'Dr Romantic 2' Week 4 delves into workplace sexism and moral conflicts through Lee Sung-kyung's Cha Eun-jae
'Dr. Romantic 2' Episodes 7 and 8 deal with two concepts -- sexism at the workplace and the moral lines one tends to cross while serving patients. The former is a result of Dr. Cha Eun-jae (Lee Sung-kyung) trying to stop a patient's father from physically abusing his mother. She even stops the wife the first time she tries to hurt her husband, just to stop him from verbally and physically abusing Eun-jae who wanted to support the abused wife. The administration headed by Dr. Park Min Kook (Kim Joo-hun) reads this as an unnecessary action that the doctor took because she was meddlesome.
They even cover up the entire incident by getting Eun-jae to apologize to the man. This results in the wife getting more anxious because of her husband. She ends up stabbing her husband in the end, something that Eun-jae had stopped the first time around. If only Dr. Park hadn't covered the incident up, the father of the child would have been imprisoned and the mother would have been freed from the cycle of domestic abuse.
Not only does Dr. Park cover up the incident, but he also has the audacity to blame Eun-jae's gender for everything including the doctor's attempt at saving someone. He asks her when she plans to quit because she is a woman. He even reiterates the fact that he is a sexist a*****e when he tells her that he has made it a point to not teach a woman because she usually quits her career after marriage or for a baby. He gives her the choice to leave Doldam Hospital of her own accord instead of being let go off by the administration.
This is before the man that Dr. Park saved by covering up the incident is struck by his wife. Not that it changes anything, because, following the stabbing, all Dr. Park can think about, is the way Kim Sabu (Han Suk-kyu) reprimanded him for being a jerk in front of the other employees in the hospital. So in an attempt to change the authority figure in the hospital, Dr. Park ends up trying to bring Manager Jang to his side. Wouldn't Kim Sabu expect this of Dr. Park already? For now, manager Jang seems to be giving Dr. Park inside information to help him.
In the meanwhile, the doctors also face an important and difficult decision ahead of them. To admit a patient with renal failure or not. The confusion lies in the fact that he is a prisoner on a life sentence. The administrator believes that admitting this patient might endanger the safety of the people in the hospital. The same administration that swept the Eun-jae incident under the rug is now worried about safety and the hypocrisy here is what Kim Sabu has always tried to stay away from. In the end, he is dragged into dealing with corporate politics after the former president of Doldam Hospital was fired.
The two episodes bring the issues that doctors face while trying to serve patients and it has nothing to do with skill or knowledge, but more about connections. In the final minutes of episode 8, we finally see Eun-jae get the nerve to take a stand and voice out her disagreement to being treated unfairly, considering she did nothing wrong. She also faces her senior who has bullied her so far, and tells him that she will no longer accept his behavior and it is satisfying to see her chew him out for being nothing but a pain.
'Dr. Romantic 2' episodes air on Mondays and Tuesdays at 10 pm KST on SBS.