Hold onto your hats, folks, these episodes deliver some high-voltage shocks to the chest — and I’m not even talking about what’s happening at the hospital. We get back to meatier themes this week with the marquee topic of mothers and daughters: how they protect each other, and how they sometimes fail to.
EPISODES 5-6
We’re back on track and I feel confident again that this is the show I signed up for. I’m going to start with the scandalous bit because, like all good gossip, it’s exciting and terrible.
Previously, we had learned that Seung-hee has a daughter, CHOI EUN-SEO (So Ah-rin) — who’s the same age as Jung-sook’s daughter, SEO YI-RANG (Lee Seo-yeon). The two 12th graders have been hanging out and studying for their exams together, and Eun-seo has even been over to Yi-rang’s house and met Jung-sook.
This week we learn that In-ho is Eun-seo’s father. (Shock #1) And, he knows! (Shock #2) He’s known since Seung-hee became pregnant with her. This puts the relationship between In-ho and Seung-hee in a whole new perspective for me. I had started to feel some understanding for Seung-hee last week, but this explains her actions a lot more. And In-ho? I hated him in a kind of funny way before, but now I hate him with a serious passion.
First things first, Jung-sook is starting to suspect that Seung-hee and In-ho have a thing going on. When we left her last week, she was so distracted by the idea, she got knocked out from a literal electric shock while trying to revive a patient. When we jump back into our story, In-ho has carried Jung-sook from her collapsed position on the floor to a hospital bed where she’s being cared for.
This event sparks rumors all over the hospital that In-ho and Jung-sook are in a “some” relationship (which baffles and exasperates Jung-min in the funniest way possible). It also gets Seung-hee even more riled up than she already was, yelling at In-ho and taking out her anger on Jung-sook by overworking her. Plus, In-ho — as a married man — can’t have these rumors going around that he’s cheating with one of the new residents (which is just hysterical in all its irony). So, he endeavors to get Jung-sook to quit by disallowing her from participating in rounds with the other residents.
All the efforts by In-ho and Seung-hee almost work. The thing that saves Jung-sook is that she starts to develop close relationships with some of her patients. We see that she may not be the best at the technical aspects of her job, but she’s good at listening to people and making them feel cared for. Still, after a big mishap, Jung-sook is on the verge of quitting, feeling like she’s making too many mistakes.
While Dr. Kim tries to tell her that it’s her attitude and confidence that need to change — and In-ho presses her to go forward with resigning — she only decides to stay after an uber-wealthy patient thanks her in front of all the hospital’s higher-ups. He says that Jung-sook gave him unconditional compassion, which helped him face his scary diagnosis and treatment. The patient then donates a ton of money to the hospital and says that if Jung-sook leaves, he’ll take the money back. So, yeah, she’s staying.
Apart from getting the hospital administration to go easier on her, the patient’s public display of kindness also gives Jung-sook the confidence she needs to try harder at her tasks, and she starts to become really good at her job. So good, she outwits In-ho when diagnosing a patient and he agrees to let her participate with the other residents again. She even earns a compliment from So-ra — which delights her so much she can’t contain her smile.
Okay, back to the gossip. We first learn that In-ho is Eun-seo’s father when Eun-seo screams at her mother that she should never have given birth to her. Seung-hee became estranged from her wealthy family when she got pregnant without being married and she’s had to raise her daughter on her own. Plus, Eun-seo has grown up without a father.
The genius of having Eun-seo confront her mother like this is that it gives us the backstory straight from the person that these events have affected the most. In-ho may have “taken responsibility” for his first child, but that only makes it hurt worse to know he didn’t do the same for Eun-seo. Especially considering that Eun-seo is aware of who her father is. In fact, it’s the reason she’s befriended Yi-rang.
In a conversation between Seung-hee and In-ho, we learn that Seung-hee’s family wanted her to give the baby up for adoption, but she chose to keep her. In-ho says this is why he thinks Seung-hee is amazing, but she retorts that he turned pale when he heard she was pregnant. He responds — and I kid you not — “Throughout my entire life, I always turned pale when someone told me they were having my child.” What the…? How many more kids are out there?!
Seung-hee is not as upset by his reply as I am and suddenly suggests they go to a hotel together. This only makes me feel even more for Eun-seo, as her mother just won’t give up what’s bad for both of them.
As luck would have it, when they leave the hotel later, Dr. Kim is there to spot them and he realizes it’s not the first time he’s seen these two outside work together. At the hospital, he confronts In-ho and tells him to stop deceiving his wife. In-ho, like the privileged jerk he is, is angry not just that Dr. Kim knows about the affair, but that he had the nerve to tell him to stop.
We close this week when Jung-sook sees “Yi-rang’s friend,” Eun-seo, at the hospital and realizes that she’s Seung-hee’s daughter. Jung-sook starts to put all the clues together that In-ho and Seung-hee are having an affair and, just then, Dr. Kim appears and says he has something important to tell her.
The theme of mothers and daughters is strong this week and we get a couple of other incidents outside the scenes with Seung-hee and Eun-seo. First, Jung-sook is tending to an elderly inmate, imprisoned for killing her husband, who’s now very ill in the hospital. We learn that the woman has not seen her daughter since she went to jail decades ago.
Jung-sook tracks down the daughter, who’s now a mother (and doctor) herself, and tries to convince her to go make amends with her mother. Jung-sook is under the impression that the daughter can’t forgive her mother for the murder. But as it turns out, the daughter is ashamed because she is the one that killed her abusive father as a kid — and her mother went to jail for it. Jung-sook simply says, “Your mother will understand. As a mother yourself, you should know.” This incites a tearful reunion between mother and daughter at the hospital.
In a second case, we have a 20-year-old pregnant patient, unmarried, whose parents want her to give the baby up for adoption. The patient asks Jung-sook if she thinks her parents are correct. Jung-sook says no (and I can’t help but think about the fact that Jung-sook was that girl herself once, except In-ho married her). She tells the girl that her life is about to change, though, no matter what.
Seung-hee overhears this exchange and tells Jung-sook she has no right to give out advice. Jung-sook — knowing nothing of Seung-hee’s situation — says, “Raising a child on your own isn’t easy.” And Seung-hee comes back with, “How would you know that when you raised your kids in comfort?”
I really, really love all the counterfactuals that are being set up between all these cases. We’ve got unwed mothers that became married and unwed mothers that didn’t. We’ve got married mothers that actively got rid of their husbands and those left alone when their husbands died (like Jung-sook’s mom). And we’ve got one character — In-ho — who’s both a “responsible” father and an absent father. It’s got all the complexity of a scientific study, and being the nerd that I am, I can’t wait to see the results.