Superdaddy Yeol: Episode 6

by Saya

Find out where it hurts and why. Fix it. That’s our assignment this week, but it turns out not to be as straightforward as it sounds. Yeol devotes himself to getting to the bottom of Sa-rang’s problem, which isn’t quite what he expects. But we’re in for a taste of crisis, as nothing goes to plan yet again, and he has to answer to Mi-rae, who has problems of her own as the big surgery comes up. How long will she be able to hide her illness, and at what cost?

But crisis has a way of bringing people together, and the makeshift family Mi-rae has put together might just be beginning to bond…

EPISODE 6 RECAP

In an opening voiceover, Yeol tells us that his role model was Park Chan-ho. Both their lives took a turn for the worse at the same time, with Chan-ho’s career slump parallel to Yeol losing his game, his girl and his mother. But now Yeol is hopeful that his hero’s return bodes well for himself, too. Dreaming of hitting a home run at the last inning, he’s going to take his second chance with Mi-rae and his career.

We rewind to Ki-tae’s pitch. Yeol closes his eyes and hits the incoming ball on sense alone. Nobody’s more shocked than he is, and the kids break into raucous cheers.

The class is treated to a meal at Ki-tae’s expense — his penalty for losing the bet. Yeol crows about his win to Ki-tae, making everyone at the table uncomfortable, eventually driving away Ki-tae’s wife, CHAE YOO-RA.

Ki-tae is quick to make excuses for his loss, and Yeol sniggers that he should be a better loser. “It’s embarrassing, in front of the kid,” he adds, indicating Bo-mi. Incensed, Ki-tae grabs Yeol by the collar, while the latter congratulates him for falling for his curveball. Ki-tae suddenly notices all the kids staring, and when his glance reaches Bo-mi, she runs out, her face full of shame. He chases after her.

Yeol chuckles about their lack of family solidarity, when Mi-rae follows them out. Min-woo’s departure makes Sa-rang try to follow, but Yeol cajoles her to stay (so he isn’t a loner, lol).

Mi-rae bows her head to Yoo-ra, who accuses them of ruining the meeting with their crass behavior. Mi-rae agrees — there’s no way classy people like Yoo-ra or Ki-tae would get petty or vengeful about such a thing, right? Mi-rae’s got her good there, and Yoo-ra has to satisfy herself with the high road she just got given, haha.

Min-woo waves at Bo-mi and she cheers up, waving back. Sa-rang watches from inside. Yeol remains cheerfully oblivious and figures she’s down because Min-woo went after Bo-mi. That’s not it, she says, and reproaches him for his graceless behavior to Ki-tae. She abandons him, too, and he still doesn’t get what the problem is. He notices her limping.

Ki-tae plays a loud song on the drive home to break the tension, but mother and daughter simultaneously yell to turn it off. Yoo-ra screams in frustration, and Bo-mi joins in. So does Ki-tae after a moment. This is actually pretty funny and makes Ki-tae strangely likeable for the first time. He vows to his family that he will beat Yeol (and restore their honor? lol).

In his car, Yeol sings along to the same song while Mi-rae covers Sa-rang’s ears. Just as Sa-rang is about to rip into him, mom holds her back. It’s the first time he’s won since losing nine times, she whispers — let him have his moment. Sa-rang complains that he’s so childish, it undoes her efforts to think well of him.

Yeol finds out Mi-rae sent Woo-hyuk on a personal errand, and she asserts that he’s like family, which makes Sa-rang smile. But she snaps at Yeol to concentrate on driving, and he grumbles that it’s like serving royalty. He must’ve hit the nail on the head because this makes the ladies point and laugh.

Dr. Hwang signs off on Hyun-woo’s surgical consent forms when daughter Ji-hye pops in. She’s off for the day, and Mom tells her not to go drinking. Ji-hye puts her hand over her heart, and croons that right there, it’s calling out for alcohol. Haha, I like her.

