Dr Romantic – Season 3 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Putting an Elephant in a Fridge – Part 2

Episode 3 of Dr Romantic Season 3 starts with Min-guk asking Dr Cha to work at the Doldam Trauma Centre. Dr Cha states that he will only work at the new hospital if Teacher Kim has nothing to do with the place and is left out of it. Min-guk hesitantly agrees to Dr Cha’s demand. However, Teacher Kim happens to be in the same room and voluntarily backs out of working at the Trauma Centre.

Min-guk states that the Trauma Centre was Teacher Kim’s dream from many years ago and that he was giving up on it for Dr Cha. Teacher Kim argues that since Dr Cha needed to be a part of the Trauma Centre since he’s such a good doctor, he’s willing to back out. Dr Cha leaves his office and finds a woman waiting outside who is silently protesting against him.

The woman blames Dr Cha for the death of her son. At Doldam Emergency Hospital, Dong-hwa is having a hard time focusing on the cases as he hallucinates being the only doctor on call. Dong-hwa is worried that with other doctors on leave, he might be the only one who is left to help all the patients.

Woo-jin arrives at the hospital and learns from Ki-tae that a new Cardiothoracic (CT) surgeon is going to join them. Inside the common room, Woo-jin finds Eun-jae dozing off after spending the night at the hospital working as the on-call doctor. He offers her some tomato soup and Eun-jae reacts to it by acting cute while Woo-jin makes fun of her. Their chaos is interrupted by the new CT surgeon, Dr Lee Seon-ung, introducing himself to the two.

Seon-ung introduces himself as the new resident doctor and claims he left his job at the Naval base after witnessing the doctors perform at Doldam. Woo-jin leaves to tend to an emergency patient who’s at the hospital after a skiing accident. Dong-hwa explains that the patient was experiencing a stomachache even though his knee was fine after the accident.

In-soo and Moon-jung check up on the patient and discern that his CT scan showed no sign of distress. Woo-jin examines the patient and determines that he was faking the stomachache in order to sit out of the skiing competition that he was practicing for. The patient’s coach lashes out at him for creating a scene and wasting so much time over nothing. Dong-hwa asks Woo-jin to sympathise with the patient who may have acted out due to being stressed.

Woo-jin claims that as doctors, they cannot sympathise with patients all the time. Nurse Oh notices how Woo-jin’s words hurt Dong-hwa and ask Teacher Kim to intervene and ask Woo-jin to go slow on the intern. Teacher Kim states that the two doctors should bond on their own terms and states that butting heads like this would only make them closer eventually. Over the next few days, Woo-jin gives Dong-hwa a hard time at work, testing his limits.

Teacher Kim finds Dong-hwa napping at the coffee machine and tells him that being tired was a sign that he was doing well. He also tries to hint at Woo-jin to take it easy on Dong-hwa. Nurse Oh is sure that Woo-jin hadn’t caught the hint. Meanwhile, Dr Cha makes it to Doldam Hospital to meet Min-guk and Teacher Kim. At the same time, CT surgeons, Eun-jae and Seon-ung chat about their new office space.

Nurse Oh blames Min-guk for letting Dr Cha into the hospital due to which Teacher Kim would have to give up on his dream of working at the Trauma Centre. Teacher Kim tells Nurse Oh that it was his decision to bring Dr Cha into the hospital which would in turn help Doldam Trauma Centre given his work experience and reputation. Teacher Kim and Min-guk have a meeting with Dr Cha where they discuss the potential surgeons that will join the trauma centre.

Min-guk and Teacher Kim notice that the list of surgeons shortlisted by Dr Cha do not have any from Doldam Hospital. Teacher Kim and Dr Cha have a pissing contest where they both argue how skilled their chosen surgeons are. Min-guk is stuck between the two and tries his best to diffuse the situation. He shows Dr Cha the way out, while Teacher Kim claims that he was regretting his decision.

Min-guk tells him that it was not too late to back off from letting Dr Cha join the Trauma Centre. Woo-jin finds Eun-jae with Seon-ung in the CT Surgeon’s room and notices that Seon-ung was drinking the tomato soup he had prepared for Eun-jae. He gets jealous and barges into the room demanding answers from Eun-jae. He asks Seon-ung to leave but Eun-jae coaxes him to stay making it confusing for the new resident doctor.

Just then, Min-guk brings Dr Cha into the CT Surgeon’s office and he is shocked to see Woo-jin and Eun-jae together. Woo-jin goes to see Teacher Kim but finds his office empty. The senior staff at Doldam are discussing the sudden decision of Teacher Kim to leave Doldam Trauma Centre to be led by Dr Cha. They wonder if his health condition has worsened, which could be a valid reason for his decision. The group of doctors are confused and Woo-jin is worried.

Woo-jin asks Teacher Kim to give him and the other senior doctors an explanation about his decision. Teacher Kim asks the doctors to go with the decision because it was necessary for the Trauma Centre to be led by a competent doctor. Teacher Kim mentions that Dr Cha was one of them and with the number of emergency cases that they got, it was necessary to have many more doctors at the Trauma Centre once it opens. The senior staff unwillingly agree with Teacher Kim.

