Resident Playbook: Episodes 1-2 » Dramabeans
Resident Playbook: Episodes 1-2
by DaebakGrits
It’s been nearly four years since Hospital Playlist graced our television screens, and our return to Yulje Hospital, this time to the Jongno branch, begins with an introduction to a whole new crop of characters. The new crew at the center of our story is a small group of first-year OB-GYN residents, and we join them on their emotional — and sometimes reluctant — journeys to become doctors.
EPISODES 1-2
As a diehard Hospital Playlist fan, I hoped the return to the Yulje Hospital cinematic universe would be like slipping on a well-worn fuzzy sweater on the first crisp day of fall. So, imagine my initial confusion when Resident Playbook opened with an action shot of a helicopter landing on a hospital roof. The intensity and dramatic emergency response felt more like a scene from The Trauma Code – Heroes on Call — enough that I was tempted to double-check that I’d clicked on the correct medical K-drama in my Netflix queue. But before I could grab my remote, my bewilderment quickly turned to understanding when the panicked and well-manicured OH YI-YOUNG (Go Yoon-jung) was tasked with performing an emergency surgery without gloves. Ohhhhhh, this is a stress-induced nightmare — one that takes a really dark turn when Yi-young’s real-life money problems manifest in her subconscious, causing her to dream that she’s gagged and bound to an operating table so her organs can be harvested to pay for her debts.
The unfamiliar tone of the cold opening feels like an intentional reminder to the audience that this spin-off is not a continuation of Hospital Playlist and, therefore, shouldn’t be treated as such. With our expectations properly managed, though, Resident Playbook falls into a cadence that feels somewhat familiar and more in line with the original charm of this particular medical series. Case in point: the chuckle-worthy detail of Yi-young’s fuzzy bunny eye mask gagging her when she wakes up from her torture-gore nightmare.
As was also the case with Hospital Playlist, our first episode of Resident Playbook acquaints us with an extensive cast of characters that requires a (literal, for me) cheat sheet to keep everyone’s names and job titles straight. Luckily, the introductions flow rather systematically, with Yi-young serving as an unofficial main character as we go about meeting the various doctors at Jongno Yulje Medical Center along with her as she starts her residency… for the second time.
You see, Yi-young is not our typical Korean drama med student with altruistic aspirations of becoming a doctor so she can help people. She’s not chasing social clout, either. Instead, her original long-term career plan had been for her rich father to open a hospital, where she could jump right into the administrative side of hospital work and serve as a director. Unfortunately, her father was scammed by a long-term friend, and now that Yi-young has racked up her own personal debts — presumably trying to maintain that chaebol lifestyle — the only way for her to pay them off and appease the bank teller (cameo by Ra Mi-ran) who haunted her nightmares, is for her to get a job. And so, Yi-young, who’d previously quit her residency some time ago because it was “too hard,” returns to Yulje as a repeat first-year resident. Her motivations for becoming a doctor are not conventionally admirable, but as someone who once pursued and subsequently quit a career that was “too hard” for me mentally and emotionally, I find them 100% relatable.
Joining Yi-young on her journey are her fellow first-year residents. KIM SA-BI (Han Ye-ji) is an overachieving bookworm, but her bedside manner has a lot of room for improvement. This is mostly because she is an extremely logical individual, to the extent that her words and actions are often paired with robot sound effects to emphasize her inability to compute situations that call for empathy and tact. She strives to be the best and measures her achievements through quantitative goals, as demonstrated by her desire to rack up the most patient consent forms, an objective that’s stymied when she encounters a patient who refuses to sign her consent form because she’s struggling to process the reality and unfairness of her cancer recurrence. But, as fourth-year resident GU DO-WON (Jung Joon-won) explains, the hospital is not a place she should be seeking praise for coming in first place.
Contrastingly, EOM JAE-IL (Kang Yoo-seok), a former K-pop idol who never achieved that BTS-level of stardom, is much more conscientious of the needs of others. Unfortunately, he’s also the kind of guy who hears galloping hoofbeats and assumes the sound is caused by a zebra and not a (more probable) horse, and his biggest weakness as a fledgling doctor is over-diagnosing his patients. For example, he reports to second-year resident CHA DA-HYE (Hong Na-hyun) that he’s concerned a patient with a headache and runny nose is suffering from a brain fracture — even though said patient has not left her bed since giving birth.
And finally, the last member of the Playbook Quartet is PYO NAM-KYUNG (Shin Shi-ah). She’s Yi-young’s former high school classmate, but Yi-young has no memory of the image-conscious Nam-kyung even though she saw herself as Yi-young’s academic arch rival. And, perhaps intentionally, Nam-kyung does not get much screen time in Episode 1 because, as was presumably the case during their high school years, Yi-young steals most of the limelight.