Ji-hye passes Woo-hyuk in the corridor. More than a little tipsy, he loudly curses out an absent Mi-rae, convinced Yeol’s a fake. Recognizing an ally, Ji-hye turns back and tells him he’s right, it’s a fake marriage.

Mi-rae walks in on Yeol in the bathroom, eyes going south first. Still classy, show. You couldn’t wait until he came out, to thank him for being Sa-rang’s daddy? She openly takes a good look at his bits remarks that he’s doing well (the “down there” is implied). But when he tries to get cozier, she warns him that that’s as far as it goes. But if he fixes Sa-rang, who knows, she might jump him first.

Over (many) drinks, Woo-hyuk tells Ji-hye about the first time he met Mi-rae. By holding his hand before a surgery, she calmed the hand tremors he’d had since he was born because she’s magical by getting him to think of himself as a robot. That explains so much. Since then, he’s carried a torch for her.

Ji-hye wails that she wants Yeol, like she wants her Chanel bag or Gucci heels. “Are you really a doctor?” Woo-hyuk asks. She grabs him in a choke and garbles at him to fix her, “I want to heal!”

Mom Dr. Hwang and Coach Bang arrive in time for this display, and the sound of her voice gets sloshed Ji-hye’s attention. Releasing Woo-hyuk, she launches herself at, “My single mooom!” But when she notices who mom’s with, she’s all, “Are you two…dating?” But they’re just here to discuss Hyun-woo’s surgery and rehab. Meanwhile, Woo-hyuk passes out on his plate.

Yeol wakes Sa-rang up for school…on Saturday. Impervious to her flails, he changes the plan to morning exercise. She sulks her way through it (understandably), and it’s the same back at home when Yeol tries to give her a foot-bath. Eventually even Yeol loses his patience.

At the clinic, Sa-rang’s x-rays are clean and Yeol tells her it’s tendonitis, which should get better with rest. But it hasn’t, Sa-rang says — which is his point. Why not? She accuses him of being a quack — he should already have figured out what hurts and why. He says the tests prove she should be fine to run, but she steadfastly refuses.

Yeol reports to Mi-rae that she’s faking injury to get out of running. Mi-rae’s busy with prep for Hyun-woo’s surgery and doesn’t bother even looking at him. The cause, Yeol says, is an attitude problem stemming from her mother, and he’s done with her.

This gets her attention. Sa-rang needs him, she says, to help her overcome her rebellion and lack of will. Yeol replies that she should leave her alone. She can figure it out herself, like everyone else. Mi-rae asks if he’d do that to his real daughter, and Yeol readily concedes he wouldn’t: He’d make sure she went to school, had friends, and studied properly. But, he points out, he’s not her real dad, and the fake doesn’t become real, just like their paper relationship isn’t real. All she wants is Sa-rang and a dad for her, he notes cynically.

She lays into him: Did he even try? She throws a jersey with his name and the number “61” at his feet, and reminds him of his role model. She liked him because he used to try hard and not make excuses. That’s why she sought him out now. But she can’t entrust her daughter to someone without a sense of responsibility. So he can do as he likes, she says — she washes her hands of him.

Alone, he contemplates the shirt. A flashback shows us injured Yeol, in a wheelchair. He’s handed over to a green young trainee — Mi-rae. He’s her first patient. Find out where he’s hurting and why, Dr. Hwang instructs her.

She adorably shuffle-hops to Yeol on the ward, and her novice-like ministrations have him asking for a different doc. But her determination surprises him; she strips off his jersey for a hospital gown in a flash, and puts the jersey on herself. “From now on, you’re my patient. I’m your doctor,” she declares. And she’ll figure out his problems whether he tells her or not. Aw, he looks pretty smitten already.

Present Yeol picks the shirt up with a sigh.

That night, Yeol’s dad catches him with a bag full of beer, going the opposite direction to home. Dad figures he fought with Mi-rae and advises him to make up. But he hits a nerve when he says a couple still needs to sleep in the same bed, and Yeol tells him to mind his own business.

