Heart to Heart: Episode 3

by LollyPip

Now that the premise is all set up and the characters introduced, the show is starting to settle into a cute, quirky groove that I quite like. Hong-do takes some positive steps forward in getting to know Doo-soo, and we get a glimpse of what a good, intuitive doctor Yi-seok can be when he makes an effort. Of course, it’s getting him to give a damn enough to MAKE that effort that’s going to be the challenge, but it looks like it’s going to be a fun process helping him turn into a real live boy.

EPISODE 3 RECAP

The show opens on Hong-do and Doo-soo dressed as a Joseon couple on their wedding night. Doo-soo laughs kindly at Hong-do as she uses her voluminous sleeves to hide her blushing face, and pushes the table between them out of the way. He tells her he likes her red cheeks, and gently caresses her face. He leans forward to kiss her forehead, and the candle is blown out. Rawr.

In the morning, still in bed, Hong-do shyly asks, “Did you sleep well?” Doo-soo only smiles and pulls her in for morning cuddles.

Back in reality, we see Hong-do where we left her, begging Yi-seok to fix her. But Yi-seok isn’t moved by her pleading, still angry that she accused him of murder, and he ignores Hong-do to call the police to report the break-in at his office.

Of course, the team that shows up to investigate are Doo-soo and Yang (Yi-seok: “Are you the only detectives around here?” HA). Hong-do has a minor freak-out and shoves her helmet back on, but Doo-soo is so sweet — he just talks to her like nothing is odd, asking if she got her phone where he left it.

Yi-seok tells the detectives that the only thing he wants back is a collection of gold hearts. Remembering Hong-do’s incredible memory for detail, he asks if she saw how many there were when she came the first time.

Hong-do leans in close to whisper to Yi-seok (which seems to bother Doo-soo) that there were eight blank spaces so 72 in total, and Yi-seok orders the detectives to find them and leaves. He calls to Hong-do to follow if she wants him to treat her so she shuffles around Doo-soo, who offers to find her another doctor, hee.

Hong-do finds her voice once she and Yi-seok are outside, griping about how rude he was to Doo-soo. He shoos her away but she reminds him that he said he would treat her. Yi-seok orders her to give him a ride to his car, steals her helmet for himself, and literally picks her up and plunks her on her scooter in front of him.

Of course, being the jerk that he is, he spends the entire ride making fun of her and whining about her driving. When they get to the garage he asks why she wants treatment so badly, and she says she wants to be able to talk normally to Doo-soo, to say normal things like “Hello,” and “Did you sleep well?”

Yi-seok latches onto this last one, since it’s something you’d say to someone you spent the night with, making Hong-do grin sheepishly. Yi-seok agrees to a consultation, but she’s shocked at his high fee and drives away, hurling insults as she goes.

Yi-seok calls Dr. Uhm from his car, who says again that she’ll find him a room to work out of at her hospital. He refuses again and hangs up, turning on the radio to listen to his girlfriend Yeon-woo’s radio show. He grimaces to hear that she’s interviewing another psychiatrist who wrote a book, and talks back to the radio every time Yeon-woo says something complimentary.

But something makes Yi-seok change his mind about Dr. Uhm’s offer, and she shows him the room she’s found for him. It’s nice and roomy, but full of junk, smells, and has no electricity, but he sees it as a good place to make his comeback. A sweet little grandmother enters the room (one of Dr. Uhm’s patients) and suddenly Yi-seok is crippled with the same ringing and pain in his ears that was triggered by his previous patient.

An awkward edit takes us to his grandfather’s study, where Chairman Go has wrangled Butler Ahn into typing his memoirs. Sighing, Butler Ahn reminds the chairman how “that grandmother” was good at this, but the chairman thinks this job is extremely difficult and still doubts she can do it.

Yi-seok explains to Dr. Uhm that this reaction has only happened to him once before with his patient that stabbed himself, but that he’s met a woman that seems to cancel out the symptoms. Dr. Uhm wonders if it’s PTSD from the stabbing, but Yi-seok is worried he’s taking after his mother with her bipolar disorder.

Butler Ahn gets his wish and Hong-do returns to the chairman’s home in her grandmotherly disguise to start her new job. Chairman Go gives her a list of books to use as reference material, surprised when she can read the English titles. She quickly manages to locate all the books in his extensive library, impressing him even further when she knows what the books are about. I love the chairman’s disgruntled expressions, ha.

Hong-do offers to get more books from the library, telling him it’s better to check them out before buying, and he takes a bit of offense at her implication that she knows more than him. He tells her (in English) that she’s wrong about him and she backs down, saying with a charming grin that she can’t keep up with him, throwing in some compliments to butter him up.

