[Drama 2014] Mama 마마

[baduy]

Ep 21 previews are on the MBC site:

Combining what can be gleaned from the ep 21 text and video previews taken together (which seems to be the most reliable approach:)

JE, no longer regarding herself as TJ's wife, but solely as SH"s friend, goes through with the divorce and intends to dedicate herself entirely to saving SH, but SH firecely rejects her help, saying it's none of JE's business.

SH becomes increasingly prone to delusions. She is convinced that someone is watching the children's playground with a view to abducting GR, and attacks an innocent woman she suspects of being an abductor, ending up (as per the video) detained in the police station, where her victim is claiming she's a totally crazy woman.

The title, "I'm so sorry... will you marry me?" isn't referred to in either preview, but it seems a reasonable guess that this would be JS talking to SH after being summoned to bail her out of police custody as we see in the clip.

At the end of the video clip, GR is asking someone (? a doctor: that seems to be a white coat and the setting looks like the hospital corridor) why his mother isn't there and where she's gone.

[EDIT]

On second thoughts I think that it's TJ that GR is talking to at the end. It might be his follow-up question after what we see TJ saying to him at a restaurant (where SH is seen crying as she watches their meeting from outside).  TJ is urging GR never to forget that he has a father, and that he'll never be alone, even if his mother "has gone".

[Winetu]

How can the mother not inform her son about her condition and look for another way to secure a guardian for him. He is already 13.

[mudaepo]

@baduy Yes, it looks like he's talking to TJ, and he's asking him why would his mother not be here any more, and if his mother is going somewhere.

@Winetu You say that he's already 13, but I feel like he's only 13. Sometimes he acts like a grown-up, but deep down he's just a little kid who is terrified of being left alone. Now that TJ seems to have his mind set on taking care of him, telling GR about SH's illness would not be in GR's best interest. At this point, there's nothing anyone can do about SH dying, no need to shock GR and have him spent the next weeks worried that his mother might drop dead any second.

[baduy]

If we wanted to treat the drama as a forensic case, rather than indeed just a drama, we could ask a lof of awkward questions about what SH keeps secret from various people, and why.  Questions to which ultimately the only answer might be that the plot needs to be kept going for 24+ hours of airtime.

But I don't think SH's determination to keep her terminal illness a secret from GR for as long as possible is one of those points. It's part of a thread that can be seen going back to the earliest episodes.

The relationship we see between GR and SH in the opening episodes is bad, because GR feels his mother has consistently and heartlessly neglected him in the cause of advancing her career as a painter. He acknowledges that she's spent huge amounts of cash on him as she grew increasingly successful and wealthy, but it's not cash he wants or needs.

However, in succeeding episodes SH reveals that, despite how things look to GR, she has always put him at the center of her existence and has lived only for him. She explains to him, when he asks why she didn't discard him at birth, that it was because she "wanted to live" and she knew she couldn't live without someone else to love and care for. Her apparent total focus on her work was all with the aim of making herself and GR financially independent and able to escape the constraints of her starting position as the penniless single mother of an illegitimate child.

But then, just when she thought she had achieved her goal and could now give GR the time and attention he craved, she got her shock diagnosis. The years she thought still lay ahead that would allow her to make up to GR for what he'd lacked turned out to be not hers to dispose of.

She immediately adopted two goals: to ensure that GR had a family to care for him, and to use what little time she had left to make GR as happy as possible and ensure he had at least some fond memories of their time together. A major irony of the drama is that her need to pursue the first goal gets in the way of her pursuing the second, a kind of reprise of the way that in her earlier life, her efforts to do her very best for GR's future made him miserable in the present and came close to wrecking their relationship.

But, as she explained to JS in an earlier episode, though she accepts that GR will have to know the truth eventually, and adds that she is resolved to be the one who tells him when it can be put off no longer, she is equally resolved that their last times together should not be clouded by the boy's knowledge and anxiety about what lies ahead.

It looks from the preview, and what the doctor said last week about her deteriorating mental state, that the plot has a further cruel twist, in that the illness may deprive her of her faculties and hence her ability to reveal the truth to her son at a time and in a manner of her own choosing, and that the end effect may be that he finds it out in a much more harrowing way.

As for the guardianship, that's quite a different matter, and SH has settled it her own way. It's pretty plain that the provisions in her will haven't changed, and that they will name JE as guardian (without any reference to TJ). SH is as certain that JE would accept that responsibility and carry it out better than anyone else, as she is sure that GR would want no-one better than JE to care for him in his mother's place.  But that's not something she needs to discuss with her child (and indeed she couldn't do so without giving the secret of her impending death away).

[andy78]

@baduy thanks so much...i can feel it will be another heartbreaking episode...poor GR!!! JS is always there for SH...trying to do everything to help her....love his character so much...

