Goodness!
I never thought I'd say this, but thank you for making me cry so much, show.
This was a MASTERPIECE. Perfection through and through.
I expected excellence and excellence I got.
I'm so overwhelmed by the beauty of this, that I don't even know what to say.

Goodbye, Mother.
I loved you as much as the distance between the heavens and the earth

This drama was so satisfying to watch even if it does rip your heart to bits at times. I love everything about the acting, directing, cinematography that this show did and really hope it does well at Cannes. This show was enjoyable to watch not because of a makjang plot or hot, young cast but it was very truthful, honest, and reflective. It's treatment of human relationships was done so delicately yet passionately and I really appreciated that. I know it's not the original, but props to the original drama for creating such a wonderful story.

Thank you for the weecap! I'm grateful this show got picked up for open thread along the way, because I had a really great time and enjoyed hearing everyone else's opinions about this show.

Thanks for the recap, Saya. Been waiting for this since i first saw it on the "next recap to post". Agreed with you that the show "didn’t tell a story of “mere” motherhood, it told a dozen variations of it" and weave it into an awesome drama. Glad that the hard work of the production team is rewarded with the nomination at Cannes. My heart skipped a beat when yoon-bok is about to be adopted by another couple, what a relief when both are now reunited. Anyway, the show really show us about the myriad shades of a mother very well.

To be moved in such a manner and form, which is what this drama did at every episode was something special. You experienced the highs and lows, the beauty and the warts and all. They never used the ‘standard’ tricks to get you invested in it. There were no quick fixes and resolutions, it moved at a very natural and sometimes frustrating pace, as life does.

I have enjoyed this one so much, my only very tiny ah sucks thought is that we did not get to explore more of Yoon Bok’s travels in the time in between. Perhaps we did not need to, as we saw enough to know she was sliding off and almost fading away. Soo Jin and the doctor would have been nice, but was not a central part of the over all aspect, and I think would have been a distraction to the whole.

The characters and actors portrayals were spot on. It starts a little detached, but once it has you, you never want to leave. This I am sure, will remain one of my most enjoyed and liked kdramas, as it was so supremely done. Thank you for any and all recaps as they help me to understand the presentation so much better.

"I can’t even tell you how much I loved Yi-jin’s son saying that he wanted to be a dad when he grew up. Yes, go you!"
Admirable. I remember in the final ep of Dae Jang-geum, Jang-geum asked her SUPER cutie of a daughter what she wanted to be in the future. And with a bright smile,she replied;"A Mom!"
Jang-geum was taken aback with amusement, and the girl explained that Dad advised her to be as smart and kind as mom, not only with cooking wonder foods but with helping people all around with a heart full of compassion,and simply being AWESOME.
And no,it wasn't at all about predetermined gender roles or anything. It was about parents being just awesome to the level that the child sees it and being a responsible person as the highest thing reachable in life.
Though I only followed you through recaps (because I'm wimpy) thank you MOTHER, and congratulations on Cannes.
I'm going to at least watch the final episode!

Thank you @saya ! A beautiful recap and commentary befitting of a beautiful beautiful drama.

I am at loss for words to describe this precious gem or perhaps I am afraid mere words will not do it justice. This is a rare show which is not only intelligent, well-crafted and artistically put together, it also very perceptive on what makes a woman 'mother' and the love and bond between mother and child. The way it dealt with child abuse and the impact on abandoned and abused children is one of the best I've seen.

I came across a comment elsewhere that ep 15 is fillerish. I couldn't believe my eyes. I suppose that viewer wanted to see more 'action' like Yoon Bok's escapades or Soo Jin fighting to get her back and found Mdm Cha's death a disruption. It was the opposite for me. I never knew an episode to send a character farewell would be so beautifully and meaningfully done. I also bawled like a baby. Isn't it amazing that the last word Mdm Cha said was "Mother"?

When Seok Ak died four eps ago, I was pleasantly surprised. An ordinary drama would have kept the suspense probably till the finale week and devote the last episode to address Yoon Bok and Soo Jin's fate. I am so glad that this drama made good use of these precious last few episodes to address the real issues at hand.

Although the ratings were good for this genre, I wish more people will watch this. Well, at least it got the Cannes nomination.

