In present-day Koreatown, Los Angeles, when a free-spirited immigrant mother and her in-the-closet bi, type-A-minus daughter decide to get each other something nice, their “gifts” end up backfiring. Literally. 

SYNOPSIS:

MAMA CHO mistakes the sound of APPLE using her new vibrator for vacuuming and gives her unsolicited vacuuming advice through the bedroom door, inevitably sexually frustrating Apple. Later that morning, Apple almost comes out to Mama Cho but stops when she realizes her mother was saying, “I love you” to her iPad.

Apple’s best friend SEB drops by and asks her if she’s come out to Mama Cho for Mother’s Day yet. Apple indicates she can’t because her mom can’t stand liars, implying she believes Mama Cho would think she was a liar for not telling her. She heads for work, and Mama Cho confides to Seb about Apple’s strange behavior: “vacuuming” her room to no avail. She concludes that because Apple is incapable of taking care of herself, she must help Apple find a proper husband to take care of her before it’s too late. At work, when a co-worker shares that her mother died on Mother’s Day weekend, Apple realizes she’s never told Mama Cho, “I love you.” But rather than telling her mom this, she decides to be the “perfect Korean daughter” her mother always wanted. So when Mama Cho calls about setting her up on a blind date for their Mother’s Day dinner, she agrees.

Mama Cho goes to the library to look for eligible bachelors, while Apple goes shopping for a “perfect Korean” outfit during her lunch. Their efforts are respectively stymied by bottom-of-the-barrel men and impossibly tiny clothes. Mama Cho eventually gets kicked out of the library for being disruptive, but on her way out, Mama Cho runs into a DUMPSTER DIVER in the parking lot. He turns out to be a CEO of a B-Corp eco startup and agrees to meet Apple. Meanwhile, Apple runs into JESS, her high school crush who’s now a lawyer and a power-suit in the making. There is definitely chemistry there, but Apple squashes that notion—it’s not part of the plan. She does, however, find inspiration for her dinner outfit in their meet-cute.

Apple arrives at the Korean restaurant in an ill-fitting suit and runs into her uber basic ex-boyfriend TODD. They share a moment before everyone else arrives. Dinner immediately goes off the rails, and the Dumpster Diver ends up getting set on fire. As he gets wheeled out, Mama Cho and Apple admit to each other that they should communicate better and agree to work on it. However, when Mama Cho asks Apple if there’s anything she’d like to tell her, Apple is still unable to come out to her mom. Instead, she tells her she exchanged numbers with Todd and that they’re seeing each other again.

Later that night, Mama Cho finds Apple’s vibrator and mistakenly uses it as a massager for her temple.