Doctor Slump (2024) K Drama Episode 4 with Park Shin Hye and Park Hyung Shik

Episode 4 of Doctor Slump begins with Ha-neul’s musings about how she has always liked studying more than spending time with friends which eventually left her with no friends. It comes against the backdrop of Ha-neul and Jeong-woo deciding to become friends. She’s particularly happy since she can be nostalgic about the past and have someone she knows from school to discuss it with. 

Ha-neul and Jeong-woo go to a nearby restaurant for breakfast and while Jeong-woo is placing the order, Ha-neul falls asleep. She had given Jeong-woo the obscure dissertation that she found about a similar case as Jeong-woo’s before falling asleep. Jeong-woo asks the owner to let her sleep, emphasising that they’re just friends and they don’t need a room. He promises to buy slightly pricey dishes in return. 

White internally battling about being affectionate with Ha-neul and reinforcing that everything he’s doing is permissible in a friendship, he falls asleep beside her. The two wake up to the sounds of customers and have breakfast. Later, Jeong-woo receives a call that his clinic has been sold. To cheer him up, Ha-neul suggests getting some fresh air along with coffee and they discuss the difficult times. 

Back at Ha-neul’s place, her mother (Wol-Seon) and brother assume that she’s gone to Sokcho with Hong-Ran, Ha-neul’s only friend. However, when Hong-ran visits Ha-neul’s place, Wol-Seon runs out of the house to catch a taxi to go to Sokcho, thinking that Ha-neul has gone there alone to drown herself. At the same time, Ha-neul and Jeong-woo arrive and Hong-ran creates a misunderstanding with leads everyone to believe that Jeong-woo is Ha-neul’s first love. 

Back in her room, Ha-neul clarifies with Hong-ran and her family present that she’s only friends with Jeong-woo and that he’s a decent person, referring to the ongoing case. Later, Wol-seon asks Hong-ran to find a blind date for Ha-neul as she’s worried about Jeong-woo and Ha-neul becoming closer. Hong-ran asks a nurse in her workplace if she knows any decent men. The nurse, thinking that Hong-ran wants to go on a blind date, suggests her to Bin Dae-yeong. 

Bin Dae-yong is a classmate of Jeong-woo’s who considered him a rival. He has a Neo-Tube channel with only 4 subscribers – his employees. In the previous episode, while ridiculing Dae-yong’s ridiculous content, Hong-ran had accidentally subscribed to his channel. Now, Dae-yong thinks that she’s interested in him and agrees to go on the blind date.

 Meanwhile, Jeong-woo is on cloud nine thinking that he is Ha-neul’s first love and has descended into a kind of hilarious narcissistic confidence. For instance, he looks in the mirror and comments, “Gosh, how blinding, who’s that. Oh, it’s just me”. At the same time, Ha-neul arrives and shyly asks him if he’d like to go shopping with her later in the day while the two have coffee outside. Jeong-woo is becoming more and more certain about Ha-neul liking him. 

Later, while walking towards their destination, Ha-neul slips and Jeong-woo catches her, holding her in his arms. Ha-neul and Jeong-woo visit a store where Ha-neul tries on a dress. Jwong-woo is mesmerised by her. They talk about a nostalgic moment from their past following the romantic-but-not-supposed-to-be-romantic slip moment.

Back in high school, during one of their self-study sessions, Ha-neul was annoyed by the sound of the fan so, she got up on the table and started hitting it. Well, she slips, Jeong-woo holds her, the class starts chanting “Date” and he loosens his grip and lets Ha-neul fall on the floor. She got her wrists sprained in the process and tried writing with her mouth. Guilty, he gave her notes and recordings of the classes.

That’s why Ha-neul says that even though he’s competitive, he genuinely cares about others and could never have consciously harmed anyone. She also proceeds to tell him about her blind date, the reason for her shopping, shattering Jeong-woo’s pride. She tells him that even though she doesn’t like blind dates, spending time with him makes her want to experience everything she hadn’t before. For our poor Jeong-woo, he goes back to his room and throws a tantrum by himself. 

The next morning Ha-neul meets Dae-yong and finds him odd. He keeps talking about his Neo-tube channel and mentioning Hong-ran. Meanwhile, Dae-yong finds it odd that Ha-neul is talking about herself in the third person thinking that her name is Hong-rang. At this time, we learn that Hong-ran has a son while Dae-yong’s teenage daughter spots the two, gatecrashes the date and leaves. While Dae-yong is leaving after her daughter, he calls “Ha-neul” followed by clarifications about the misunderstanding. 

On her way back home, she meets Jeong-woo, who has no interest in knowing about her blind date. However, once she mentions that it was a flop, he’s suddenly cheerful and curious. Simultaneously, Ha-neul’s two aunts visit her family’s restaurant. As paradigms of toxic Asian relatives, they proceed to badmouth Ha-neul in front of her mother, suggesting that she was thrown out of the hospital and doesn’t have the personality to get married. In Ha-neul’s defence, Wol-Seon lies that Ha-neul left her job to get married and is with her partner at the moment. 

Unfortunately, Jeong-woo and Ha-neul arrive at the same time. The aunts mistake him for her boyfriend. Later, Ha-neul clarifies that they’re just friends, revealing her mother’s lie. The aunts proceed to talk rudely about her again to which Jeong-woo appropriately responds by insulting them in the garb of his medical opinions about plastic surgery. They leave while commenting upon Ha-neul’s joblessness. 

Later in the evening, Ha-neul asks Jeong-woo for drinks and they compete about who’s better at ruining themselves when Ha-neul decides to send job applications under the influence of alcohol. The next day, she receives an interview call from a far-away hospital for the post of Chief anesthesiologist. She goes to Jeong-woo with the update and tells him about how her self-esteem is at rock bottom without her job. Jeong-woo encourages her to give the interview and she leaves for the same. 

Later, Kyung-Min visits Jeong-woo and they go out for Gukbap. Kyung-min tells him that he received a call for Ha-neul’s reference check as he knows the director of the hospital. Turns out that he had told the director the “truth” about Ha-neul’s problems with the professor and her rumoured assault. Jeong-woo is bewildered at this discovery. 

Meanwhile, Ha-neul reaches the hospital after a train journey only to receive a call that she doesn’t need to appear for the interview. Dejected, she calls Jeong-woo and tells him about how she’s failing at life but Joeng-woo appears in person. He’s taken a train to tell her that it’s not her fault.

In the epilogue, we see Kyung-min holding a pen similar to the one that had a hidden camera inside Jeong-woo’s office. We see the same pen under Jeong-woo’s bed as well sometimes when he goes to get champagne for drinking with Ha-neul after they empty the beer cans. 

The Episode Review

Kyung-min, Jeong-woo’s high school tutor and Ha-neul’s senior at work, become a target of our suspicion. But hang on, the shows often mislead us with simplistic and straightforward culprits so we cannot be sure yet. The question is, where did he get the pens from? 

This episode, again, had nothing much to add to the narrative except to reiterate Ha-neul and Jeong-woo’s miserable lives along with their budding closeness. This week’s episodes lacked charm since it feels like a mediocre recipe for a typical romcom.