Season 1, Episode 4
Date of release: January 24, 2025 (Netflix)
Written by: Choi Tae-kang
Directed by: Lee Do-yoon
“And the undisputed top earner is... Aah, this is exciting. For the second year in a row, the funeral home.”
“The funeral home is unbeatable, huh?”
Well, yeah. People die, and other people make money off of that. When more people die, the others make more money. Especially when there's a deadly pandemic going on. Something like the bubonic plague or COVID-19 is good business for the mortuary.
If there is one thing I dislike about the characters, it's when they act irrationally and crazily, and therefore annoy me. Now, this might be a perk of Korean storytelling, which I don't know about because this show happens to be the first Korean show I decided to watch, but maybe Han Yu-rim's behavior is simply beneath contempt. He is a doctor in charge of two floors (general and colorectal surgery), and he yells at Dr. Baek like he is the chief of staff who has command over everything. Plus, the entire hospital is so focused on making money and keeping their numbers in the black, it makes me wonder when all of those doctors are actually being doctors, taking care of their patients. Are Dr. Baek and his trauma team the only floor of this hospital who are actually doing the work?
Not to mention that I have a general phobia of storylines that involve administrative crap involving the budget. Sometimes it makes for good television because the bosses come into conflict with the main characters just wanting to do their jobs, but that doesn't even seem to be an issue in this show. Baek previously told Yang not to worry about the budget, and the nurses in the trauma unit aren't even considering that the budget may be an issue. So the entire hospital, minus the trauma wing, is being made the villain here, and I don't quite like that image.
Story-wise, Dr. Han got a chance to become friends with Baek and the idea of a trauma unit in this episode, as he got to see what type of work they do. Of course, since I hadn't heard a beep from Han's daughter before, I didn't particularly care about her survival here (and I was annoyed by Han's constant screeching in front of the OR doors), but her accident could be used as a plot device to do the one thing I would love for the show to do at this point: Make Han a more likable character, have him stop being the absurdly loud and over-the-top villain, and have him collect some character depth on the way. After all, his daughter had a life-threatening injury – if that doesn't make Han a nicer person who thinks before he speaks (or yells), then I don't know what does.
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| Dr. Han Yu-rim finally shows some emotions. |