With Sang-hae, he watches old Park Chan-ho games and reminisces about their golden age, when they thought they only had glory ahead. But Sang-hae likes his life now, with its widened focus, and even appreciates the bitter things. He tells his friend that to work things out with Mi-rae, it has to be different this time — after all, it doesn’t matter how he throws the strike as long as he stays in the game.

Dr. Hwang briefs the team on Hyun-woo’s surgery, to be led by Mi-rae, and his post-surgery rehab with Yeol. Mi-rae interrupts to say that Yeol might quit, since he failed her first assignment. Ji-hye jumps in to take over his training, determined to save him. Mi-rae surprises everyone by agreeing.

Woo-hyuk pokes his head in. Mi-rae tells him to wait outside, but he’s here for Ji-hye, to switch back their phones which got mixed up the other night. Later in the car, he’s keen to clarify to Mi-rae that they’re just friends, but she’s not interested. He’s not the one, she says. He argues back that unlike Yeol, he wouldn’t give up on Sa-rang — does he still have no hope?

It looks like it, because as they arrive at Sa-rang’s school, they spot Yeol waiting to pick her up, wearing the jersey Mi-rae discarded earlier. She’s shocked, and Woo-hyuk mutters about how tacky he looks. She gave it to him, she reveals: his hero Park Chan-ho’s shirt number, so he would be like him. Woo-hyuk sinks into his seat with a sigh of defeat.

A flashback shows an excited Mi-rae wheel Yeol away from a Park Chan-ho game. Big news: He’s fit enough to be discharged! She presents him with a congratulatory gift — that special jersey. She tells him to keep throwing no matter what, just like Park Chan-ho. Whether he falls down or gets hurt, not to give up. He doesn’t say anything, but his gaze speaks volumes.

She approaches him now, and he plays off the jersey thing as having nothing else to wear. She was packing her bags, she says, since he’d given up on Sa-rang’s rehab. But Yeol barks that she can’t and he hasn’t — his livelihood is at stake. Bringing her close, he adds that it affects their relationship as a real married couple — one where she might make a move on him first, he leers. Mi-rae even flirts back. They break into giggles a second later.

Woo-hyuk watches their affectionate display from the car with despondence.

Sa-rang shuffles along in a reluctant jog, with Yeol directing her from behind. He notices how she’s tucked down the back of her left shoe so the heel juts out. She tells him the right shoe fits fine, but not the left. But her mom doesn’t need to know, she says fiercely.

Their run brings them to Bo-mi, and Sa-rang immediately turns around. When her mom arrives, Yeol U-turns to join Sa-rang. He’s not avoiding her either, he blusters, it’s just tiresome. They exchange conspiratorial smiles.

It’s surgery time for Hyun-woo and Yeol accompanies him. Yeol wishes him well, and hands him over to Mi-rae for transfer to the hospital. Before she leaves, he asks her about Sa-rang’s shoe size. She’s busy with Hyun-woo and doesn’t think it’s important. The elevator doors close between them.

Yeol figures Sa-rang can’t have quit running over shoes, and reviews her race footage. She stays down after a fall, and he follows her line of sight to the stands — where Bo-mi watches.

He talks it over with Sang-hae. His theory is that she’s developed a jinx around Bo-mi since she stole away Min-woo. Sang-hae advises him to check with Mi-rae, but Yeol is confident. He knows now, where it hurts and why.

Tracking down Bo-mi, who is with Min-woo, Yeol sends her to a nearby playground where her dad is waiting for her, he tells her. She skips off and Yeol holds Min-woo back for a “man to man” chat. Lol.

Sa-rang gets a text from Min-woo asking to meet at a playground. Face alight, she’s about to head off, when she sees Min-woo in a shop stuffing his face with a giant burger.

Yeol returns Min-woo’s phone, and commences grilling him: Does he like Sa-rang? Min-woo explains that she’s fiery and likes to have her way, while he’s more of a get-along person. He’s wrong, Yeol says — she only acts fierce, but really she’s sensitive and easily moved.

