justify her actions towards her son, yes, it’s a very complicated thing to talk about but like I said in the premiere episodes review, I really wished they would have addressed it more head on and not give the mother excuses for her horrible actions.

Even with her death, which I thought as a story not needed, it felt as if was added for the sake of the extension of the plot and to soften people’s views about her.

Even after his incident, when she threw him to that pond of water, the rage that consumed me….

Even if we let aside the kimbap situation, she still didn’t eat with him growing up, was too harsh on him, didn’t allow him to have fun in his teenage years. It would’ve been nice to not try and excuse her behaviors as ‘the good bad mother’ is all I am saying, she still ruined him. She’s lucky he didn’t end up worse.

And even her reaction to him pursuing the revenge she raised him for… its astonishing that she ever pictured he’d turn out anything ‘normal,’ and then would push back against said revenge as if she hadn’t been building him up for this, sis, this all happened because of you, a lot of what happened to him is your fault.

I bring this up because the mother’s character is emotionally very intelligent and hyper aware of her actions which makes it even more inexcusable as opposed to a mother who thought she was doing the right thing, she knows her handling was horrible but continues to push with her raising antics knowing well how they brought him up in the first place.

Excusing emotional or physical abuse is not something I take lightly, which is why I concentrated on this point heavily. It seemed to me the screenwriter more than approached her character with as much sympathy as she could.

Back to the ending….

The mother’s death was handled gracefully and was very emotional. Do Hyun and Mi Ran really had amazing chemistry and truly marveled with their performances. They were the highlight of the series for me.

Having this drama be 14 episodes was a mistake. I think 10 would’ve been more than enough. Going from writing for movies scripts which are roughly two hours to 14 hours is not easy feat for any screenwriter, which was the case for this one.

Regardless, overall, this drama was worth watching for its emotional arc alone, I have many issues with it, but I can’t deny I still loved the performances and the hard work put into it.

Have you guys seen the ending of “The Good Bad Mother”? did you like it or not?