Summary
Doctor Slump sheds some light on Kyung-min’s backstory, continuing to exhibit strong characterization, writing, and acting, especially with these newly fatal stakes.
We’re approaching the end of Doctor Slump, and even though the stakes have risen quite dramatically following a big cliffhanger at the end of Episode 12, it remains impressive how well Season 1 has been able to retain the same charms and rhythms despite frequently subverting the usual K-Drama structure. Just like hurdling over key plot points (the court case) and tropes (the break-up and reconciliation) earlier than anyone expended, even a late-game shift into mortal peril doesn’t episode make Episode 13 feel meaningfully distinct from what came before.
It might not necessarily sound like it, but this is a very good thing, since it’s a sign of very well-written characters and confident storytelling. The foundation of Doctor Slump is so strong that it just seems to work under almost any conditions.
What is the outcome of the accident?
Picking up from where we left off, Ha-neul survives the car crash with a few broken ribs and a bit of missing lung, which is a small price to pay, really. Jeong-woo asks Ha-neul’s mother to allow surgery, and she’s out of the woods pretty quick. But her near-death experience has knock-on effects for everyone, even Ba-da, who feels guilty for being the layabout brother and forcing her to work twice as hard for the family’s sake.
Jeong-woo also seeks Kyung-min’s name on the surgery list, so he knows who Ha-neul was in the car with, but when she wakes up, he says he’s happy for him to tell her who she was with later. Also, as mentioned in the preview for this episode, Jeong-woo does see the note Ha-neul wrote for him in high school, which is given to them by their former teacher who rather inexplicably kept it all these years.
Jeong-woo finds out what Kyung-min has been up to
The anaesthesiologist tips Jeong-woo off to the fact that Kyung-min has been a string-pulling villain the whole time, and is also allowed by the police to listen to the car’s black box audio, which reveals that Ha-neul put herself in danger for his benefit. Jeong-woo berates her about this, but as ever, they hug and make up pretty quick. Ha-neul is also adamant that she’d do it again if she had to.
Episode 13 goes some way towards explaining what happened to Kyung-min to turn him into the person he is now. He wasn’t always this way; a flashback reveals that he genuinely liked Jeong-woo and had the right intentions when they first met, which is when he was overpaid by Jeong-woo’s mother as a tutor to ensure he got into a prestigious medical school.
But something changed, evidently. It involves Kyung-min’s father, a heavy drinker, who had needed Kyung-min’s help to get home after a binge. However, the timing wasn’t fortuitous, since it was three weeks before Jeong-woo’s exams. His mother wouldn’t allow Kyung-min to leave for a couple of hours to take his father home, and that night his father took too many pills and died.
Needless to say, this is explains why Kyung-min would have an issue with Jeong-woo’s mother, but I think it also explains why he’s so bitter towards Jeong-woo also. It’s not uncommon for this kind of grudge to manifest and cause collateral damage. To Kyung-min, Jeong-woo might not have been directly responsible for his father’s death, but in a roundabout way he benefitted from it.
At the end of the episode, Kyung-min asks to see Jeong-woo, clearly in a confessional mood knowing the end is near. He claims not to have known that the clinic he had sited for a murder was Jeong-woo’s. It’s not much of an excuse, and Jeong-woo doesn’t really believe him and isn’t prepared to forgive him, but Kyung-min’s imminent demise, in these circumstances, is still emotional for him.
Kyung-min dies of his injuries. Also as seen in the preview, Jeong-min howls in grief over the black suit he bought him for his graduation. With the show’s “villain” now out of the way, what will the next few episodes have in store?
What did you think of Doctor Slump Season 1 Episode 13? Let us know in the comments.
