By: Hafiz Jasri
A heart warming family drama about a mother named Yoon Bok Hee (Bae Jong Ok) who goes from being a market merchant to a billionaire loan shark suffering from Alzheimer’s and how she raising her children who struggle to grow up in such situation to run their family business and take care their mother.
Go Young Chae (Jung Yoo Mi) is a designer and the oldest daughter of Yoon Bok Hee. She is spoiled and argumentative, the kind of girl which often described as a princess. She will be at odds with Jang Hoon Nam (Jung Gyu Woon), a nice guy and the second son of a clothing factory family who lost his parents at an early age and cares for his hearing-impaired brother. Because of his own strong sense of responsibility, he tries to make Go Young Chae into a better person and in the process falls in love with her.
My Rambling Recap
So I first started watching this drama from episode 6 (I went back to my parents home and my sister had this in the tivo ~is that what they call the cable thingamajig that records shows while you’re out of the house?- gawd I sound so technologically deprived or just plain old… but I’m not!! I’m in my twenties dammit!) Okay sorry ignore that crazy rant that I had going on there- okay so back to the fact that I found out about this drama and I realized that I’ve been missing out on some mighty fine Jung Gyu Woon ogling. I hadn’t seen anything with him in it since Champ (2010)!!! oh lord THREE years without McHotty. Yeah I scanned through History of a Salaryman but it doesn’t count because I didn’t really watch that drama in it’s entirety.
Okay so first thing that struck me from the first episode was the intro with Nan Bok Hee (the titular WONDERFUL mama) throwing her self proclaimed most loved possession (money) to the unsuspecting crowd below. Of course at first I thought she was a suicidal person, standing up on the ledge and talking about throwing away something important (I thought LIFE). but I’m glad I was wrong! She does sound like a lunatic though… as she throws away her money… (save some for me please!).
Then we get introduced to her oldest, her daughter 30-year old Young Chae who is as material barbie girl as can be. She ends up having a hilarious (for me) but embarrassing encounter with the spiffy pulled by his bootstraps hottie Hoon Nam, she ends up mistaking his red convertible for her own and basically treating him as a valet… while he stares at the crazy. And because of her noisy bossy attitude, he ends up calling her an ahjumma… something that is kept throughout the drama as his nickname for her from here on out.
However Young Chae isn’t the only irresponsible one. Her twin brother Go Young Soo (cutie pie Kim Ji Suk [Personal Taste, Chuno]) is a dummy who gets scammed by friends and girls, even suckered into believing that his two-two girlfriend (twenty two days of being together) is pregnant for three weeks and gets roped into investing in her father’s ideas. Then there’s eternal college student 26-year old Young Joon who is a party animal and his friend’s “wallet.” They all cause their mother pain at seeing how they’re throwing their life away, but she’s also an enabler at the beginning because she wants them to be happy just a bit longer at least for the next thirty years while she’s healthy and able to provide for them. However those are famous last words and soon she’ll be throwing them into the fire of adulthood and responsibility.
What makes her change her attitude about her children’s need to grow up? The fact that Bok Hee finds herself an early Alzheimer patient with a prognosis of 5 years at most before it becomes completely disabling. She (curious note she’s known as the Dragon Lady and she’s a lady loan shark) gets together with another lady loan shark and together they cook up a plot that involves a fake failed venture that leaves the family impoverished, thereby forcing her children to work to make their rent.
Meanwhile, as her children learn the meaning of hard work Bok Hee is looking for a child that was stolen from her thirty six years ago. Curiously her child would have been about the age her doctor is. Doctor Hong, also just so happens to be sponsored by the beast who stole her baby in the first place, Choi Eon Ok (Kim Chung).
Also even curiouser is that the doctor lived through the fire that supposedly killed Bok Hee’s child and of all the koinkidinks the doctor was saved by Hoon Nams parents who happened to be two of the four deaths reported… as long as Bok Hee’s child isn’t Hoon Nam and I don’t think it is since he’s younger than the doctor… by three years… but if he is or they start thinking he is and cause angst that is NOT necessary I’ll be having afisticuffs word match with the writer.
Anyways Bok Hee comes to a dead end when even the dust biter that her first love is finally faces her (after several dastardly avoidances) and comes clean with what he knows of the child’s death. I’d feel sad for him but he’s a coward so let’s just sweep him away, he’s not really important in the present… his relevance is in the past so lets set him aside. At least I don’t care for him.
