Resident Playbook: Episodes 3-4

by DaebakGrits

The ups and downs of life as a first-year resident continue as our Playbook Quartet struggles not only with their patients’ needs but with interpersonal relationships — both within the group and externally. Will this cohort finally have a meal together, or will competition and sabotage make them enemies?

EPISODES 3-4

Although I try not to make an abundance of comparisons between Hospital Playlist and Resident Playbook, it’s hard to avoid them when, as was the case this week, there are so many references to the parent story embedded in this spin-off. Some of them are subtle, like Jae-il’s conversation with his sunbaes in the hospital cafe, which was a small callback to Dr. Bong Kwang-hyeon’s multi-discipline cafe sessions with the residents clamoring to get the scoop on their mentors and — in most cases — crushes.

Jae-il’s interest in Do-won is strictly professional, of course, but Yi-young, who was eavesdropping from the sidelines, was very eager to learn more about her crush’s hospital life and — apparently extremely punctual and predictable — habits. But can you blame the girl? Do-won’s playful personality is extremely attractive, and the way he instinctively threw out a protective hand when he abruptly hit the brakes while they were carpooling to work was — swoons.

This week’s series of similarities don’t end with one cafe session, though, as we get not one — but two — callbacks while our residents wait for an elevator to take them up to their floor. First, Nam-kyung disses Yi-young’s shoulder pads in a way that’s very reminiscent to Mi-ha and Gyeo-wool’s friendly, fashion centric ribbing sessions, and then our interns run into a very familiar face: YONG SEOK-MIN (Moon Tae-yoo) — or, I should say, Professor Yong Seok-min. He nearly misses the elevator, but once he’s on board, he knowingly pushes the fifth floor button for Nam-kyung and the other OB-GYN residents.

Because of this simple act — and the fact that Seok-min keeps glancing over his shoulder — Nam-kyung mistakenly assumes Seok-min has a crush on her. But the reality is that, as Min-hwa’s former resident, he picked up her skill of recognizing people and discerning which floors patients and doctors were getting off on. And he wasn’t glancing back at Nam-kyung. Nope, his gaze kept wandering to his lovely girlfriend HEO SEON-BIN (Ha Yoon-kyung), who was in the back corner of the elevator. Oblivious to the reality of the situation, Nam-kyung gushes and insists Seok-min’s behavior is an instinctive sign that he’s into her — because “your body just reacts without even realizing it” when you’re in love — but my mind, of course, goes back to the way Do-won instinctively reached out to protect Yi-young in the car.

Our story sets aside the fan service for the time being so that we can focus on our current crop of residents, and this week it’s not just Sa-bi whose bedside manner needs a little work. In fact, the only first-year one who seems to be earning brownie points from his patients is Jae-il, but his affinity with people is a lot like a magician’s ability to use misdirection. When they complain or ask questions about their diagnosis that he doesn’t have the answer for, Jae-il deflects and encourages them to eat and exercise — because no one is going to argue against healthful habits like eating and exercising. While Nam-kyung takes a page out of Jae-il’s resident playbook and employs his trick with her patient who is insistent that she must be discharged so she can attend a wedding, Sa-bi and Yi-young’s patient cases are a little too nuanced for Jae-il’s shortcut.

Sa-bi is caught in the middle of a sticky family situation when her college-aged patient’s father discovers he’s about to be a grandfather when his daughter goes into labor and is admitted to the ER. Needless to say, he’s not pleased with his daughter’s decision to have the baby or with her young baby daddy, who disappears and misses his baby’s ultrasound in order to take a phone call. Sa-bi feels compelled to smooth over the situation — and not just because she wants to defeat Jae-il and be the first first-year resident to appear on the Yulje compliment board in the hospital lobby.

At the same time, Yi-young has been assigned to work with Professor JO JOON-MO (Lee Hyun-kyung), who’s arguably more cantankerous and deserving of the “witch” title than Professor Seo. Their patient is a young woman with uterine cancer that might have spread to her ovaries, but due to the limitations of imaging scans, Professor Jo won’t know until they biopsy her ovaries during her hysterectomy if he will have to remove them along with her uterus. Despite the grim prognosis, the patient is relatively calm, but the same cannot be said for her mother, who is emotional and repeatedly asks the doctors to explain the procedure to her. With each discussion, she hopes to find a small sliver of hope that she can latch onto and alleviate her anxiety, but doctors aren’t in the business of making promises that they can’t keep.

