My favorite noona, Uhm Jung-hwa, is back in Doctor Cha – a show that’s part light-hearted comedic fun and part jab to the jugular of a patriarchal system. So far, we’ve got high-energy characters, obvious antagonists, and a story that promises to have us rooting for our heroine until the end. We may be dealing with life and death on the operating table, but luckily the drama takes itself way less seriously than that.
Editor’s note: Continued drama coverage is pending based on Beanie feedback.
EPISODE 1
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this show but I should have known that with Uhm Jung-hwa at the helm, it was going to be good. Here, she plays CHA JUNG-SOOK — a woman who completed medical school, trained in a chaotic emergency room department, and then got pregnant and gave up her aspirations of being a doctor.
When we meet her, she’s been at home taking care of her husband, children, and mother-in-law for more than twenty years and is starting to feel the inkling that something just isn’t right. For one, her best friend from medical school is now a famous dermatologist (sans husband and kids) and seems to be happy and living the good life — all with fabulous skin! Jung-sook can’t help but look at her friend’s awards and think about what might have been.
In addition, Jung-sook is married to an awful man. Her husband, SEO IN-HO (Kim Byung-chul), is a high-ranking surgeon from an already wealthy family with all the egotism that goes along with it. We learn right away that their marriage is on the rocks. Ten years ago, he started sleeping in a separate room when he came home late from the hospital, but then it became his full-time pad — and neither has made the trek to the other’s bed in all that time.
While Jung-sook misses her husband and still tries to put the moves on him every now and then, he’s not interested in her at all — not as a woman or as a person. He criticizes her, talks down to her, and — as we find out pretty quickly — has had a long-time love affair on the side. His mistress, CHOI SEUNG-HEE (Myung Se-bin), is a colleague at the hospital — and also his first love, whom his mother wishes he had married.
I bring up In-ho’s mother because she’s a big part of the story here, much to my dismay. As a mother-in-law, KWAK AE-SHIM (Park Joon-geum) is not only traditional in how she expects Jung-sook to behave (i.e., she serves her like a housemaid), but she also completely controls her middle-aged son.
The story starts to take off when Jung-sook lands in the ER with acute hepatitis. In-ho is off with his mistress and decides not to cancel their trip to look after his wife, and Ae-shim just can’t be bothered to come to the hospital when she’s got other plans. Things get worse when we learn that Jung-sook’s condition is not reversible and she needs a liver transplant (yep — that’s the kind of show this is). The only person who’s a match for donation is In-ho — and his rotten-to-the-core mother blocks him from going into surgery to save Jung-sook’s life.
We end Episode 1 with Jung-sook waking from anesthesia — when she was supposed to have gotten the liver transplant — and realizing that In-ho didn’t go through with it. With the little breath she can muster, she calls him a bastard, and the music tells us it’s all hijinks to come.
While it’s clear who the antagonists are — because they’re very easy to hate! — there are some lovable saving graces in this show too. First up is Jung-sook’s mother, OH DEOK-RYE, played by the magnificent Kim Mi-kyung. She’s the one who comes to the hospital to be with her daughter when no one in Jung-sook’s household will make time for her. Deok-rye also stands up to Ae-shim when the latter throws a hysterical tantrum about her poor son being asked to undergo surgery for his wife.
The other totally lovable character is DOCTOR ROY KIM (Min Woo-hyuk) — Jung-sook’s transplant surgeon, who’s also becoming her confidant (with the sparks already flying). When she mentions to Doctor Kim that she almost became a surgeon and, lately, she’s been missing her time as a doctor, he lets her accompany him into the OR to watch a surgery. We see the light come back into her eyes and it’s pretty clear that he’ll be one of the catalysts when she decides to shake up her life and get back to practicing medicine (and, I’m guessing, leaving her husband).
All in all, this was a fun first episode with undeniable feminist undertones. We have the juxtaposition of Jung-sook and her dermatologist friend, currently representing the extremes of career versus family. But the journey for Jung-sook will be how she bridges that gap, maintaining the mom status that’s so important to her while also fulfilling her dreams of being a doctor.
The show also doesn’t shy away from discussions about income disparity between men and women and the observation that “women with a lot of talent and abilities strangely have no luck with men.” A fortune teller says to one character that she’s super talented as a doctor, but if she really wanted to be successful, she should have been born a man.
I also love that Uhm Jung-hwa is in her early fifties and the character she’s playing is roughly that age. There’s been mention of menopause, marriages fizzling out, and the kids being grown enough to take care of themselves. At the same time, our heroine’s later-in-life love interest is at least ten years her junior. Is it still considered a noona romance at this age? I say, yes. And bring it on!