Mother and Mom: Episode 1 (First Impressions) » Dramabeans

Mother and Mom: Episode 1 (First Impressions)

by Dramaddictally

Mother and Mom arrives with an interesting premise about family, work, stress, and the three generations of women who are trying to hold it all together. But, billed as a drama that offers humor, heart, and healing, I came out of Episode 1 not feeling any of the above.

Editor’s note: This is an opening review only. For a place to chat about the entire drama, visit the Drama Hangout.
 
EPISODE 1

I like the idea of this show and I went in with an open mind. I was especially interested to see Jeon Hye-jin as the overstressed mom, after watching her in 2023’s mother/daughter drama Not Others, where she and her grown daughter acted like they were about the same age. But while the premise is enticing, something about this just isn’t hitting.

We open with a child crying on the street. This is seven-year-old HONG SEO-YOON (Kim Sa-rang), who’s at the center of all the family fuss in this story. Her mom, LEE JUNG-EUN (Jeon Hye-jin), works a high-stress job in marketing, but spends all her free seconds worrying about where Seo-yoon will go to elementary school — so she can one day go to medical school.

We cut to two days prior to that crying scene to see how Seo-yoon ended up lost in a frenzied business district of Seoul. The short story is that Jung-eun is overworked and overstressed, pulling her weight as the primary breadwinner and also the parent that’s most neurotic about Seo-yoon’s future. Her husband, HONG JAE-MAN (Jeon Suk-ho), is a nice guy, but he doesn’t seem to understand the pressure Jung-eun is under.

Since both parents work (along with both grandmothers), Seo-yoon is left with a nanny. The nanny’s main duty is to shuttle the little tike to pre-school in the morning and then to her hagwon in the afternoon. Seo-yoon happens to attend a prestigious hagwon, where the competition is so stiff between the A and B classes that they hide the Class A textbooks from the parents whose kids are not in that class. It’s also worth noting that most of the kids come from uber-rich families (with moms who appear to not work).

One day, right at the time that Seo-yoon is supposed to go to her hagwon, the nanny calls and cancels. Mom and Dad are both at work, but Jung-eun is the one who takes a break, goes to the pre-school, and runs Seo-yoon to her study academy — I mean, literally, she carries her and runs up a hill. They make it on time, but afterward, Jung-eun contacts the nanny to make sure everything will be back on track tomorrow. Yes, says the nanny.

Except, the next day, Jung-eun doesn’t even get a cancellation call, the nanny just doesn’t show. Jung-eun skips lunch and picks up Seo-yoon, but they get stuck in traffic on their way to the other school. She realizes that they’re right near where her own mother works, and decides she’s going to drop her kid with grandma, so she can go back to the office.

Grandma, also known as YOON JI-AH (Jo Min-soo), is an art therapy practitioner for small children. She has a classroom filled with colorful paints that’s within a hospital. And she’s not keen on taking Seo-yoon, since she’s still in class, but Jung-eun leaves her daughter there anyway, with the instruction to take Seo-yoon to the hagwon as soon as class is over.

After class, Ji-ah walks with Seo-yoon outside, where she sees one of her art therapy patients with his mother. The mother is carrying the child on her back, saying he’s not breathing correctly, and she’s rushing him to the ER at the same hospital. And then, in the most illogical of events, Ji-ah tells her seven-year-old granddaughter to wait in the street alone while she goes to check on this patient.

Inside, as the child waits for a doctor, Ji-ah plays the soothing sounds of rain for him to help him breathe normally again — because she realizes he’s having a panic attack. The boy is about Seo-yoon’s age and is dealing with the same stressful situations of pre-school and hagwon (but is also in therapy due to the stress).

Back in the street, Seo-yoon is gone. And we learn that she’s taken a taxi to her hagwon. (Okay, what? Grandma leaving her in the street made no sense. But a taxi driver picking her up is even more nonsensical — and the guy seems to think it’s totally legit to take directions from a pre-schooler.)

In the interim, Jung-eun gets a call that Seo-yoon never made it to her hagwon. She freaks out and can’t reach Ji-ah or Seo-yoon on their phones. Then she sees that the nanny has left their group chat and starts to imagine that the nanny kidnapped Seo-yoon. She jets out of the office and runs around blindly in the neighborhood where Seo-yoon is supposed to be, while her husband has enough wits to call the police — who are the ones that locate Seo-yoon, crying in the street.

The little girl is fine, but Jung-eun is a wreck when she sees her at the police station. And Grandma is utterly surprised that Seo-yoon didn’t make it to school in the taxi on her own. We keep flashing back to another little girl, running in the rain at night, and later learn that it’s Jung-eun who was also not looked after properly by her mother.

At the station, Jung-eun yells at Seo-yoon, but the girl cries that she was trying to do what her mom wanted: she’s always so worried about getting to the hagwon on time. Jung-eun is conflicted because she doesn’t want to entrust Seo-yoon to her mother again, the nanny is gone, and she doesn’t want to quit her job either (and she thinks these are the only options, although her mother tells her to look for a new nanny).

In the end, Jung-eun feels bad for being angry with her mother and agrees to let Ji-ah shuttle Seo-yoon between schools each day (I have no idea where this even came from; Ji-ah also works). But the following day, Ji-ah is back to her same tactics, letting Seo-yoon out of the car a few blocks from the hagwon when they’re stuck in traffic (“Don’t tell your mom,” she says, as I roll my eyes).

Afterward, Ji-ah enters the café where she told Seo-yoon she’d wait for her (I think Seo-yoon actually made it to class this time). And while she’s there, she sees the irresponsible nanny and calls Jung-eun, who comes to the café to yell at the ex-nanny. The nanny retorts that it’s Jung-eun’s fault that Seo-yoon got lost — she is the mom after all. And right then, Ji-ah slaps the nanny in the back of the head and tells her she should apologize. Suddenly, Grandma and Mom are on the same side against a common enemy, and that’s where Episode 1 ends.

Well, it’s got some problems. My main issue is that the characters all feel flat to me. The only person in the entire show that I truly felt empathy for was that little boy having a panic attack at age seven from the stress his parents are putting on him to succeed. And the thing is, that’s what the whole show is about: overwork. The adults are overworked and so are the kids. So, why is a side character getting the moving moment while the main characters feel like cardboard cutouts of what a stressful life in Seoul is supposed to look like?

I don’t think I’ll be sticking around for this one, but if I did it would be to see how the grandmother and mom (or the “mother and mom”) are going to reconcile their long-held hurt. It’s clear that Jung-eun is still harboring deep pain from whatever happened in her childhood with her mother. And it’s also clear that Ji-ah may be flighty but she’s not unfeeling. These two are likely to see eye to eye at some point in the story and that — along with the effect it’s likely to have on Seo-yoon’s life — might be worth the watch.

 
RELATED POSTS