Mother

January 24, 2018

Elementary school teacher Soo-jin (Lee Bo-young) notices that Hye-na (Huh Yool), a student in her class, is being abused. Her professional attempts to help are blocked at every institutional level. The Incheon school exterior establishes the drama's world.

January 24, 2018

Soo-jin's impulsive decision to take Hye-na and run — bypassing every institution that failed the child.

January 31, 2018

The two of them on the run in the Gangwon-do countryside — the natural world as sanctuary from the institutional one.

January 31, 2018

Hye-na's world before Soo-jin — the abuse, her survival strategies, the specific intelligence of a child who has learned to read danger.

February 7, 2018

Soo-jin's complicated relationship with her own adoptive mother — the drama's second layer of motherhood.

February 7, 2018

Extended sequences in the Gangwon-do rural landscape — the drama's breathing space, its most visually beautiful episodes.

February 14, 2018

The police search for Soo-jin and Hye-na — and the biological mother's complicated role in it.

February 14, 2018

Soo-jin and Hye-na's relationship at its most genuine — the bond that is forming despite everything conspiring against it.

February 21, 2018

Hye-na's biological mother and the drama's most painful examination of what motherhood actually means.

February 21, 2018

Soo-jin's own history as an abandoned child — her motivation for what she has done.

February 28, 2018

The institutions that should protect children failing again — the drama's systemic critique.

February 28, 2018

Hye-na's own choice about what she wants — a child's agency in a drama full of adults making decisions for children.

March 7, 2018

The search closing in. Soo-jin's decision about what to do when she is caught.

March 7, 2018

The legal and moral reckoning for what Soo-jin has done — and what was done to Hye-na.

March 14, 2018

What Soo-jin pays for her decision — the drama's refusal to let its moral clarity become simple.

March 14, 2018

The finale. Lee Bo-young and Huh Yool's performances — two complete people at every age — made Mother winner of Best Drama at the 54th Baeksang Arts Awards.