Heart to Heart: Episode 2

by LollyPip

Things get a bit more interesting as we start to learn more about Yi-seok’s family background, and discover exactly how crippling Hong-do’s anxiety can be. Though Yi-seok is off the hook for the stabbing, he’s still in hot water for drinking on the job, and his personal life takes a turn for the worse on top of everything else. And while Hong-do takes a huge step towards normalcy, it makes her realize that it’s time to seek help in the last place she expected.

 
EPISODE 2 RECAP

In agonizing slow motion, and with skinned and bloody knees, Hong-do runs desperately through the streets. Interestingly, she’s not wearing her protective helmet, but instead is dressed nicely with her hair and makeup giving her a soft, pretty look. But her face looks scared and panicked as she runs.

Doo-soo gives chase, his expression giving away worry and concern. Hong-do momentarily loses her hat, but manages to grab it without being caught, and continues her flight.

Sometime earlier, we go back to where we left Yi-seok, hanging from the ceiling by his tie and calling for help. Hong-do hears his gasps for breath and grabs his legs, but this only makes things worse (and oddly hilarious) as she swings with him. She changes tactics to push his desk near him, climb on it, and cut the tie with scissors.

They both crash onto the sofa with Yi-seok on top of Hong-do, and he quickly jumps up to listen again to the message that Doo-soo left. He hasn’t even caught his breath yet, but he smiles to hear that his patient woke up and has admitted to stabbing himself in the neck. Then the anger kicks in, and Yi-seok screams his frustration.

Hong-do’s phone rings in his pocket and he answers out of habit — it’s Doo-soo calling Hong-do. She tries to grab the phone but Yi-seok fends her off and rips Doo-soo a new one for believing the “crazy woman” and not him.

He hangs up and rounds on Hong-do, shoving her against the wall and blaming her for his being treated like a murderer and for his near-suicide. He orders her never to show her face to him again and walks out, leaving her to mutter to herself that she saved his life. Yeah, I knew he wouldn’t be grateful.

Yi-seok drives to the hospital to confront his patient (whose name is Park Man-dong), angry about the marks the tie left on his neck and not realizing that Hong-do is following him on her scooter. He finds his patient’s room and walks right in, as Hong-do tries her best to hide between some chairs and the wall, ha.

Yi-seok asks why the man stabbed himself, and whether he’s okay, but in the patient’s presence the painful ringing in Yi-seok’s ears begins again and his vision blurs. He’s struggling to breathe by the time the patient’s daughter enters the room, and Hong-do creeps in behind her (as if nobody will notice a woman in a helmet on her knees, haha).

Hong-do grabs Yi-seok’s hand and asks for her phone back, and instantly the ringing stops and Yi-seok feels normal again. He pushes her out of the room and the ringing starts again, but stops right away when he pulls her back inside. Okay that’s strange, and oddly familiar.

Yi-seok shoves Hong-do into the hall again, the ringing rushes back full-force. In the process he also pulls the patient’s daughter this way and that, and now the father looks angry. Yi-seok crawls out of the room and the moment he does, he’s back to normal. Hong-do asks for her phone again and he denies having it, but it’s right there in his pocket ringing again with another call from Doo-soo.

He plays keep-away with the phone as Hong-do jumps around him, assuming she and the detective are in some kind of relationship. Hong-do finally loses her temper and screams at him to give her her phone now, that it’s all his fault she ended up at the station and that Doo-soo saw a side of her she wanted hidden. She bellows that he’s just a drunken quack doctor, drawing a crowd.

Yi-seok is amused by her outburst, but denies that he’s a quack (he allows her other accusations though, ha). He grabs her helmet and forces her to look him in the eye, and asks if she wants to fix her blushing and social anxiety. He says he can fix her in return for three minutes of her time, and grabs her hand to pull her back in the hospital room.

Yi-seok parks Hong-do in a chair and, keeping one hand on her helmet, tells the patient he has a lot of questions for him. But the patient isn’t interested in talking and tells him never to come back. Yi-seok settles for asking him why he stabbed himself, so the man motions him closer.

Yi-seok reluctantly lets go of Hong-do and the patient pulls him in uncomfortably close, and whispers if he’s curious about him now that he’s seen his daughter. If he’s implying what I think he is, that he’s been inappropriate with his own daughter, this man is a true sicko.

He orders Yi-seok never to come near his daughter, and the ringing begins yet again as Yi-seok pulls away and staggers out of the room. Sick to the bone, Yi-seok stumbles to the elevator and tosses Hong-do her phone when she asks for it one last time.