Yi-young is paired with the department “witch” SEO JUNG-MIN (Lee Bong-ryun), a professor whose nickname references her reputation for being a hardass. Personally, I don’t find her that intimidating, but maybe that’s because Professor Seo seems entirely justified in putting Yi-young in a corner for not knowing something as basic the proper way to dispose of excess suture. Yi-young continues to blunder her way through her first few days as an intern, and her mistakes are the result of a combination of ignorance and willful incompetence, the latter of which likely stems from her obvious lack of passion for the medical profession.
However, a tiny flame of passion might be buried underneath Yi-young’s disinterest, and the flame is gently fanned when her patient’s baby boards the express train out of its mother’s vaginal canal, forcing Yi-young to help the “first time” mother deliver her baby in the hallway. The experience moves Yi-young to tears and has her running to work the next day, but as time begins passing in a blur and our Playbook Quartet enters the third week of their residency, they all contemplate quitting for various reasons.
Yi-young, who was ready to walk right back out the hospital’s revolving door the day she started, is pushed closer to the edge by a senior doctor prone to hazing and unscrupulous behaviors. This doctor is none other than MYUNG EUN-WON (Kim Hye-in) the “fox” from Hospital Playlist who made Min-ha miserable. Well, suffice it to say, Eun-won hasn’t changed much in the years since we last saw her. If anything, her evil bag of tricks has expanded as she’s moved up the proverbial food chain.
For starters, Eun-won asked all the first-year residents to report to her daily, and while at first glance this may seem like a teaching method designed to train their ability to retain and report important patient information, it’s actually a low-effort means of gathering information so she can exploit it for her personal gain. There’s a position at the hospital opening up once a senior doctor retires, and the more Eun-won can fake being a perfect doctor and impress the department chief, the more likely she can fill the position once it’s vacated.
Eun-won’s duplicity, however, extends beyond ass-kissing her superiors. In order to boost her favorable reputation among patients and leave a lasting impression on them — especially ones who might be of use to her later — she breaks hospital protocols to cater to their whims. She lies to Yi-young, ordering her to book an operating room for an emergency C-section. Then, when the obviously-not-an-emergency emergency pisses off the anesthesiologist and assisting surgical team, Eun-won throws Yi-young under the bus. It must have been a misunderstanding, she tells them nonplussed, and everyone believes her when she pins the blame on Yi-young, who already has a reputation for being the dullest scalpel on the surgical table.
Although Yi-young’s situation is arguably the most frustrating to watch, she’s not the only first-year resident contemplating a career change. Sa-bi’s blunt bedside manner is, once again, under scrutiny after she dismisses a patient’s discomfort with cold hard facts: said patient can’t be feeling feverish because her body temperature is within a normal range. The attending doctor, KONG KI-SUN (Sohn Ji-yoon), tells Sa-bi to apologize to the patient, but Sa-bi struggles to find the appropriate words when she doesn’t fully understand what exactly she did wrong. And was her faux pas bad enough that she should quit the path to becoming a doctor like the patient suggested?
Meanwhile, Nam-kyung and Jae-il are being tested in completely opposite — but totally character appropriate — ways. Nam-kyung, who values her social life and appearance, is drowning in work. She barely has time to eat and keep up with her basic hygiene, and to make matters worse, she’s assigned a particularly cantankerous cancer patient who insists on having her dressings changed four times a day. Contrastingly, the eager-to-help Jae-il, who wants nothing more to assist the other residents’ with their workloads, is benched after making a few sleep-deprived mistakes. So, while Nam-kyung is so rushed that she spills yogurt on scrubs and embarrasses herself in front of a judgmental former classmate, Jae-il has ample time to wander to a nearby Subway, eat at a leisurely pace, and fill Resident Playbook’s sandwich PPL quota for the week. (What?! No Egg Drop? Blasphemy!)
Of course, this is a healing, slice-of-life drama, so it’s only a matter of time before our first-year residents overcome their current hurdles, grow from these experiences, and have some touching moments with their respective patients. Sa-bi, for example, still has the EQ of Tamagotchi, but after receiving advice from Professor Seo — a doctor more attuned with her personality — Sa-bi learns to embrace her strengths when she finds herself coming up short in other areas. In this case, Sa-bi sets aside her increasing worry that she’s not cut out to be a doctor and puts her book smarts to use and reanalyzes her patient’s charts. She correctly deduces that she was developing pre-eclampsia, and as a result of this discovery, Sa-bi was on hand when her patient collapsed.
