The plot intrigues and the jokes abound, but the best part of Mom, Don’t Do That (媽別鬧了), currently available on Netflix, is the realistic portrayal of the relationship between the three main characters: mother Wang Mei-mei (Billie Wang, 比莉) and her two daughters: Chen Ru-rong (Alyssa Chia, 賈靜雯) and Chen Ruo-ming (Ko Chia-yen, 柯佳嬿).
Taiwanese culture permeates the show, playing off common cultural themes such as family pressure to marry by a certain age.
Dirty jokes abound, using slang that the English subtitles can’t fully convey. “Frying rice” as a euphemism for sex had to be explained to me by my mom, who grew up watching these famous actresses in serious romantic dramas.
Photo courtesy of Netflix
The series revolves around Mei-mei’s international quest to remarry — and her constant criticisms of her daughters for not being able to find a husband. Her daughters, meanwhile, chide her for many questionable decisions while on the hunt for a man.
It’s a familiar way for Taiwanese families to express their love: nagging, wanting a loved one to be better and to have the best.
Their jabs are savage, expecting the target to fight back with exaggerated confidence. But the one time Mei-mei doesn’t retort, Ru-rong knows something is wrong.
Photo: Deanna Durben
Humor coats everything from serious topics, like a cheating boyfriend, to glitzy high school reunion antics (the only sideplot in the show that I disliked, a quickly resolved confrontation with a blatant moral angle).
Mei-mei’s ability to compulsively throw herself into new situations, as well as laugh at herself when she fails, is a central message of the show.
“Getting scammed is just getting scammed. You get thick skin as you get old, just cry and laugh it off,” she says when Ru-rong worries for her emotional state.
Photo courtesy of Mom Don’t Do That Facebook page
Fall in love — but not blindly, the show demonstrates through the interweaving storylines and conversations.
Mei-mei is not afraid to walk away when her boundaries are crossed. She is dating to marry, and won’t waste time with someone who doesn’t value her, although her habit of jumping to conclusions results in a few misunderstandings.
Younger daughter Ruo-ming’s reluctance to abandon a cheating boyfriend who leeches off her is portrayed with sympathy.
Similarly, Ru-rong’s reluctance to date is a great storyline, and her various reasons for staying single, whether borne out of fear or career commitment, are explored throughout the series. It is significant that her ending wasn’t treated as a failure.
“‘I love you’ has two meanings,” Ru-rong posits. “One means I want you to make sacrifices, the other means I’ll sacrifice for you. Unless you’re sure which one they mean, never reply ‘I love you too!’”
Great advice is nestled among the crazier storylines. Her fantastical romance subplot was both cheesy and entertaining.
Each nuanced character goes through their own journey, as the three women figure out how to move on with their lives while still remembering their deceased family patriarch. Mei-mei whirls through a seemingly crazy romance, while her daughters slowly realize who they are and what they actually need.
It’s not a happy ever after tale, but it feels real. This warm-hearted comedy is definitely worth a watch.
This month the government ordered a one-year block of Xiaohongshu (小紅書) or Rednote, a Chinese social media platform with more than 3 million users in Taiwan. The government pointed to widespread fraud activity on the platform, along with cybersecurity failures. Officials said that they had reached out to the company and asked it to change. However, they received no response. The pro-China parties, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), immediately swung into action, denouncing the ban as an attack on free speech. This “free speech” claim was then echoed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
Exceptions to the rule are sometimes revealing. For a brief few years, there was an emerging ideological split between the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) that appeared to be pushing the DPP in a direction that would be considered more liberal, and the KMT more conservative. In the previous column, “The KMT-DPP’s bureaucrat-led developmental state” (Dec. 11, page 12), we examined how Taiwan’s democratic system developed, and how both the two main parties largely accepted a similar consensus on how Taiwan should be run domestically and did not split along the left-right lines more familiar in
Many people in Taiwan first learned about universal basic income (UBI) — the idea that the government should provide regular, no-strings-attached payments to each citizen — in 2019. While seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 US presidential election, Andrew Yang, a politician of Taiwanese descent, said that, if elected, he’d institute a UBI of US$1,000 per month to “get the economic boot off of people’s throats, allowing them to lift their heads up, breathe, and get excited for the future.” His campaign petered out, but the concept of UBI hasn’t gone away. Throughout the industrialized world, there are fears that
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) controlled Executive Yuan (often called the Cabinet) finally fired back at the opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan in their ongoing struggle for control. The opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) acted surprised and outraged, but they should have seen it coming. Taiwan is now in a full-blown constitutional crisis. There are still peaceful ways out of this conflict, but with the KMT and TPP leadership in the hands of hardliners and the DPP having lost all patience, there is an alarming chance things could spiral out of control, threatening Taiwan’s democracy. This is no
RSS