Some days later, Hong-do cheerfully applies her old-woman makeup, preparing for her first day as the chairman’s typist. She wonders to herself how it will be, but figures at least she’s not cooking or cleaning.

But when she arrives at work, the chairman claims he didn’t intend to hire her and tells Butler Ahn to pay her and send her away. Hong-do enters the room and gently comments that he must be prejudiced against older people, asking him to give her a chance.

It doesn’t work and she heads back downstairs, but starts and nearly trips down the stairs to see the picture of Yi-seok on the wall. The head housekeeper tells her proudly that he’s the chairman’s grandson, and Butler Ahn rushes in to fetch Hong-do since the chairman’s decided to give her a chance after all.

Yi-seok’s mother calls him to remind him of his grandfather’s birthday soon, and she’s clearly in the manic phase of her bipolar disorder because she’s dressed to the nines and in a fantastic mood. (Bipolar disorder, for clarity, is a disorder that causes extreme mood swings from manic highs to depressive lows. It’s not, as many people mistakenly think, a form of multiple personality disorder.)

Yi-seok is sick and hung over but assures his mother he’s fine, agreeing to go shopping with her for a gift for his grandfather. He hangs up and chastises himself for not realizing his stabbing patient was that ill.

Chairman Go dictates to Hong-do then asks to see what she’s written, but dismisses her after saying that he only gave her a shot because she wanted it so badly. She astutely figures out that he can’t actually see what she’s typed and shows him how to use a smartphone as a magnifying glass, which blows his mind and he reconsiders hiring her.

Butler Ahn walks Hong-do out, and she waves him back inside. She hears a cry and sees Yi-seok carrying his mother’s many, many shopping bags while she limps on a hurt foot. Hong-do hides her face in a bush, peeking out to see Yi-seok scoop his mother into his arms and carry her inside. Hong-do marvels at Yi-seok’s easy smiles and laughter — he’s a different man with his family.

Doo-soo and his partner Yang grab lunch at a convenience store, Doo-soo fending off Yang’s teasing that he likes Hong-do. Doo-soo tries to call her again, insisting he’s just worried about her, and types up a text when she doesn’t answer.

He’s so intent on his text, he completely misses a stark naked woman running past the store window. Yang points her out and the two cops run out of the store after the woman, and Doo-soo’s text gets accidentally sent half-finished.

Hong-do is tending her indoor garden when she gets the partial-text from Doo-soo. He thanks her for the porridge and asks if she wants to… something, but it cuts off halfway through a word. She wanders through the house repeating the half-word, wondering what he could possibly have meant. She types a response asking what he means, but drops her phone in horror when she accidentally sends it.

The naked woman streaks through the streets with Doo-soo and Yang in hot pursuit, managing to evade them for quite a ways. Yang keeps up admirably, hilariously calling to shocked bystanders to look away, HAHA, and Doo-soo takes a shortcut in an attempt to cut her off.

At the same time, Yi-seok’s sister Se-ro is on the set of her film, dressed in a bikini and lounging poolside next to the movie’s lead actress, seemingly as an extra. Every time they start shooting, she manages to get her face or leg in the shot and obscure the leads, hee.

Suddenly the set is interrupted by the naked woman, who runs past everyone and jumps into the pool. Yang leaps in after her, and Doo-soo grabs Se-ro’s towel and finally coaxes the naked woman to him and covers her. Se-ro looks more annoyed that her only scene in the movie is cut out of frustration for the interruptions, than any concern over why a woman would be running starkers through the streets.

Yi-seok meets with a psychiatrist sunbae of his, Dr. UHM GI-CHOON (Seo Yi-seok) and fills her in on the details of the stabbing incident (but glossing over the marks on his neck as hickeys). He says the patient claimed to have been depressed since his wife passed away, and he just took his words at face value and didn’t look deeper. He confesses that now he’s concerned by the man’s unnatural obsession with his daughter.

Dr. Uhm says the man’s suicide attempt was a cry for help, but quickly changes the subject and asks Yi-seok why he’s been drinking. She says he’s in no condition to be practicing and assumes he’ll be quitting since his patients have left anyway, but Yi-seok only protests his innocence.

The naked woman is picked up at the station by a family member, who assures a worried Yang that she’ll take care of her but doesn’t seem to take the situation seriously. He’s concerned because she seems on paper to be a normal woman with a good job, and he wonders what would possess her to run around naked in broad daylight.