At the same time, Nam-kyung’s increasing need for self-care causes her to run away from the hospital. On her way to the mall for some retail therapy, she misinterprets a text and has the taxi turn around because she believes her patient has died. Thankfully, her patient is fine and has simply been moved to a room with a larger window, but in the brief time that Nam-kyung thought she had died, her priorities shifted. No matter how stressed and unkempt she may feel, she shouldn’t forget her patients are also away from the comforts of their homes and likely experiencing their own hardships — especially if, you know, they’ve got cancer and tubes draining fluids from their nose and abdomen.
While Nam-kyung’s brief exodus from the hospital was spontaneous, Yi-young literally packs her bag with the intention of never returning. However, she doesn’t make it past the front door before she hears a code blue over the intercom, and knowing all the other OB-GYN doctors are unavailable, Yi-young sets aside her personal desires to assist the patient who collapsed in the hospital convenience store. Professor Seo arrives on the scene before Eun-won, the on-call doctor, and scolds her for dragging her feet and then lying about being held up by a non-existent surgery. Yi-young, however, is praised for remaining calm under pressure.
Professor Seo’s compliment does not fuel Yi-young’s desire to become a doctor, though. No, Yi-young still fully intends to quit, but she’s delayed (again) when Do-won tasks her with transporting a patient to another Yulje branch, where Yi-young meets CHU MIN-HA (Ahn Eun-jin). Since we last saw her, Min-ha has not only become a newlywed — yes, this is the kind of fanservice I love! — but she has also matured enough to sense that her hoobae is in distress and needs guidance. Yi-young’s genuine concern for her patients is a quality in a doctor that Min-ha admires because it was a skill she initially lacked as a resident.
Yi-young finds comfort in Min-ha’s words, but when she returns to the Jongno branch, she hesitates to accept Do-won’s invitation to stay and observe a twin delivery. Eun-won is participating in the delivery, and one of the anesthesiologists is openly hostile and antagonizes Yi-young. Thankfully, Do-won comes to Yi-young’s defense, sets the record straight on the previous incident, and places blame where it belongs: on Eun-won. With the tension diffused, Yi-young stays to observe the C-section.
Afterwards, Do-won takes Yi-young aside and pointedly confirms that she will be returning not only the next day, but every day after that. What makes this moment memorable (for me, a romantic) is the not-so-subtle way Do-won flirts with her, leaning in close to lift her bugout bag, and remind her of the crushing debt she has to pay off. From the moment it was revealed that Do-won’s brother was married to Yi-young’s older sister and we got a peek at their home life banter, I boarded this ship, but this scene in particular had me raising the sails and breaking a bottle of wine over its bow. (Seriously, would this drama be a true addition to the Yulje cinematic universe without a ship — or five — to root for?)
As this week’s episodes wind down, we learn that all the senior residents had been looking out for our Playbook Quartet in hopes they’d get over the three-week hurdle, but their methods, while well-meaning, weren’t as effective as they’d hoped. Da-hye, for example, thought she was helping Jae-il by giving him ample free time to sleep — because sleep keeps you in a positive mood. Likewise, third-year resident KI EUN-MI (Lee Do-hye) kept pestering Nam-kyung to eat because “a full stomach makes you happy.”
Neither of these things, Do-won asserts, matters once the residents get their first payday. And he’s right; the Playbook Quartet — minus Yi-young, who is disappointed by how small of a dent it puts in her debt — is noticeably happier once they see their paychecks. Much to Jae-il’s disappointment, none of his peers will join him for dinner, but luckily he spent his unprecedented free time making friends with his sunbaes and got an invite to join them for pasta.
As someone who absolutely adores Hospital Playlist — and, as such, has very strong opinions about the series — I’m surprised by how pleased I am with this spin-off. Although, maybe I shouldn’t be because, like its parent story, it excels in an area that made me fall in love with Hospital Playlist int he first place. I’m talking about the story’s ability to subtly and naturally reveal characters’ personalities through their habits and interactions with others. The character that best exemplifies this after our premiere week is, in my opinion, Jae-il. He didn’t get nearly as much screen time as Yi-young and the other first-year residents, but there is a lot we can infer despite his lower scene count.
Obviously, he wants others to recognize him from his former life as a K-pop star, but his repeated attempts to get the other first-year residents to join him for a meal suggests he’s searching for the same camaraderie he had as part of an idol group. He’s also someone who notices details and over prepares for every situation, whether he’s taking notes on a patient or ensuring his backpack is stocked with the essentials, like a massive power bank to loan Nam-kyung and spot fabric cleaner to spritz — unprompted, I might add — on Sa-bi when her drink stains her shirt. Even though he’s outwardly flashy and his social personality might cause some to mistake him for, well, a carefree idiot, I wouldn’t be surprised if he became the most successful doctor of the bunch. Maybe we’ve got a young Lee Ik-jun-like character on our hands.
RELATED POSTS