Dr. Uhm visits Yi-seok’s mother, who has come down from her bipolar high since her husband showed up, no longer cheerful but now anxious and quiet. She seems to have lost a few days, and thinks the chairman’s birthday is coming up and she needs to go shopping. Dr. Uhm gently reminds her that the chairman’s birthday was last week, and Mom gasps when she realizes she’s right.

Doo-soo and Yang are checking the CCTV footage at the station when Yi-seok calls Doo-soo for Hong-do’s phone number. Doo-soo refuses, so Yi-seok settles for having him relay a message to have her come to his new office location.

Hong-do is at home happily making seaweed snacks for Doo-soo, chirping out answers to questions she imagines Doo-soo would ask her on a date. Later she delivers the seaweed and makes sure the coast is clear, then settles to write him a note. She’s so engrossed that she doesn’t notice him pulling up, and he smiles to see her there.

Hilariously, Doo-soo sneaks up behind Hong-do and taps her shoulder, then holds out his arms to keep her from fleeing (once she recovers from the heart attack his tap gives her). He stops her from running and asks her to stay and talk, ushering her to his car to sit.

He’s very aware of her discomfort, warning her before taking her arm and letting her sit in the car while he stands outside. He asks what she brought him and she hands him the note, and he chatters a bit nervously about how much he likes her seaweed snacks the most.

Doo-soo tells Hong-do that seven years ago when he responded to a call to her home regarding a thief, it was the first time he actually saw a criminal in action. He gained confidence from that, and every time she brings him food in thanks, he gains a bit more. Okay, that’s really sweet.

He says that he wants to help her in return, casually resting his hand on the edge of the window. As he natters on about all the things he could help her with, Hong-do gently reaches out and touches his finger, which stops his talking. He looks down at her for a long moment, but she suddenly realizes what she’s doing and escapes through the passenger-side door.

Yi-seok waits for Yeon-woo outside her apartment, and when she arrives he tells her he’s hurt that she chose another psychiatrist to interview on her radio show. She seems upset that he’s grumpy about that and not their breakup, but he asserts that they’re not broken up, just in the process of breaking up. There’s a difference?

Hong-do lies in bed later, chastising herself for touching Doo-soo, but she kisses the finger that touched him, literally making her toes curl. Cute. Doo-soo texts her that he forgot to give her the message from Yi-seok, and thanks her for staying and talking. She types out a text telling him to sleep tight, but ends up deleting it without sending.

Yi-seok cleans in his new office the next day, and the little grandmother shows up to chat. She aegyos him to play with her, but he waves her off when the painful ringing begins again. Suddenly the ringing stops, and Yi-seok looks up to see Hong-do in the doorway. So he doesn’t even have to be touching her, just her nearness makes the pain stop. Iiinteresting.

Doo-soo calls Yi-seok’s sister Se-ro, having received a formal complaint from her regarding the naked runner interrupting her movie shoot. She’s not interested in talking and tells him to just follow the law, and hangs up on him. Yang joins Doo-soo on his bench, when out of nowhere the naked streaker runs past them again.

Yi-seok considers the strange way Hong-do nullifies his symptoms whenever she’s near him, comparing her to the antidote made by the snake’s own venom. He wants to find out why this happens, and offers her a spot in his new office so he can test the effect she has on him when he meets a patient that sets him off.

He offers her a tiny discount on her consultation fee if she’ll clean the office up, but it’s so insulting that she leaves. She sticks her head back in to offer to help him on a regular basis if he’ll treat her for free, but they’re interrupted by a call from Dr. Uhm sending him to the police station to evaluate the naked runner. Desperate, Yi-seok agrees to Hong-do’s offer so that she’ll go to the station with him.

Doo-soo and Yang are busy fending off their cop colleagues who are all trying to get a peek at the naked woman through the two-way mirror. Yi-seok lowers the blinds and tells Hong-do to cover the woman with a blanket, which she does as the poor woman shivers in a corner, oblivious and unresponsive.

The woman shakes violently and doesn’t answer Yi-seok, but from under the table Hong-do says she doesn’t think the woman is cold. She objects to his aggressive questioning style, and slides one of her pieces of candy from Doo-soo towards the woman.

Oblivious, Yi-seok tosses the candy in his own mouth, causing Hong-do to wail that it wasn’t for him. Strangely, the naked woman starts to sniff his mouth, smelling the candy, and Hong-do quickly hands her her last piece. The woman grabs it and stuffs it in her mouth, grunting like an animal. Poor thing.

