Summary
Episode 4 maintains Doctor Slump’s strong run of early form and is especially rich in chemistry between the leads.
This relationship is quite lovely, isn’t it? And I don’t say that lightly. All on-screen romances are designed to be lovely; they’re beautiful people working through idyllic love stories. But Doctor Slump has a note of honesty and sincerity to it that works. It knows to use its leads and their dynamic as a lens through which to view important cultural biases and issues, not just as an excuse to heap trauma on everyone for the sake of cheap drama. Episode 4 exhibits the chemistry vividly without moving away from Season 1’s underlying notes and ideas.
Give it a week or two, and this will be the hottest K-Drama airing right now. Netflix have another winner on their hands here.
Episode 4 picks up where Episode 3 left off, delving into Ha-neul’s friendless past – she was too focused on studying – to contextualize the importance of her present-day friendship with Jeong-woo. And it remains a friendship for now, even though they end up spending the night together (not like that!) and deeply panicking Ha-neul’s mother when she realizes her daughter hasn’t come home.
A Blind Date
A lot of this episode is about gradually deepening this friendship into something more explicitly romantic. Ha-neul’s friend Hong-ran lets slip about Jeong-woo being Ha-neul’s first love right in front of him, which strokes his ego and makes him think that Ha-neul is just making an excuse to be closer to him, but Ha-neul’s mother is fretting about her daughter having been out all night with someone who might have killed a patient, so she asks Hong-ran to set her up on a blind date. The crossed wires when Ha-neul asks Jeong-woo to go dress shopping with her is pretty funny.
The date is funny too, mostly because it’s disastrous. The blind date turns out to be Jeong-woo’s friend and rival Dae-yeong, who a) thought he was going to be dating Hong-ran and b) has a teenage daughter who ruins the whole thing even more. Jeong-woo is naturally pleased to hear this, but things take a nastier turn when Han-neul’s aunts visit and just judgementally ridicule the entire family, especially Ha-neul for losing her job. However, she does get the last laugh, since Jeong-woo lays into them about all the work he’d do for them as a plastic surgeon.
Does Ha-neul get a new job?
Things continue not to go especially well for Ha-neul in this episode, though. She is offered a job interview at a hospital she applied to, which she’s excited about and Jeong-woo encourages her to pursue it. Still, when she heads off Kyung-min tells Jeong-woo that he had received a call from the same hospital and revealed Ha-neul’s problems and exit there. Jeong-woo rushes off to find her, but by that point, she has already received a call that she won’t be getting the job.
Even though Ha-neul doesn’t get the job, Jeong-woo is immediately there for her for support and to tell her that nothing that is happening to her is her fault – which is probably just what she needs to hear.
In the epilogue, we get a bit more tease for the ongoing plot about Jeong-woo’s place being bugged – it turns out the anaesthetist who was working in the surgery is responsible. What’s going on here? Maybe we’ll find out next week.
What did you think of Doctor Slump Season 1, Episode 4? Let us know in the comments.
