Summary
Doctor Slump continues to be a charming and engaging romantic comedy with genuinely meaningful things to say about workaholic culture and mental health.
Doctor Slump debuted to immediate adoration, and it’s easy to see why. It paddles in the comfortingly warm waters of romantic comedy, with two immediately compelling leads, but it’s also unafraid to use its jokey undertones as a way to thoroughly critique South Korea’s sometimes brutal workaholic culture and examine the reality of mental health crises. Episode 3 continues to develop Season 1’s essential themes while also providing more backstory for the leads and developing their present-day relationship.
Jeong-woo and Ha-neul’s schooltime relationship is funny enough, but it’s also deeply sad in a way, reflective of warped values and class struggles. Ha-neul’s deeply unhealthy relationship with studying and stress started here, with her compromising her health to achieve her mother’s academic goals for her. She never stopped studying, never stopped stressing, which is why she was able to beat Jeong-woo in the midterms.
However, this development also caused Jeong-woo to try and emulate Ha-neul’s own obsessive approach, working as hard as her and trying to replicate her circumstances, which only let to him collapsing. It should have been obvious to both at the time that this isn’t exactly sustainable. Neither, but especially Ha-neul, seem to have gotten the memo.
Karaoke Therapy
This is why, in the present day, Ha-neul is struggling so much with her depression diagnosis. As we saw in Episode 1 and Episode 2, she doesn’t know how to handle it because overexertion is all she has ever known, and now her family are throwing her “depression parties” and mollycoddling her, which is the exact opposite of what she needs. She seems willing to confide in Jeong-woo, but he has problems of his own – namely a window broken by an intruder which prompts Ha-neul’s brother to invite him to stay with them.
Ha-neul’s mother’s horror at her depression is only exacerbated by Jeong-woo revealing that Ha-neul sacrificed all the “normal” experiences during her school years to simply study all the time. She never had a regular teenage life; never had fun. Jeong-woo tries to rectify this in the present day by taking Ha-neul out to sing karaoke – she doesn’t know any K-pop songs – and let loose a little.
Of course, we can’t be having things proceed too smoothly, so Jeong-woo gets the hump on when he overhears Ha-neul’s mother and brother discussing his case and how they’re mistrustful of him being in their home. This leads to him distancing himself from Ha-neul, and in turn to her researching his case. She finds a similar case and rushes to court to present it as evidence, but she’s too late. It’ll only be admissible in the next trial.
Episode 3 of Doctor Slump ends with a moment of closeness between Jeong-woo and Ha-neul as they watch a sunrise. Both are at their lowest ebbs, and both have found solace in each other. However, snippets of recording devices in Jeong-woo’s home (remember the break-in earlier?) hint at a more sinister plot at play beyond the romantic drama.
The episode reveals that when the two of them passed out as kids, Ha-neul wrote a note to Jeong-woo suggesting they could both work hard together to do well – which has finally come to fruition in the present-day, but was never received in the past.
What did you think of Doctor Slump Season 1, Episode 3? Let us know in the comments.
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