Hong-do hangs out in the bushes outside Doo-soo’s home, wondering aloud what she’ll do if he meant to ask her out. She bends to tie her shoe, which sets off a sweet imaginary sequence where her shoes and his shoes meet, his shoes tap and coax hers into dancing, and they end up nestled together as their occupants are presumably busy kissing.

Just then she gets a text from Doo-soo apologizing for the confusion, and he does indeed ask her to lunch the next day. Thrilled, she imagines herself helmetless and dancing with abandon in the street outside his home, looking absolutely radiant.

The next day she gets ready for her lunch date, excited but nervous, and leaves the house looking very pretty and most of all, dressed normally and without her helmet. She has a momentary setback when the taxi can’t get near her front door and she has to walk a couple of blocks to meet him, but she manages by hiding her face with an umbrella.

In the taxi, she pretends to be sleeping to avoid having to make small talk. A phone left by the previous customer ruins her careful plans by ringing, and the taxi driver literally screams at her to answer it, ha. The driver finally answers, and gets pulled over for being on the phone while driving.

The driver begs Hong-do to explain to the police, and to avoid another conversation with strangers she throws money at him and leaps out of the taxi. But she doesn’t pay enough, and the driver jumps out to chase her.

Meanwhile Doo-soo waits for Hong-do at the restaurant, looking nervous and perking up at every woman who walks in. He notices a suspicious-looking man alone at a table, and recognizes him from a police sketch of a wanted man. The man notices Doo-soo and runs, with Doo-soo chasing right behind.

Ah, so the opening sequence wasn’t Doo-soo chasing Hong-do, but each of them chasing, or being chased, separately. Hong-do flees from the cab driver, colliding with a biker and cutting up her knees, dropping her cell phone in the process. Doo-soo manages to catch his man, despite stopping to return some kids’ ball and help an ajumma pick up cardboard boxes that she dropped like the perfect hero that he is.

That night, Yi-seok and his family gather for the chairman’s birthday dinner. Mom is super perky and dotes on Yi-seok while practically ignoring Se-ro. The chairman is in a bad mood, asking Yi-seok about his practice and his drinking on the job and making a point to criticize everyone at the table.

The festivities are interrupted by Yi-seok’s father, causing Mom to become downright terrified. Later the three men meet in the chairman’s office, and Yi-seok is furious as he tells his father he has no right to come back here. Interestingly, the entire time he dresses down his own father for abandoning his mother and cheating on her, he never once actually looks at the man.

Shocked and scared, Mom takes to her bed, and Yi-seok goes to her room after laying down the law with Dad. He assures Mom that he’s got everything under control and she needn’t worry, that he’ll keep Dad far away from her.

Though it’s after dark, both Doo-soo and Hong-do arrive at the restaurant where they were supposed to meet. Doo-soo goes in and asks if anyone has seen a girl wearing a helmet, while Hong-do hangs outside, too nervous to talk to him.

Hong-do listens while Doo-soo calls her phone, but the person who answers tells him she was hit by a bicycle and lost it. Doo-soo walks right past Hong-do on his way to pick up her phone for her, though she hides her face from him.

All day, Hong-do’s perfect plans for her first meeting with Doo-soo have been ruined, and as she thinks of the final plan — to smile brightly at him when she sees him — she breaks into great sobs of disappointment. This is the one thing she could have done, yet she let her shyness take control and missed her chance.

Hong-do goes home and drinks soju alone in bed, and she gets a random urge to wash her bedding. As she strips the bed and complains about her dirty house, she hears Doo-soo call to her from outside, and quickly shuts off the light.

Doo-soo smiles when the light goes out, knowing she’s in there listening, and says that he came because he heard she was in an accident and was worried. Again overcome by crippling anxiety, Hong-do crouches in her bedroom and covers herself with her blanket.

Doo-soo leaves her phone by the door and apologizes for today, assuming that Hong-do waited for him. He asks for another chance, and she doesn’t answer but sits silently with tears streaming down her face. Doo-soo says that the person on the bicycle said she was wearing a very pretty dress, which makes him regret missing their date even more. He leaves but asks her to call him, saying that he’s very persistent. She pulls the phone in through her window and finds medicine for her scraped-up knee inside the bag too.

Yi-seok goes to see Dr. Uhm again, complaining that his father is back in the country and plans to move back into Grandpa’s house. She tells him that she got a call about his drinking and the stabbing incident, and that his license wasn’t suspended. But she’s in charge of him for the time being, and she orders him to quit drinking and start coming to work at her clinic, where she can keep an eye on him to make sure he stays sober.

