This review may contain spoilers
Not my cup of tea
This show did not work for me. First off, the mother, Young Soon is abusive. She was abusive when Kang Ho was a child and she was abusive after he became a disabled adult. The show puts in a lot of work to get you to sympathize with Young Soon. They even pull the terminal illness card to gain extra sympathy. Which was unnecessary in my mind. They show us why Young Soon was the way she was and the way she acts towards Kang Ho is understandable but just because I understand the why, it doesn't make her abuse okay. At some point she realizes she was a bad mother to Kang Ho and yet she continues to abuse him at every chance. Kang Ho becomes paralyzed and she abuses him multiple times over to get him to speed up his rehabilitation. She repeatedly abuses him and the show makes it seem like all this abuse is okay because Kang Ho needs to recover quickly so he can be okay on his own. So she abuses him out of desperation but again that doesn't make it okay. What about taking accountability? What about the Young Soon owning up to being abusive? What about the her using othe methods that don't involve abuse? Young Soon abuses Kang Ho at every opportunity but I guess it's okay because the end justifies the means. After all her abusive tactics have gotten her son to become a prosecutor and they've gotten him a speedy recovery, and he's not traumatized any of it. I have no problem with Young Soon being redeemed I just felt like she never did any of the heavy lifting it would take to realistically repair the mother-son relationship.
On top of that, and these are just my own personal feelings but the show felt very ablelist to me. Lots of characters went around calling Kang Ho a fool and an idiot. Young Soon acted like Kang Ho needed to learn how to walk right now, right this instant because how could he live if he stayed in his chair and she wasn't around? There were several implications that Kang Ho being disabled was the mom's punishment. The harmfulness to imply that someone who was once able bodied becoming disabled was a punishment for someone else's behavior, or punishment at all for that matter was not it for me.
I skipped over the villagers because I didn't find them funny or useful, though admittedly they were kind of funny in the last two eps.
Despite the amount of things I didn't like, the show was okay. I can understand why others enjoyed it. I personally continued to watch to for the acting and some of the interactions. I enjoyed Mi Joo as a character and I enjoyed her and Kang Ho's relationship. I also loved the twins. They were so adorable and I love their scenes with Kang Ho. I was just disappointed that what I thought would have been a pivotal moment happened offscreen.
On top of that, and these are just my own personal feelings but the show felt very ablelist to me. Lots of characters went around calling Kang Ho a fool and an idiot. Young Soon acted like Kang Ho needed to learn how to walk right now, right this instant because how could he live if he stayed in his chair and she wasn't around? There were several implications that Kang Ho being disabled was the mom's punishment. The harmfulness to imply that someone who was once able bodied becoming disabled was a punishment for someone else's behavior, or punishment at all for that matter was not it for me.
I skipped over the villagers because I didn't find them funny or useful, though admittedly they were kind of funny in the last two eps.
Despite the amount of things I didn't like, the show was okay. I can understand why others enjoyed it. I personally continued to watch to for the acting and some of the interactions. I enjoyed Mi Joo as a character and I enjoyed her and Kang Ho's relationship. I also loved the twins. They were so adorable and I love their scenes with Kang Ho. I was just disappointed that what I thought would have been a pivotal moment happened offscreen.
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