Summary
Episode 2 is another good one, highlighting both the similarities and differences in Ha-neul and Jeong-woo’s lives while bringing them closer together.
Doctor Slump is still holding off on its romantic elements for now, which we can all agree is probably for the best. Episode 2 finds the leads still keeping each other at arm’s length, dealing with the sudden changes in their circumstances before their relationship inevitably takes a turn. There’s still backstory to unveil, and Season 1 isn’t in a rush to get anywhere, which as far as early impressions go is probably a good thing.
At the end of Episode 1, Ha-neul and the audience both discovered that her old school rival Jeong-woo had inadvertently moved into her house. He’d learned about the space from a friend of a friend and had no idea about Ha-neul being there, and she’s sure that now he has learned this rather important fact he’ll leave.
This is a K-Drama, though, so we know that he won’t.
The key element of this dynamic is that both leads are struggling, but neither knows the extent of what the other is going through. This is important since whenever they see each other they default into rivals, just as they did back in school (Episode 2 has its share of explanatory flashbacks like the premiere.) They bicker about who is smarter, and when Jeong-woo warns her that Ha-neul will inevitably hit rock bottom like him one day, he doesn’t realize how close she already is to the bottom, and she doesn’t realize how much the loss of his patient is continuing to torment him.
Ha-neul quits her job
Things aren’t going well work-wise for Ha-neul either. She’s still skeptical about her depression diagnosis and continues to work, only receiving more abuse from her senior. However, she gets to the straw that breaks the camel’s back moment when she’s forced to step in during surgery on the hospital chairman’s daughter and ends up saving the day, only to be scapegoated for her senior’s clumsy mistakes. Having had quite enough, she dramatically quits, and rightly so.
This doesn’t go down well with her mother, though, who downplays her mental health issues on the basis that she has been raised so well (it isn’t a mystery why Ha-neul is so skeptical about her condition.) Jeong-woo overhears this and later asks her if she’d like to go for a drink with him. The tables turn here when Jeong-woo is the one to face a barrage of insults and accusations, which Ha-neul overhears.
You can see the beginnings of a romantic dynamic forming here. These two lifelong rivals are more alike in the present than either of them realized, and they can empathize with each other even when nobody else around them seems able to understand. That’s a slightly shaky foundation to build a romance on, admittedly, but it’s at least a start.
How does Doctor Slump Season 1 Episode 2 end?
When Ha-neul and Jeong-woo go out drinking together, they both get plastered trying to prove that they’re a stronger drinker than the other. But this opens a path to some genuine sentiment, and a chain reaction of emotion leaves them both holding each other in floods of tears.
The inciting incident is Ha-neul’s mother messaging her to apologize and to say that all she cares about is her happiness and not her career. When Ha-neul starts crying – crucially, it’s a moment of sentiment and sincerity that finally breaks her, not all the actual hardship she’s dealing with – Jeong-woo starts crying too, for mostly the same reasons.
With the parallels between these two characters now drawn, it’s going to be very interesting to see how their relationship progresses from here.
What did you think of Doctor Slump Season 1 Episode 2? Let us know in the comments.
RELATED:
