Summary
Beyond the Bar splits itself between two cases in Episode 9, one of which remains unresolved in a slight deviation from the usual structure.
It took until Episode 9, but Beyond the Bar fiddles with its structure a little bit here, splitting its time between two cases, one of which isn’t entirely resolved by the end. It’s typical for a show with a case-of-the-week structure to add a little bit more explicit serialisation as a season progresses, so there’s nothing wrong with it in theory, but that original structure was one of the things about this show that worked really well, so it’ll be interesting to see how it holds up.
The other case is introduced and then concluded fairly summarily. It has an interesting ethical core but reaches a fairly perfunctory conclusion, which is the kind of thing I’ve been moaning about. We also see a more explicit flirtation with the will-they-won’t-they element of Hyo-min and Seok-hoon’s relationship, even though I’ve said multiple times already that I think it works better on the level of mentor/mentee than anything else.
Here’s the interesting idea of the one-and-done case. It’s about a man named Byeong-su who collapses on a plane, and the doctor, Choi, who is reluctant to treat him, which, after Byeong-su passes away, his family thinks constitutes something akin to murder. Dr Choi had a good reason, though. Byeong-su had been arrested and charged for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl, and after working on the victim, Dr Choi had previously refused to treat Byeong-su.
Since doctors are generally obligated to provide aid to a person who desperately needs it, Dr Choi’s reticence, especially given the context, may be murder, legally speaking. It’s up to Seok-hoon and Hyo-min to prove that Dr Choi’s actions were not the cause of Byeong-su’s death, but here’s where I think Beyond the Bar Episode 9 chickens out a little bit, since it turns out Byeong-su had an underlying condition that could have killed him anyway, irrespective of intervention. It would have been more compelling, I think, for this element to have been left out completely, since it would have allowed the case to be a challenging ethical one instead of, ultimately, another bad guy getting a deserved comeuppance.
For a moment, it does look like the perceived smoking-gun solution may backfire and instead implicate Dr Choi, especially if she already knew about the pre-existing condition, but it’s not to be. If nothing else, Hyo-min feels the dissatisfaction of not needing to really fight for the outcome, which is a nice touch, but on the flip side, having the prosecutor quietly hoping for this outcome because of his own history with Byeong-su feels a little too much like the easy way out.
Elsewhere, it’s Na-yeon who trips and stumbles into the second case. She’s still trying to reshape Yullim from within by implementing fairer, more meritocratic systems to prevent lazy seniors from lining their pockets with bonuses, but there’s a long road ahead, and it continues to turn based on the shady actions of her predecessors. And thus we come to Mr Lee.
Mr Lee is the former CEO of a company that was acquired by Bluestone Fund after a hefty investment and then sold off to an American company after Lee was accused of embezzlement. It was clearly a scam to dupe Mr Lee out of his own company, but the tricky bit is that Yullim handled the embezzlement lawsuit. At the time, Na-yeon was suspicious of the deal, and it seems very much like she was transferred before she could do any damage to it. This would make helping Mr Lee out now not just the right thing to do, but also an important symbolic course correction highlighting the directional changes of the company. More on this, one assumes, tomorrow.
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