So back to Hoon Nam… getting tired of reading yet? go watch it!! hahaha
Anyways, Hoon Nam gets fired/forced to submit his resignation early on because of an incident caused by Young Chae at a Fashion Show where he was supposed to get an investor for the company he works for (however he was pushing for his brother’s company). To cut the tragedy short I’ll just tell you it involved McCheaters meeting righteous anger, overturned tables, fallen models and a friendly dog (golden retriever? I don’t remember). in short DISASTER OF EPIC PROPORTIONS. His girlfriend/fiancee in the beginning is Choi Eun Ok’s daughter; cool, smart, collected Lee Soo Jin. HAH that lasts about as much as my pink is long.
We find that Hoon Nam, and Bok Hee and her children, have an interesting fate with each other since they end up leaving the country and still end up at the same place: Cebu.
There’s crazy amount of money flying around with Bok Hee’s children, while Hoon Nam is struggling to get an investor interested in the clothing his brother’s company designs. Disaster strikes Hoon Nam when he loses ALL his samples and has no idea about how to go on and show the investor how great the clothes are. This is where Young Chae comes in… after a hilarious mud wrap scene where Hoon Nam mistakes her for a man while dressed in some mumu or something that looks suspiciously like one .
As it turns out she’s a designer, having studied for a bit in Paris (but mostly shopped and slacked off) but more than that, she has a knack for design and she works the whole night through to make Hoon Nam’s bid for investment come through. (Probably because she’s the reason he lost the investment in the first place)
She also manages to get her brother’s to help out to the delight of their mom who moments before was blowing a gasket and ready to change her will to give them nothing of her money.
They all return to Cebu, though Young Chae and her family in chaos since they’ve been told that they’ve lost all their money. Mom gets them good having the old loan shark lady come in to her house and stage a personal attack for money. It’s quite fun to see the “kids” almost faint in a panic because they lost all their money.
Young Chae swallows some of her pride and goes to ask Hoon Nam for a job, and after many misgivings due to her flighty self absorbed personality, he gives her a job. Of course this doesn’t sit well with Soo Jin. Why? because if we back track a bit, right after Cebu her malformed lout of a brother Jang Ho selects only the most incriminating pictures of Hoon Nam and Young Chae working at Cebu. Mom gets involved and her classist views and general intolerance towards humans forces Hoon Nam and Soo Jin to break up.
Mom is so Heineous that she even calls up Hoon Nam’s brother Ki Nam (Ahn Naesang) who is deaf and humiliates him by shoving money at Ki Nam and warning him to keep Hoon Nam away from her daughter. I do sort of understand where she’s coming from… she was cheated on by her fiancee and lived a miserable life with him, and she’s reminded of her husband by Hoon Nam’s resourcefulness and pride. So I get that any little sign that Hoon Nam could be a cheater leaves her hysterical, BUT she’s still a beast.
Jang Ho is a cheating turd who’s only goal in life is to have sex with his secretary and screw over and mistreat his sweet wife (the always cute Lee Chung Ah – Flower Boys Ramen Shop) and mortify his uber cute son, oh and supposedly inherit Eun Ok’s business empire. I hate him. His importance in the story is just to be the fulfillment of the douchebag quotient required of every drama.
I’m so glad that Da Jung (Chung Ah) is finally getting her courage (with the help of Young Soo) to leave her husband and fight for her son. And I’m super glad Doctor Hong also has a very good moral standard and strict medical principles that don’t allow him to bend under Choi Eun Ok’s pressure and guilt tripping him into declaring Da Jung medically unstable (I’m looking at you horrible doctor in 100 years Inheritance)
Things are tough for our main couple too because despite going through several channels to receive funding for Nara/ Brother’s Apparel, they get denied when Beast Eun Ok finds out about their winning their investment competition. She is worse than a beast.
So through this all out of the three children it seems that Young Chae is the most centered and grown up now since she found something that she’s passionate about (design) while her brothers are still in limbo since they’re still working part time jobs. Young Soo is only tutoring Da Jung’s child but he’s unable to continue doing so when Da Jung leaves her husband’s house. And the maknae has turned himself into a noraebang gigolo.
However the children find out that their mother has lied to them and all hell breaks loose but Young Chae is the first to tell her siblings that they should reevaluate and apreciate the fact that now they know who is really their friends and are able to decide what they’ll do with their lives now.
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