I love Mdm Cha's farewell ode or rather her theater lines so much that I wrote my own farewell to this drama on the fanwall :
Goodbye Mother. Goodbye. Goodbye, our drama. Yoon Bok. Hye Na. Goodbye. Goodbye to Halmeoni, Finger Halmeoni. And Soo Jin Eomma. Oh, Drama, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Goodbye.

thanks for the weecap!!

mid ep 16 when soojin continually wondered how else she could legally adopt yoonbok, i found myself internally yelling for Dr Jung to adopt yoonbok, and soojin to marry Dr Jung (that would work right?) but maybe that was just my poor shipper heart :/ that aside, i honestly felt it would’ve been nice for yoonbok to have an actual fatherly figure. her birth mom was replaced by soojin as a mother, but yoonbok never got to experience any sort of a fatherly figure other than seolak, who was very much not a father. I think i read somewhere that children growing up without fathers causes them to have less confidence? maybe in the case of soojin & yijin & hyunjin jaebeom ahjussi basically played that fatherly role and helped them grow up well, but i guess since this is mother, the emphasis wouldn’t be on fathers...

What a beautiful show! And I can't emphasize enough how much I loved the soundtrack, which was primarily instrumental. Many Beanies here may know this already, but I am very critical when it comes to drama sound tracks. This drama hit all the right notes for me. :)
Congrats to everyone involved. And thanks, @saya, for your weecaps and commentary.

Regarding Madam Cha and Soo-jin's estrangement:

Yes, this is one thing that the show did not address directly. I see it the following way: Soo-jin had so many unresolved issues regarding her life pre-adoption; in combination with feelings of abandonment, she could not fully give herself to Madam Cha. We know that she tried to escape as a teenager, when she ran to the monastery. In fact, she wanted to sever ties with both her adoptive and biological mothers. I think that there was so much baggage and pain. And Soo-jin could not remember much of her early childhood, due to the trauma she experienced. I think that this left a hole in her spirit, so to speak, one that might never have been filled without the closure she received while on the run with Yoon-bok. Perhaps Soo-jin couldn't fully accept her adoptive mother's love. And perhaps she felt that added weight of becoming the daughter of a beloved and renowned actress.

What does everyone else think?

this is THE most beautifully done drama i have ever seen and i've seen a lot of them. the writing, the actors,the music, the directing everything was done to perfection. so happy to see it will be at Cannes!

OMG. I know I will write the same as many have said already. I know I am not original. But how much I love this drama??? How thankful and grateful I feel that it made me fear and cry and suffer?? Does it make sense that me, being also a victim of different types of child abuse would feel like this and actually want to watch this show over again???
Somehow very inside of me, yes... It is kind of therapy for me.
It is amazing that I can feel so touched, because it is like: out there someone understands what I have gone through.

So thank you, thank you, show for the simply fact of being made. Thanks to Lee Bo young, thank you, Yool... thank you sooo much, Lee Hye-young... For making me feel so great pain, sorrow and relieve.
I will miss this show. It was the most beautiful of 2018. I can predict that, 100%. Flawless... amazingly beautiful from beginning to end.
Wow, it is like... wow... when can I go to Korea to personally meet these girls?

Thanks for the weecap @saya. This was a wonderful drama.

I was surprised that the other girls thought they were Madam Cha's biological daughters because I'd thought from the beginning that all three of them had been adopted. I thought that maybe the married sister was going to have to be the one adopting Yoon Bok (I would have been okay with that as an ending too) and I loved that the sisters and the kids were really one big family. So lovely.

And it looked stunning too. I loved the colours that they used: a colourscheme that always reminded me of the sea, the beach and migratory birds.

So far my favourite drama of year... I hope it's not stay that way at the end of the year. Because we hope more of good drama to come right? But so far thank you for make me shed alot of tears.

Thanks for the recaps Saya. I love this show and i’m so glad its nominated at Cannes😁..

I don’t know about you all, but I needed tissue watching each episode.. This is truly a show that tells story of all kind of mothers and i’m so glad i watched it.

I didn’t quite understand why Soo-Jin keeps running away as well, since madam Cha was quite a loving mother, but I take it as her not wanting to follow her mother’s way of life..

Thank you @lollypip for the first recap. I decided to watch it live because of that.
Thank you @saya for the wonderful wee caps and @mary for listening to our pleas.
Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts and love for "Mother." Hope we'll meet again in another drama.

Thank you! I'm crying reading your open thread recap.

Nah, I need to marathon "Mother" this weekend. :)

Oh my goodness @saya

Your write up made me tear up! I think that’s the first time. These last two episodes had me bawling like a baby! I am so taken aback by how beautiful and moving this drama is! Thank you so much for picking this up! This drama needs to be discussed! There is just so much here! Thank you!

Note to Self (and other beanies): Do not watch binge watch tear-jerking dramas while sick.

Between the constant runny nose from my cold and crying multiple times a day while marathoning this show over the course of 48 hours, my poor nose couldn't handle it and ended up gushing out blood halfway through the last episode lol Perhaps the show needs to come with a warning: "Excessive crying may cause horror-film like nosebleeds. Watch in moderation."