Meanwhile, Eun-jae asks Dr Cha why he was going to work at Doldam instead of his previous job at the University Hospital. Dr Cha claims that after his popularity, he wanted to give back to society and would like to work in the remote location of Doldam, He adds that he missed his daughter and wanted to be around Eun-jae. Woo-jin meets Teacher Kim in his cabin and claims that he’s not willing to accept his decision not to lead the Trauma Centre. He believes that if Teacher Kim stayed back at Doldam, he too would not join.

Eun-jae finds Woo-jin outside Teacher Kim’s cabin and asks to talk to him about Dr Cha’s living situation. She tells him that since he didn’t have a place to stay, she had asked him to stay with her. Woo-jin agrees to stay at the hospital for a few days until Dr Cha finds an apartment of his own. Woo-jin reassures Eun-jae that he’s more than happy to help ease her stress when it comes to dealing with her father.

The episode moves to the skiing patient who has now suffered a near-fatal accident. He is rushed to Doldam Hospital’s ER room with a broken leg. Meanwhile, A-reum makes her way back to the hospital and is shocked to see everyone in a gloomy mood after the news of Teacher Kim not joining the Trauma Centre.

She meets Eun-tak and gives him a pair of wool gloves she had gotten for him. A-reum tells that Eun-tak hadn’t missed her at all since he never texted her when she was away volunteering.

Eun-tak claims that he did not want to distract her and the two get away for some romantic time. Meanwhile, Dong-hwa is waiting out the last 40 minutes of his shift when he blurts out that they did not have any trauma patients at the hospital that day. Just then, they get an emergency call about the skiing patient.

Woo-jin is shocked to see the patient with a broken knee as is Dong-hwa. Eun-jae makes her way back home with Dr Cha and starts cleaning out all of Woo-jin’s stuff before Dr Cha could see them.

She lies that her roommate is A-reum from the hospital. At Doldam, Woo-jin and the rest of the doctors starts treating the skiing patient. They decide to start the surgery in the ER room after seeing the patient’s condition. Dong-hwa seems very distracted which further angers Woo-jin. Dong-hwa is in shock throughout the surgery and finds it hard to follow Woo-jin’s instructions.

Woo-jin yells at Dong-hwa for not being able to follow any instructions but In-soo asks Woo-jin to be patient as Dong-hwa was only an intern. Teacher Kim states that it seems like Woo-jin is in a rush and not being himself. Woo-jin explains that it was he who had sent the skiing patient home earlier that day for faking an injury.

Eun-jae rushes to the hospital after getting a distress call. She gives Dr Cha a bowl of ramen for dinner which he doesn’t find appetizing. Dr Cha finds men’s grooming items in the apartment as well as more pictures of Eun-jae and Woo-jin in her bedroom and seems angry about Eun-jae lying to him. Seon-ung sees Eun-jae getting ready to go to the Operating Room and asks to join her. Eun-jae is shocked that a CT surgeon wanted to enter the Operating Room willingly and asks him to join her.

Teacher Kim is also a part of the team of doctors operating the skiing patient. The CT scan shows how the patient’s left leg showed no sign of activity. Woo-jin wants to stitch up the patient’s leg first since he was on the national skiing team and they needed to prioritize his legs. Eun-jae argues that his arteries also needed care and needed to be treated first in order to sustain the patient.

Teacher Kim does not respond and Woo-jin leaves Dong-hwa to finish stitching up the patient. Woo-jin and Eun-jae plead their cases with Teacher Kim but to everyone’s shock, Dr Cha joins them and backs Eun-jae up. The argument escalates and Woo-jin and Dr Cha end up yelling at each other.

Teacher Kim intervenes, stating that there’s a way to prioritise both the patient’s life as well as his leg after seeing the complexion of his foot.

Teacher Kim claims that the operations on the skiing patient’s leg would precede the arteries. Dr Cha lashes out at Teacher Kim but the latter believes that he has deciphered the condition of the patient’s arteries from the complexion of his foot. Teacher Kim calls Dr Cha an amateur while the other doctors praise and join Teacher Kim for the surgery. Dr Cha yells at Eun-jae for giving in so easily after seeing how reckless Teacher Kim is being with his patient.

Eun-jae and Woo-jin praise Teacher Kim’s skills, which further triggers Dr Cha. Dr Cha calls Woo-jin and the other doctors at Doldam just as crazy as Teacher Kim. Woo-jin argues that saving lives is romantic for Teacher Kim because he always put the patient first. Dr Cha is left alone as all the doctors get ready to operate on the skiing patient as the episode comes to an end.

The Episode Review

From the beginning of this episode, it seems like Dr Cha has had a casualty case which is why he is so eager to leave his present job and join Doldam Trauma Centre. However, him wanting Teacher Kim out of there makes no sense because all the doctors are people that are Teacher Kim’s followers.

Seeing the riff-raff between Dong-hwa and Woo-jin, it seems like the former will soon lash out at the latter which will eventually make things hard for the two to survive on the same team.

It won’t be totally absurd for Dong-hwa to eventually side with Dr Cha’s team because their principles seem to align at present. It seems like the fight between Dr Cha and Teacher Kim is not the only reason for his move to Doldam and it is likely that the senior CT surgeon was moving to the remote hospital after he ended up causing the death of an innocent patient.

As unlikely as it may seem, I really wish to see Dr Cha come around to accept the absurd but effective ways of Teacher Kim as the season progresses.