Yi-young is, predictably, a fish out of water and struggles to communicate with her patient and her patient’s mother, but sometimes silence and a willingness to listen is what people need. In the case of the mother, who came to Yi-young’s rescue when she saw her getting an earful from Professor Jo, she feels helpless and guilty for inadvertently encouraging her daughter to be the strong, independent one in their mother-daughter relationship. Her daughter should be coming to her with her worries and complaints, especially at such a tough time in her life, but instead Mom is the one leaning on her daughter for emotional support. She vows to cry less and be a better support system for her daughter.

Although the daughter was able to put on a brave front when her mother is around, the facade drops when she is alone with Yi-young and being prepped for surgery. Yi-young tries to take Jae-il’s advice and comfort her patient, but the patient sees through her awkwardness and requests that she be her genuine self, which she prefers. What the patient needs is some time alone to cry, so even though Yi-young knows her actions will earn her another scolding from Professor Jo, she lies to her professor and conspires with the surgical staff to delay the surgery so her patient has a moment to openly feel the bundle of emotions she’s been suppressing while her mother has hovered at her side.

Meanwhile, Sa-bi, who definitely isn’t as attuned with her patients’ emotional needs, is showing growth. Of course, there is still a major learning curve for her, as demonstrated by her inability to sense that her patient’s father is not happy about the birth of his grandchild. At first, Sa-bi is surprised because she expected Jae-il would be correct in his assertion that people instinctively soften and fall in love with a baby once they see it and hear it cry. The baby’s daddy is definitely humbled to see his new child, but the red mark on his face is a clear sign that he does not have his family’s support.

Although the new grandfather is somewhat appeased that the baby’s father is not as flakey as previously suspected, Grandfather is still conflicted. He knows the difficulties of raising a child — especially without her in-law’s approval — will affect her quality of life, and looking at the baby makes him feel guilty and resentful. Even though he bought his daughter gifts — items he purchased at the suggestion of other new mothers — he throws them in the trash because, I suspect, he can’t in good conscience give them to her when he knows his emotions do not align with the positive gesture.

Sa-bi, however, chooses to fish the gifts out of the trash, and as she hands the items to her patient, she admits that her first instinct was to leave them in the trash. When she realized that the tailbone cushion and compression socks were gifts for his daughter — not items for the baby — she decided to give them to her. At a time when most people — including Sa-bi — were focused on the baby and the supposed joy newborns bring to their families’ lives, Grandfather was most concerned about his child.

In case you haven’t noticed a pattern yet, Jae-il who was initially praised for his bedside manner, is proving he’s not an expert on the matter as the advice he gave his peers systematically fails — most noticeably his suggestion to Nam-kyung. Although repeatedly emphasizing the importance of diet and exercise initially seemed like solid advice, it also puts the onus on the patient. So, when the patient doesn’t get the desired outcome, as is the case with Nam-kyung’s patient, they blame themselves for their failure.

Nam-kyung is appropriately guilty when her elderly patient’s tests results come back and she’s not able to be discharged from the hospital in time to attend her own wedding, but I feel like this particular lesson was swept under the rug rather quickly when that very patient then sagely imparted her own wisdom upon Nam-kyung: live while you’re young. While this is solid advice, in general I feel like it inadvertently condones Nam-kyung’s biggest flaw: her selfishness.

Most of the mistakes Nam-kyung has made as a doctor stem from her desire to cut corners and make her residency easier on herself, so, if you ask me, Nam-kyung is YOLOing it up a little too much for a first-year resident. And as our story carries over into Episode 4, we see that Nam-kyung remains susceptible to advice that allows her to put herself before others. In this case, she listens to Eun-won (of all people) and tries to assert her dominance over the nurses. Predictably, this causes some unnecessary tension between her and the nurses, who are only trying to be helpful.

And speaking of tension, things between Yi-young and Sa-bi turn contentious when Professor Seo asks an extremely disinterested Yi-young to assist with her research. Sa-bi, who would have chewed off her left hand for the opportunity to work with Professor Seo, is especially bitter because she read the text messages between Yi-young and her sister, OH JOO-YOUNG (Jung Woon-sun), and knows that Yi-young is on the verge of quitting. Cue: Sa-bi’s bitter, passive aggressive comments.

I suspect, however, that Professor Seo is paying extra attention to Yi-young because she senses that Yi-young has a lot of potential and is trying to break past her apathy and spark her passion. And so, Yi-young also joins Professor Seo’s team for a complex multidisciplinary case involving a 20-week-old fetus with a heart defect. It’s such a serious case that KIM JOON-WAN (Jung Kyung-ho) — eeee! — is brought in to consult (and don’t think I didn’t notice that he’s still wearing a couple ring).