Yi-seok grabs Hong-do, roughing her up for more candy that she doesn’t have, and the naked woman wakes up and asks where she is. Ooohh, she’s diabetic. That explains a lot. She’s in insulin shock, which can cause a whole host of strange behaviors.

Once her mother reaches the station and explains her daughter’s condition, everything seems under control. Peeking from around the corner, Hong-do notices the matching rings they both wear, though the young woman looks uncomfortable when her mother touches her.

Doo-soo walks Yi-seok and Hong-do out of the station, and it’s telling how Hong-do cowers behind Yi-seok as if he’s a safe barrier. Doo-soo thanks her for the seaweed snacks, earning a grin which makes Yi-seok snarl.

He grabs her in a headlock and says they have to celebrate her new job working for him, and drags her away. Looks like jealousy to me, though Yi-seok doesn’t realize it yet. He hauls her to their vehicles, but shoves her away once they’re out of Doo-soo’s line of sight.

He can’t stand it when she looks happy that he’s agreeing to help her for free in return for her help, and makes fun of her wanting to seduce a man with that red face. Gah, he’s so mean! He pokes her helmet a few times for good measure, but she just blandly reminds him that it was her candy that helped his patient just now.

When Hong-do arrives at Yi-seok’s office to help clean, he screeches a fake, “Cockroach!” to distract her long enough to steal her helmet, ha. He tells her she’s not allowed to use it to hide her face in the hospital or she’ll scare the patients. She pretty much cleans his entire office while they exchange snarky insults, though he clocks that she’s perfectly comfortable talking to him.

Se-ro comes to the station to talk to Doo-soo about her complaint, but she’s not interested in hearing their side of the incident. She tells him how it affected her, and how their interruption of her movie scene probably kept her from becoming this generation’s Meryl Streep. HAHA. She hands him the receipts for her expenses like her bikini and mani/pedi, demanding they pay her back with a sincere apology.

Hong-do does a great job on Yi-seok’s office, but as soon as she sits for her consultation, her blushing rushes back full-force. Yi-seok marvels at it and cups her cheek to feel the heat, asking her to explain how she feels right now. She says she’s uncomfortable and objects to his further questions, but he can’t help her without her cooperation.

She says she’s uncomfortable at how he looks at her, admitting that she assumes he thinks she’s ugly. He says he doesn’t and she explodes, yelling at him for making fun of her, but he insists it’s true. Hong-do lashes out, saying that she may have one big weakness but that he has many more weaknesses than her. After she storms out, Yi-seok admits to himself that she’s not wrong.

Back home, Hong-do cuts up fruit for Doo-soo and grumbles to herself about Yi-seok. Yi-seok calls her and orders her to meet him at the hospital, but Hong-do notices his phrasing — that he requested that she come rather than ordered her, which feels like a small victory.

She motors over to Doo-soo’s place to leave the fruit, but screeches to a halt when she sees him meet a pretty woman outside his apartment. She’s deflated as she watches them get in his car, chatting about how many elders will be present from their families.

She’s in a nasty mood by the time she meets Yi-seok at the hospital, and he assumes she’s still angry with him. She tries to hang back in the parking lot but he tells her he’s meeting the diabetic woman who says she’s in emotional pain, and Hong-do just sighs that she’s got nothing to hurt over and she’s jealous of her.

At Yi-seok’s prodding, Hong-do says she noticed that the woman wears couple rings with her mother, and that she envies their close relationship. Yi-seok teases that she must dream of wearing couple rings with Doo-soo, earning a tiny smile, and he bonks her on the helmet again (though now it’s more teasing than mean).

There’s a tense atmosphere in the young woman’s hospital room, and she’s mysteriously developed strange spots on her skin. The patient says she’s fine and her mother overreacted, and tries to get Yi-seok and Hong-do to leave, but shrinks back when her mother reaches out to touch her.

Yi-seok notices their couple rings, and takes a page from Hong-do’s book by suggesting they all tell each other their weaknesses. He asks Mom about her daughter, and she says her only weakness is being too nice. Next he asks the daughter about her mother’s weaknesses, but Mom interrupts and answers that her daughter respects her too much to do that.

Mom admits that they recently had a fight because her daughter was saying she didn’t want to get married, and her sweet exterior slips a bit when she turns to her daughter to say she should get married and have children soon. Yi-seok asks the young woman if she caused her insulin shock on purpose, and she quietly admits yes.

Mom sharply asks her why she’d do that, and her daughter says it’s because her mother talks constantly, and that she thinks she’s so nice and kind and everyone else is lacking and stupid. Finally finding her voice, she gets loud as she yells that she’s sick of her superior act, and how she pretends to be the perfect mother.

