Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim 3: Episodes 11-12

by alathe

It’s a dark night at Doldam. Our Trauma Center head has feet of clay — and there are plenty who want to exploit this. Meanwhile, everyone’s favorite couple faces jeopardy when our heroine’s mother arrives on the scene with a suitcase. Before they can get better… things are about to get ugly.

EPISODES 11-12

Dr. Cha gets his day in court — and a speech, to boot. Lawsuits, he announces, ruin doctors’ lives. Respect for the medical profession has dwindled to nothing; staff face constant abuse. What happened to Assemblywoman Ko’s son was a tragic accident, but CCTV footage tells a nobler tale: an understaffed hospital facing multiple emergencies; Dr. Jung juggling it all with fire-forged professionalism. Faced with this wall of rhetoric, the judge rules in favor of Doldam. But no one’s kidding themselves: Assemblywoman Ko is icily intent on appealing.

Behind the scenes is another matter: with Director Park and Teacher Kim, she’s willing to bargain. Fire Dr. Cha. In exchange, she’ll drop the suit — and the Trauma Center’s budget will pass without incident. Dr. Cha, after all, is a toxic asset: rumors abound that he drove a young resident to suicide. Teacher Kim remains unmoved. But Director Park’s eyes are hungrier. Later, in the Office of Ideological Disputes, Teacher Kim warns his wayward disciple that backroom deals are a coward’s move. A real leader fights big waves upfront. I hope, he adds, that you’ll become that kind of leader.

Meanwhile, our OTP face a tsunami of their own: Eun-jae’s mother has arrived at her door — armed with suitcases. Amid Eun-jae’s sputtered protests, she breezes in, declaring the house too small for a family… if she, Dr. Cha and Eun-jae are to live together, they’ll need at least two stories! In a swift yet understandable regression to adolescence, Eun-jae slams the door and storms out. Then, she remembers Woo-jin’s boxers on the bed. Soon, the Cha matriarch is flipping out at her thirty-something daughter for living in sin. What if (hushed, genteel outrage) the neighbors find out? Would someone please think of the children?!

Eun-jae, deciding discretion is the better part of oh-god-why-is-my-family-so-wealthy-and-weird, retreats to sulk at Doldam. Here, she overhears Dr. Bae tell Teacher Kim there’s a chance Woo-jin’s hand may never fully recover. Pasting on a smile, she greets her boyfriend with a box of rainbow-colored physio tools, and a firm insistence that nothing is wrong. Nope, nothing. Stop asking, please. By the way, just a thought: why don’t they get married? Like, right this second? To her horror and humiliation, Woo-jin’s face falls. He knows Eun-jae. This isn’t romance — it’s just her hack-and-slash approach to problem-solving. So, no, they can’t get married. Not like this.

Back in his office, Dr. Cha makes an unpleasant discovery. There’s a box waiting on his desk. It contains a bloodied pen, engraved with the name “Woo Sang-min.” Grim flashbacks assault him. The student he’d blamed, accused of incompetence — plunging to his death from the top of the building. His mother, wailing. The pen, lying next to the body. Shaken, he springs into action: who sent this? CCTV footage shows a man walking into his office with a bag obscuring his head. But Dr. Cha has a hunch. He’s certain the culprit must have gone to Hanguk University… and only one member of staff fits that description.

Sun-woong finds himself summoned to Dr. Cha’s office, allegedly to help with some cleanup. But when Dr. Cha orders him to pass him a blue folder, the jig is up. Awkwardly, he offers a red one. It’s you, breathes Dr. Cha. Once upon a time, Sun-woong applied for a job under Dr. Cha — and was flatly rejected. Apparently, hiring a color-blind candidate was too much for Dr. Cha to bear. What’s more, Sun-woong was in the same class as Sang-min, the student who took his own life.

Sun-woong is marched down the hallway, in full, humiliating view of all staff. The Doldam rumor mill is set alight. Suddenly, everyone seems an expert on Dr. Cha’s part in Sang-min’s suicide — and on Sun-woong’s sudden penchant for sinister, bag-headed office invasions. Stuck in the middle is Eun-jae, who glares daggers at her father’s detractors. She’s livid. She loves him. To her, she announces angrily, he’s like a decorated hero.