He complains about having to work here instead of his own fancy digs, but doesn’t seem to have a choice in the matter. Dr. Uhm asks if he doesn’t want to become a real doctor — one who can cry alongside his patients when they cry.

With her blushing back full-force, Hong-do regards her helmet and remembers Yi-seok’s claim that he can cure her anxiety. She makes a decision and tells the helmet that she will meet Doo-soo again, and she won’t be needing its help that time. First thing in the morning she heads out on her scooter to see Yi-seok.

Yi-seok arrives at his clinic to find it totally cleaned out of all his furniture and belongings, but before he can even process this, Hong-do approaches him. Her face is burning and she stumbles over her words, but she determinedly removes the helmet and reveals herself.

Seeing her bright red face and wild hair for the first time, Yi-seok is taken aback and asks her what’s wrong. He realizes her condition is more serious than he thought, and she haltingly asks if he can help her. Gaining momentum out of desperation, she tells him that even if he’s a bad doctor, even if he’s a psycho or a swindler himself, he has to fix it.

Starting to cry, Hong-do tells him that if he can’t help her, she’ll die. She meets his eyes and simply pleads, “Fix me. Please.”

 
COMMENTS

The show is definitely growing on me, as we learn more about our leads and their backgrounds, and now that the basic plot has been laid out I find it intriguing. It’s simple — Hong-do needs help so she can meet the man she loves, and the only doctor who can help her is more of a mess than she is — but sometimes the simplest stories are the ones with the most potential because the writers hasn’t written themselves into a tight corner. There are a lot of places the story can go from here, and I’m interested in the characters and their issues enough to be willing to see where this all goes.

I do get the sense that this show will be a slow burn (no pun intended), and that we could be peeling back layers for some time to come. It’s fascinating that, even though they know very little about each other and what they do know, they dislike, Hong-do and Yi-seok seem to already be helping each other. Hong-do has, twice now, found her voice in front of Yi-seok and spoken her mind, which she hasn’t been able to do unless behind her old woman makeup. And I’m even more intrigued by whatever is going on with Yi-seok whenever he’s near his patient Man-dong, and how having Hong-do close by calms his bizarre reactions.

And what’s that all about anyway?! Clearly something about Man-dong is triggering Yi-seok’s symptoms of ringing ears, blurring vision, and feeling weak and sick. I’m dying to know why he reacts that way to the man and what’s causing it. Does he have some sort of psychic sick-bastard radar that the man is setting off? And why does Hong-do’s proximity make it all stop? There was nothing about Heart to Heart to indicate there’s any sort of supernatural angle to the story, but for now I can’t think of any other reason why this particular patient would be causing Yi-seok’s strange reaction. But I like the setup that he and Hong-do have to work together to help each other, and I like the fact that they have an interesting chemistry that’s not animosity and not friendship, but just a sort of resigned acceptance. It’s a different kind of start to a romance, and it will be fun to watch it play out.

Doo-soo, on the other hand, seems just a little too good to be true. I wonder about his motives for trying to draw Hong-do out of her shell, because “she’s been bringing him food for seven years and he’s curious about her” seems a little too easy. Maybe I’m wrong and he’s just that nice, but it feels more like she’s a project to him, than an actual romantic interest. I do like that he understands her and respects her boundaries, but like I said before, someone in her condition doesn’t need to be coddled, they need to be helped to heal and lead a more normal life. Especially since that’s clearly what she desperately wants, and even more especially since he’s the reason she wants it. It could quickly become frustrating to Hong-do to reach out for help, and have Doo-soo instead give her space. Giving space is nice, but only as long as the person wants that space, you know?

Which is why I think that, despite all his freakishly strange issues, Yi-seok has the potential to be better for Hong-do in the end. Aside from being an actual psychiatrist, he’s not the type to sit back and let people just do what they want when he sees it’s harming them — it’s his instinct to help. I think that’s why, in the first episode, he was so good at helping the woman on the roof, but got so frustrated and twitchy with his patients in the office. The woman on the roof needed, and responded to, his prodding for her to open up and accept his help, while his regular patients only wanted someone to listen while they whined. I can understand how that would turn a man like Yi-seok, with his drive to take action, to drinking. By coming to him and asking for his help, Hong-do has already started a process in Yi-seok that will help him get better too, because he’s a man who needs to be needed (more evidence — his relationship with his mother). I can already see how they will be good for each other, as patient/doctor and potentially as romantic interests.

 
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