[Guest micela]

@baduy is it really "I'm so sorry... will you marry me?"?, the title for next episode?. Because if it's, I'm afraid this is about to start to get kind of ugly. The reason -> if it was will you marry me?, I would be a 99% sure that is JS, but the fact is that is "I'm so sorry... will you marry me?", so I may be wrong but I think is TH who says those words and that would be really disappointed. I guess we'll have to wait.

I hope that is JS. I would like if we can see a big progress between SH and JS.

[TRAN]

How many times have JiSub said 'marry me ' already? If it's him again what the writer trying to say?

[baduy]

Impossible to say for certain (as the writer of the preview undoubtedly intended it to be) but in all the circumstances, including the that they were once a long-standing couple, I find it a little unlikely that TJ would use the words 나랑.... 결혼해줄래? to SH. I think he’d be more likely to say 우리 결혼할까? Or, more robustly, 우리 결혼하자. To my ear, 나랑 suggests that the speaker is aware that there is something slightly unexpected / unusual about the idea of her marrying him (such as age difference or relatively short acquaintance.)

Though it could indeed be TJ expressing his awareness that there’s something preposterous about him proposing to her after everything that’s happened. Added to which, the speech form is banmal, which TJ and SH always use to each other, but which JS doesn’t normally use with SH.

However, the boundaries between banmal and jondaemal, especially between couples who are growing closer, are much more fluid than the grammar books indicate, and the -요tends to get dropped here and there without being abandoned altogether. My hunch is that if this is indeed JS speaking, he’d be even more likely to get turned down if he went the whole jondaemal hog with 나랑.... 결혼해줄래요? which rather emphasizes the gap his proposal would be hoping to bridge.

As for the "I'm so sorry", though this does seem to point towards TJ as the speaker, if the order of shots in the teaser video is to be trusted (big IF, course) it's GR who is first to arrive on the scene at the police station, with JS coming along after that (possibly summoned by GR -- if that's so it would be significant that he called JS rather than TJto his mother's side)  He could be apologizing for not being around when this happened and hinting that if they married he would be much more able to forestall similar events in future...

But who knows? Given the tricksiness of preview writers, this may turn out to be BN speaking to GR, thus forcing him to come clean on why he keeps harping on about being addressed as Oppa. But we shall soon see (though maybe we won’t, if this turns out to be yet another phantom teaser that isn’t in the episode at all)

[panitkanjanapat]

Pic from preview 21
cr: MBC

[baduy]

Minor delay in the schedules today, with Mama now planned to start at 22.00 KST.
Still, anybody who tuned in ahead of time gets a reminder of  how excellent the acting and writing is in Mama by contrast with 왔다! 장보리 which is currently shrieking its OTT way to a conclusion. Very much like a daily, except the agony lasts twice as long for each episode.

[baduy]

And the moral of today's episode is twofold:
1) NEVER underestimate the tricksiness of preview writers.  We were all certainly taken for a ride over who was  going to propose to whom.2) Don't drink juiced broccoli. As soon as JE said what was in that bottle, I feared the worst.

[andy78]

omg...today more than ever i can't wait for @baduy post...what the heck happenend ?What the corupt Director and that woman did against SH?And the last scene of SH and SJ ...So sad...their confort hug ...it was buffering so much i couldn't hear very well...And what about the preview?That old witch comeing at GR house...will GR know everything...about the past and his mom being sick?And those people takeing the paintings from SH house...

[Go Seung Ji]

Deleted

[valsava]

Now what's that horrible Halmoni up to in the preview since she wants to be apart of GR life  just tell him she split up his mom and dad..  I need to see this episode with subs..

Also did Sj tell Tj that she will move in to take care of  Sh..? 

[mudaepo]

baduy said: And the moral of today's episode is twofold:
1) NEVER underestimate the tricksiness of preview writers.  We were all certainly taken for a ride over who was  going to propose to whom.2) Don't drink juiced broccoli. As soon as JE said what was in that bottle, I feared the worst.

[andy78]

mudaepo said: baduy said: And the moral of today's episode is twofold:
1) NEVER underestimate the tricksiness of preview writers.  We were all certainly taken for a ride over who was  going to propose to whom.2) Don't drink juiced broccoli. As soon as JE said what was in that bottle, I feared the worst.

[baduy]

Well, we all know that "Love is never having to say you're sorry" 

But I never thought I'd hear the lines "I'm really sorry to have to ask you this  but [which is more or less how, in its full context, the first part of the  line needs to be translated]   .. will you marry me?" even from the most self-effacing of Kdrama doormat females.

[andy78]

baduy said: Well, we all know that "Love is never having to say you're sorry" 

But I never thought I'd hear the lines "I'm really sorry to have to ask you this  but [which is more or less how, in its full context, the first part of the  line needs to be translated]   .. will you marry me?" even from the most self-effacing of Kdrama doormat females.

[baduy]

valsava said:

Now what's that horrible Halmoni up to in the preview

[andy78]

@baduy thanks again...i think that GR will realise soon...the boy is smart...omg i really hate that old witch...