Later at Yi-seok’s office, Hong-do asks him how he knew the daughter hated her mother. He says the couple rings tipped him off, because no mother and daughter like each other that much. He says the stress of putting up with her mother is what caused the young woman to stop eating and cause her own illness.

Hong-do admits that he was just a tiny bit awesome with the patients, which he eats up like ice cream. He’s so happy that he offers her a reward, and says he’ll help her say, “Did you sleep well?” to Doo-soo. She balks, but a little reverse psychology brings her around.

Hong-do wakes in the morning, thinking of the young woman bottling up her feelings until it made her ill, which convinces her that she needs to say the things she wants to say. She practices the short sentence over and over, until Yi-seok calls to say he’s on his way to pick her up.

Soon Hong-do is banging her helmet on a wall outside Doo-soo’s apartment, while Yi-seok urges her on from his car. Ha, his increasingly frustrated flailing at her hesitation is hysterical. She makes a few false starts towards Doo-soo’s door, then finally girds her loins and whips the helmet off, positioning herself right in front of the door.

Right on cue, Doo-soo comes outside, looking happy to see her without her helmet. Hong-do tries to say her line but gets hung up on the first word over and over, and bless Doo-soo, he just waits patiently.

Eventually she gets herself together, but instead of saying what she planned, she blurts out, “Detective Jang, I like you.” And her face turns bright red as she stares at him in horror.

COMMENTS

Okay, now this is more like it! I found this episode much lighter and funnier than last week’s premiere episodes, and I’m all in if this is how we’re going to continue. I even found myself laughing out loud at unexpected moments, which is unusual for me, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the little beats of sweetness even among serious or humorous scenes. The tone of the show seems to be leveling out a bit, not so dark as the first episode but still carrying a nice weight to balance out the funny moments. And I like the little vignettes at the beginnings of the episodes, which seem random but turn out to have a strong connection to what happens in each episode. It’s familiar, but not the exact came conceit as Marriage Not Dating‘s cold open fake-outs, and they’re a cute way to introduce the conflict of the episode.

The lead characters are downright charming, even Yi-seok with his grumpiness and his careless manhandling of Hong-do, though I can see that he’s coming to respect that she’s more than just her condition. He gives her credit for having a great memory for detail, and uses her comment about everyone having weaknesses to help his patient. And I do think a little jealousy is setting in, though it’s all subconscious at this point, because Yi-seok gets very defensive when Doo-soo is around and takes a lot of opportunities to rub in the fact that Hong-do talks to him and allows him (though reluctantly) to touch her. I do love a good petty jealous rivalry, so I’m looking forward to a lot more of that from Yi-seok (plus, how cute is that pouty-face?).

And I do think he’s a better doctor than he initially seemed, because he proved again in this episode that, when a patient is willing to meet him halfway, he’s extremely insightful. To intuit all that information just from the fact that the mother and daughter wear couple rings is downright scary-smart, though it’s interesting that he didn’t notice the rings in the first place and needed Hong-do to point them out. I can see a great potential partnership in the making here, with her eye for detail and his intuition about how people work. I can’t wait to see them work together to help more patients, and help each other grow in the process.

I have to say, I think I was a bit harsh on Doo-soo before, because the more I watch him the more I think he really is just exactly what you see. He’s a nice guy, who became a cop to help people, and he has a genuine interest in Hong-do. I like how she stands out for him, not because she brings him food, but because her home break-in seven years ago was the case that made him feel confident in his career choice. And I loved when he said that every time she brings him treats, he’s reminded of that and gains even more confidence. An argument could be made that he’s misinterpreted her gifts as thankfulness and that he only wants to return the favor, but I think there’s more to it than that. I’d be willing to bet he’s more than half-crushing on her already, because isn’t it natural to be attracted to someone who makes you feel good about yourself? His smiles whenever he sees her are so huge, natural and boyish, and I love how he turns into this big dorky goof who makes bad jokes and gets a bit clumsy around her. Yep, he likes her.

Which is heartbreaking because I can already see the seeds of interest in Yi-seok too, and it’s clear that there’s something between him and Hong-do that makes sense. He’s the only person she’s comfortable around, enough to talk back and look him in the eye, and he’s the only person she doesn’t blush around as a matter of course. Yes, she’s blushed in front of him several times, but only when she was forced to say something out of her comfort zone. In their regular interactions, she’s practically normal, and that’s more telling than seven years of secret snack delivery but still being unable to complete a sentence around a man. Not to mention how something about Hong-do causes Yi-seok’s mysterious symptoms to disappear. If ever the Universe was screaming, “These two are meant for each other,” it’s now.

 
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