Back in Director Park’s office, things get heated. Dr. Cha demands that Sun-woong be fired. He must, he reasons, have been trying to undermine him: partly as revenge, and partly to protect his dirty little secret of — of being unable to distinguish red from green! For years, Dr. Cha has been plagued with the blame for Sang-min’s death, and now he gets ugly about it. Didn’t he tell him over and over again how to put in a C-line? That fool couldn’t even do simple work!

Director Park cuts through this diatribe with magnificent aplomb. In fact, it’s so magnificent it feels — dare we say it — rehearsed? Here at Doldam, he declares, discrimination doesn’t apply. Sun-woong’s color-blindness was no secret: he told Teacher Kim in his very first interview. But as for Dr. Cha — did he really feel so threatened by Sun-woong that he’d orchestrate a plot like this to see him fired? Chin up, Sun-woong, he says. Disability can’t hold you back here. Throughout this speech, Dr. Kim observes him very, very quietly.

In the end, it’s Dr. Cha who leaves the office in shame, a thousand curious eyes burning his back. But when Sun-woong is alone, he trembles. He remembers the conversation he’d overheard: Assemblywoman Ko’s ultimatum. Director Park meeting his gaze. Now, barely able to breathe for guilt… he takes out a paper bag with eye holes, and shoves it into his desk drawer. Meanwhile, Director Park locks eyes with a stone-faced Teacher Kim. I feel, he says, like I faced a big wave today.

Teacher Kim’s no fool — he’s caught the scent of a plot. Dealing with the first miscreant is simple. He ambushes Sun-woong over a hemothorax patient, telling him he’ll be leading the surgery. Sun-woong baulks. If this scares you, says Teacher Kim, then how did you ever scrounge up the courage to screw over Dr. Cha? Then, he delivers the same speech that’s defused countless self-righteous surgeons over the years. The best revenge is to excel. To prove to those who scorned you that their prejudice was nonsense. You’ve endured a decade of training. There’s nothing you can’t do. Besides, he adds, grinning, I don’t assist just anyone in surgery.

The second schemer, Director Park, is a tougher, more pokerfaced nut to crack. Ah, my beloved problematic face… I wanted you to get more screentime, but — to quote Woo-jin — not like this! Am I to take it, says Teacher Kim, that you’re accepting Assemblywoman Ko’s terms? Sounds like a humiliating compromise. I did what I had to do, replies Director Park, stiffly. But he’s blindsided by Teacher Kim’s next question: do you really think Assemblywoman Ko is just pursuing a personal grudge? Sure enough, when we cut to our favorite thorn in Doldam’s side, she’s gloating on the phone. With the Trauma Center left leaderless, it’s not long before she can shut them down for good.

Meanwhile, Eun-jae’s mother has launched another missile in the war against our OTP. Meeting with Woo-jin, she tells him, in no uncertain terms, to get lost. Her reason? Pure, knee-jerk hatred of orphans. Or rather, as she’d put it, Woo-jin hardly experienced the love of a family. How could he become part of theirs? It’s a no from her. Thankfully, Eun-jae has remembered where she put her spine. Back home, she finally confronts her mother. What is it about my happiness, she asks, that distresses you? Her mother is adamant that it’s precisely Eun-jae’s happiness for which she fears: what if she makes a mistake? Then support me anyway, insists Eun-jae. Respect my choice.

Elsewhere, a disgraced Dr. Cha confronts Teacher Kim. Was this, he asks, dully, what you wanted? To see me beaten? Teacher Kim shakes his head. Actually, he says, I was rooting for you. But for crying out loud — you keep risking your life for worthless things! Why throw away everything for this court fight, then pick on Sun-woong? But Dr. Cha is convinced that he’s fighting for the most important principle of all: pride. How long is he meant to put up with constant abuse towards the medical profession? Until it works! explodes Teacher Kim. Screw your pride — back up this next generation of doctors, and fight to the end! It’s a gorgeous confrontation, and it’s earned, cutting right to the heart of a season’s worth of differences.