Sa-bi is so jealous that Yi-young is being given access to primo research and patient cases that she sabotages Yi-young’s efforts, intentionally deleting all the data Yi-young had put together in hopes that Professor Seo might replace Yi-young with her. Nope, that plan backfires. Instead, Professor Seo punishes Yi-young by making her accompany her with all her surgeries for the foreseeable future.

It is during one such surgery that Yi-young holds a scalpel blade in the wrong direction and causes Do-won to cut his hand. Yi-young freaks out — this is her crush here — but Do-won remains calm and assists, one-handed, until Professor Seo insists he makes a visit to the ER to get stitched up. She and Yi-young — cut to: Yi-young’s look of absolute horror — can handle the rest of the surgery. After Do-won leaves, Professor Seo calmly explains that accidents happen in the operating room, but the patient is most important. She then tasks Yi-young to help suture the patient and is silently impressed with her skills.

After the surgery, Yi-young goes to the emergency room to check in on Do-won, and he assures her that he is fine. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about their patient, the mother of the fetus with a heart defect, who is rushed into the ER. Due to complications with the pregnancy, Professor Seo determines that they should induce labor in order to protect the mother, who is at risk of developing sepsis. Sadly, because the fetus is only 20-weeks old, it will not survive outside its mother’s womb. The mother is understandably distraught, especially since this is the second baby she’s lost to the same heart defect, and as such the baby’s father grants Professor Seo permission to run genetic testing on the fetus.

Professor Seo tasks Yi-young with performing the biopsy on the fetus, but she’s reluctant to perform the procedure. When Yi-young was an intern, she saw a second-year resident cry and lose sleep after performing the same test, and she’s afraid of how she might be affected. After talking with Do-won about her fears, Yi-young decides to invite Sa-bi to join her in the room while she performs the biopsy. She knows Sa-bi has been passive aggressively sabotaging her, and the guilt-ridden Sa-bi turns out to be the perfect companion to assist Yi-young through the emotional experience of taking a dying fetus from a distraught mother and carrying it to a nearby room for testing.

Sa-bi is waiting for Yi-young, and, sensing Yi-young’s distress, she offers an unscientific — and uncharacteristic — solution to ease Yi-young’s mind: she humanizes the otherwise sterile procedure by pronouncing the time of death. Encouraged by Sa-bi’s actions, Yi-young says a small prayer over the fetus, encouraging it to heal its wounds in the afterlife and return to its mother when it’s ready. She then solemnly performs the biopsy.

Yi-young is shaping up to be the most relatable and complex of the first-year residents. In my opinion, her hesitancy — masked as apathy — suggests she’s the only one among her peers who truly understands the gravity of their jobs. One small mistake could result in the worst day of her patient’s life. I suspect it’s that aspect of her personality that has led Professor Seo to take a liking to her, because Professor Seo, despite her reputation as a “witch” and her years of experience, still struggles to find the words to console a grieving mother.

Contrastingly, Nam-kyung’s self-serving behavior this week has earned her the spot of my least favorite member of our Playbook quartet. She’s fallen into the pattern where her selfishness leads to interpersonal faux-pas that largely go unpunished or acknowledged because they’re social issues that aren’t outwardly linked to her ability to become a doctor and are, therefore, resolved quietly. For example, her intentionally rude mistreatment of the nurses was frustrating, and it irks me that no one called her out on her behavior. Instead, she silently recognizes the error of her own ways after humbly realizing the nurses are knowledgeable and show far more compassion towards their patients than she does. Having the self-awareness to recognize one’s own follies and correct them is a strong character trait, but so far it isn’t doing much to endear me to Nam-kyung.

Overall, though, I enjoyed these episodes and the many cameos and nods to Hospital Playlist — not to mention all the cute little moments between Yi-young and Do-won, whose relationship remains ambiguous despite her grabbing his hand during the group photo. But, if I have one criticism, it’s that screen time is not evenly split among the first-year residents. Poor Jae-il has yet to get his own patient-of-the-week, so to speak, and even though I’m not a fan of Nam-kyung, I at least feel like I know more about her after these latest episodes. Maybe, now that Yi-young, Sa-bi, and Nam-kyung have finally agreed to join Jae-il for a meal, this will change their dynamic enough that Jae-il will be included more — in both group activities and in air time.

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