It was totally worth it though :) Even if my room looks like a murder scene now...

I'm late to the discussion but so thankful for the weecaps and this open thread! I'm so glad it didn't end the way the Japanese original did which basically was the scene where Sujin brought Yoonbok back to the orphanage after Mdm Cha's death (but why did Yoonbok look so happy to be back and smiling while leaving Sujin? That didnt' make sense to me).

Ep 15 was so emotional and at first I wondered if the drama trope of birth secrets were really necessary but then it felt like Sujin and Mdm Cha were closer to each other from the start because they both shared the secret about Yijin and Hyunjin all those years. Sujin seemed like a mini mum to her sisters, like Hyunjin said. I think Sujin's sisters and the viewers like us may have thought Sujin ran away because she was the only non-bio daughter and felt bad about that. What a twist!
I think Sujin was estranged from Mdm Cha because she just did not know how to handle her mother's strong love. Perhaps she felt unworthy and it is a commentary on the long shadow inflicted by child abuse. Like Mdm Cha said, Sujin's nature was cold. It was only when she learnt to accept Yoonbok's love that she learnt to accept Mdm Cha's love as well. And much as I hoped and wished she would marry Dr Jung and then adopt Yoonbok, I think it may be more realistic this way. A woman who was beaten and strangled as child by her mother's boyfriend may need a lot more time to accept a man, no matter how perfect he is. Kudos to the drama for not forcing a romantic ending!
I'm also glad the drama gave some depth to Yijin, she wasn't the greedy jealous sister we saw in earlier episodes, she was frail but caring and brave. And I loved Jaebom ahjussi, who would do anything and everything to help Mdm Cha and her girls (remember how he had to drink with the gangster to get Yoonbok's passport). Goodbye show, you were worth the tears!

Am I the only one who already thought that Yi Jin and Hyun Jin are also adopted child? I forgot the episode, but it's the scene where Madam Cha, on her bed, told them that they are all her children even when their father is different. I automatically assumed that they are all adopted and they already knew it. So when the secret box was opened, it didn't surprise me and I scratched my head because it's different from my previous assumption 😅

Anyway, it's my favorite of the year drama, and I don't think there will be such a perfection in the near time which can rival it 😉 Fighting in Cannes Mother !

( And thanks for the open thread @saya 😊 )

I pondered over the question of what led to such a serious estrangement between Mdm Cha and Soo Jin that the latter disappeared for 10 years without contact.

I was drawn to @Arawn's explanation that it wasn't necessary for something big to have happened.

If I didn't recall wrongly, Soo Jin told Yoon Bok that she tried to run away several times. I guess this was a sign that despite Mdm Cha's love and the presence of family, something was never quite right between mother and daughter.

Mdm Cha may not be an easy person to live with. She had a forceful personality and certain expectations of her daughters. She even went as far as dictate Soo Jin's styling. So, was this the issue? That Soo Jin wanted to escape the grasp of a domineering mother? I think not because Soo Jin is just as hard headed. It might be an issue when she was growing up but as an adult, she can obviously live as she pleases.

Did Soo Jin not love Mdm Cha? I don't think so. I think the issue is that Soo Jin could not love herself. She must have thought her abandonment was because her biological mother didn't love her. Unlike Yoon Bok, Soo Jin could not accept that she can be loved. In turn, it affected her ability to love others and form deeper relationships until Hye Na came along. It was also being a mother to Hye Na that she understood the love Mdm Cha and her biological mom had for her.

I don't know about you guys. But as a dude, who just lost his father, and who's been having some recent problems with my own mother.

This show has really made me reflect on the important matters, and yes, I cried a lot... I think all the emotions that have been pent up from the last few months, just came rushing out when soojin and yoon bok was separated , and reunited.

One thing that I really liked the show for doing was each character was so fully fleshed out, I wish I had such a great relationship with all my siblings like this.

Too bad, real life is a bit different and more complicated.

you say you dont understand estrangement between SJ and actress mom
I do AND MAYBE lby DOES AS WELL
DOMINEERING mother and tiger over protective mothers are very destructive
I have been living with mom all my life yet we have a horrible relationship cause she cant understand that I am a person and not something she wants to put in a cage ... we keep fighting all the time I know her love is terrible but I also know she almost

wrecked my life and I keep trying to fix it>>>she kept me from developing naturally cause she keeps seeing me as a child and that is very serious problem that prevents me from living away from home

funny enough LBY might also relate... in her interviews she stressed that her very domineering mother prevented her from having fun ...she kept dreaming about getting married or running away from home
as an ex LBY till her she thirty something had a curfew I think it was at 10
LBY says she understands her mother did it for love
and I also understand however the damage is not to be taken lightly

I loved the sisterhood at the end, too. And the little boy wanting to be a dad when he grew up.