The fight with Teacher Kim is all sound and fury — but it’s a quieter, broken Dr. Cha that Woo-jin finds in Dr. Nam’s restaurant that night. Tentatively, the two split a drink. I don’t understand your generation, declares Dr. Cha. He proceeds to enumerate his grievances with Kids These Days: weak, demanding, no sense of responsibility! Woo-jin listens without rancor, then mildly replies: we no longer live in an era of possibilities. Dr. Cha glances at him. Do you think I’m to blame for Sang-min’s death? Woo-jin doesn’t give him a yes or no. Doesn’t shatter their fragile truce. Instead, he pours him another drink. Teacher Kim is tough sometimes, he observes, eventually. But no matter what happens… he never gives up on us.

Day dawns on Doldam — and with it, Dr. Cha’s resignation letter. The irony seems to be lost on Director Park, who was in precisely this place last season: finished, ego shattered by an armor-piercing speech from Teacher Kim. Dr. Cha leaves him with a single warning. Don’t trust too far in your own cleverness. Then, without fanfare, he’s gone. Eun-jae runs to find an empty office, horrified as she recalls their conversation the night before. Go back to Seoul, she’d said, fresh from that bitter talk with her mother. It’s too hard to see you like this. As a child, she’d idolized her father. Now, she fears the people they’ve become are irreconcilable.

When she dials Dr. Cha, he’s already driving home. I’m sorry, he says, gently. I should have left a better impression. This breaks both of them: Eun-jae, sobbing outright; her father struggling to cry soundlessly. You know, manages Eun-jae, when I was torn between general and cardio surgery, I chose cardio because of what you said. Do you want to hold dung in your hands — or a heart? Dad — I love you. He takes a shaky breath. Make sure you eat well, he replies. Later, in their hard-won home, Eun-jae plunges tearfully into Woo-jin’s arms.

Dr. Cha’s words to Director Park prove laughably prophetic. When he meets with Assemblywoman Ko, she’s all disdain. The lawsuit? Sure, she’ll withdraw it. But as for funding — don’t be absurd. Her gaze sharpens into a glare. I did say, she adds, that this would be all-out war. Back at Doldam, a shamefaced Director Park attempts to cower in his office. He finds, of course, that Teacher Kim has stolen his chair — and has some gleefully awkward questions prepared. Director Park dithers. Backtracks. Then, breaks. He’ll beg Dr. Cha on his knees to return! Laughing, Teacher Kim assures him it’s okay. If there’s one thing he’s prepared for… it’s war.

Sure enough, a taxi approaches Doldam. Woo-jin is at reception when the doors plunge open. Sunlight streams in. A dramatic breeze stirs the corners of his coat. Teacher Kim descends the stairs — and beams. There, in the entrance, stands the one. The only. Kang! Dong! Joo! As Teacher Kim and this awe-inspiring newcomer exchange broad, loving grins, Woo-jin stares. His face doesn’t move a muscle. The message is clear as day: Hands off my father figure!

Oh gosh — what a beautiful tear-jerker of an episode! Dr. Cha’s messy fall from grace was as narratively necessary as it always is in this show. Only by facing the full force of Teacher Kim’s disappointment can you come back fighting. But this fall, surrounded as it was by Teacher Kim’s doubts in himself, and by Eun-jae’s very adult regret, felt different: elegiac, almost. It’s been a long, dark night of the soul for Doldam, and it feels right that this season has been about growing older — about facing a new, unrecognizable world, and choosing, not to rage, but to do right by it.

As much as this week might have made me sob, I know things will be all right. This series is about redemption. And the beauty of it is, we’ve seen it so many times. Sun-woong made a judgement error: he messed up, and was caught. But he wasn’t meaninglessly punished, by either Teacher Kim or the narrative: instead, he was given a chance to do better. As for Director Park? He certainly deserves a slap on the wrist, but it’s the same principle: he made a mistake, and will do better. I’ve always loved our doctors the most when they’re human and fallible, which is why Dong-joo’s return is so important. After all, he fits that description beautifully. I’m just hoping Dr. Cha gets his chance to return and do better too.

 
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