I admit that I related a lot more to Finger Halmoni than to Actress Halmoni, but when it was her time to go, man, Actress Halmoni was majestic, and I totally cried.

Also, I will never be able to read The Runaway Bunny without crying.

Also, that was one of the best dramas ever made. That little girl, Heo Yool--HOW is a possible for a child that age to have that kind of acting ability?! And that was a life performance for Lee Bo Young. And the writing. And the cinematography. And the music. And oh, my, just the life affirming, mother affirming, love affirming message of the entire thing. This was a beautiful, beautiful drama. <3

Madam Cha, why couldn't you have lived at least another month after Soo Jin was able to adopt Yoon Bok? Why?! With Soo Jin's renewed love for her Madam Cha and her abandonment scar healed, I was hoping to see how Madam Cha would interact with both Soo Jin and Yoon Bok in happier times. I get the sense that Madam Cha would sprinkle a bit of magic for each of them in a way that's tailored to each of their personalities in the same way she has with Soo Jin and her two adopted sisters. I love how they made her departure from this world so beautiful and meaningful. She said goodbye to major things and little things. I think this is why I really appreciate Madam Cha's character. Her only regret was what she said to Yoon Bok so I was hoping to actually SEE her rectify that when Yoon Bok showed up. I'm still waiting because she tied up her loose ends really well except for this one thing. The gift of Soo Jin's baby clothes and pictures took me by surprise...Madam Cha actress was WOW!

I know everyone, including myself, keeps saying Mother is so heartbreaking and possibly scare other viewers away from the show. I want to clarify that the heartbreak is because this show beautifully showcases many roles that a woman plays in life...birth mother, single mother, adopted mother, abused mother, abusive mother, lonely mother, selfish mother, sacrificing mother, never-gonna-be-a-mother, group home mother, homeless mother, deceased mother, daughter, sibling, caretaker in the form of teachers, school administrators...and so many more(??). That's what makes this show so fascinating. The different facets that are all presented in ONE show and each role manages to hit you in the heart from in ways that repels you and warms up your heart in just one scene. I don't leave watching this show with anger or disgust. It's quite uplifting when you see Mother able to showcase things that are very meaningful to me as a female viewer. I bet male viewers would enjoy this too.

Not to nitpick but the timeline regarding the funeral didnt make sense. Its like she died, had the funeral, cremated and ashes collected all within 24 hours.
Also, Yi Jin's husband was practically non existent throughout all the important family events including the big family dinner and the funeral. We only saw a glimpse of him during an unimportant scene. Were they divorced already? It didnt seem like it.

This, for me, is a drama-of-the-year-level-drama. I enjoyed it thoroughly, even though at first I was sceptic. I prefer romance dramas, but it's lovely to see something that is so interesting that you don't care about whether there is romance or not. I felt every emotion, not only from the characters (actors), but also from the film itself: I felt the emotions through the cinematography, the writing & directing.

Well done to the whole crew, it will be a great year for dramas if we get more productions like this.

I absolutely loved the Japanese Version of Mother and I was elated to see it being retold as a Korean Drama especially with Lee Bo Young being the lead but I didn't want to watch it because of the original ending. I don't think that my heart would be able to take experiencing that ending again. So I chose not to watch it but being that LBY is the actress, I have been going back and forth with my decision. I am glad that DB recapped this drama, I decided to come and catch the finale recap to see how it ended. Thank goodness. Now I can watch the entire series without having anxiety. This is one of the very few dramas, Korean or Japanese, that had and still affects me emotionally. Thank you!

I created this account to put my thoughts on this drama. I may be late in the game, but Mother has been a splendid piece of work by tvN.
I hardly ever tear up when watching dramas, but Mother has proven me wrong on many occasions otherwise.

I am very impressed by the child actor Heo Yool. She managed to fit into her role with extraordinary skills when it comes to her emotions given her age. Yoon Bok has captured the complexity and essence of her role with such accuracy that makes it really hard to feel that it was actually a child acting it out. I agree with what Saya mentioned, that she is definitely one to look out for in the future.

I like how the story closes in the end. The 3 sisters become even more more bonded after the passing of Mdm Cha, Hyun Jin accepted Jae Beom, and Yoon Bok is happy with her mom. The beauty of this drama is that it deals a simple concept of motherhood in such a way that allows us to be more appreciative of what we have currently.

I would highly recommend this touching and beautiful drama over most overrated romance dramas. This drama is indeed one that will make you cry and feel so thankful at the same time.