He’s about to spill the beans on why she quit running when he sees Sa-rang. She runs away. Yeol follows her into the street and she rounds on him: He’s the one who sent the text, to make her meet Bo-mi. What is he, she asks, to interfere with her life?

A dad, he says. “I want to take care of you like a real dad,” he confesses. A real dad wouldn’t meddle and humiliate her, she sobs. She turns heel, and he calls out that a real dad would’ve done the same, so she wouldn’t hurt alone.

Min-woo arrives and tells Yeol that Sa-rang and Bo-mi were best friends, and she wanted to be popular like her. So the person she’s looking for isn’t really him, he says, but Bo-mi.

The day darkens. Yeol can’t find Sa-rang at home or any of the usual places. He has a bad feeling and Sang-hae asks if he’s checked with Mi-rae.

Mi-rae scrubs in for the impending surgery with Woo-hyuk, and he’s amped to be in theater with her again. That’s when Yeol charges in with the news that Sa-rang’s disappeared. Uhh. Could’ve broken that more gently, maybe.

At the playground, Bo-mi waits with growing suspicion. Sa-rang appears, and tells her that Yeol lied to engineer their meeting. They’re spotted by Yeol’s dad (out on a date, lol), but she doesn’t hear him call.

Mi-rae tears into Yeol for butting into Sa-rang’s business. He thought he could fix it — he knew where she was hurt and why. It’s just like him, she cries, to do everything on his own and end up hurting the other person. She demands he find her immediately, or all bets are off.

Yeol snaps that she’s responsible, too, for not knowing Sa-rang had differently-sized feet. Sa-rang didn’t want her busy mom to blame herself for her injury, so she kept quiet while it got worse. Yeol tried to take care of it quietly for the same reason, and he promised Sa-rang not to tell. Mi-rae becomes increasingly stricken.

Their face-off is broken by Woo-hyuk fetching her for the surgery, while Yeol gets a call from Dad — he sighted Sa-rang.

Sa-rang and Bo-mi seem to have made up. In the growing twilight, they reminisce about their past friendship, finally sharing warm smiles. Sa-rang asks Bo-mi about why they became estranged, and why Min-woo left her.

Yeol speeds to the location, berating himself. Dad is on the phone with him, and spots the girls walking by a building site. He looks up, where workmen move dangerously tottering wooden beams.

An anxious Mi-rae makes the first incision, but she has an attack of faintness and drops the scalpel, to Woo-hyuk’s shock. She struggles to focus, but her hand shakes. Woo-hyuk steadies her hand with his own, and tells her to close her eyes and hold her breath, just like she told him in the past.

Yeol is still trying to track Dad down. Dad is right behind the kids, when the whole stack of beams crashes down. Across the street, Yeol sees the disaster. Too far to make it, he picks up a brick and hurls it. It deflects some beams that would otherwise have landed on the girls.

But it’s not over yet, as debris continues to fall. Dad reaches them and throws himself over the children, shielding them from one last onslaught. A metal board slams into his back, and Yeol sprints to him, yelling.

Meanwhile, Mi-rae sinks to the floor outside the theater, clutching her abdomen.

The girls are okay, but Dad is rushed to hospital, where Woo-hyuk sees them. He finds Mi-rae frantic with worry about her missing daughter, but Woo-hyuk says he just saw Yeol.

The doctor tells Yeol that Dad luckily only fractured his shoulder. In the waiting area, Sa-rang notices Bo-mi trembling, and gives her a comforting hand.

Yeol comes to check on them, and a tearful Sa-rang blames herself. He tells her that it’s not her fault, it’s his. He puts his hand over theirs and reassures them that it’s all over now.

Bo-mi’s parents arrive at that moment, and Ki-tae throws a flying punch at Yeol that sends him to the floor. Both girls are horrified. Yoo-ra fawns over Bo-mi, who tries to tell her that Sa-rang’s grandpa got hurt.

Ki-tae rages that Yeol targeted his daughter as a calculated revenge, and Yoo-ra adds that Sa-rang was in on it, too. She stabs at Sa-rang with each statement, until Yeol stops her hand. “Don’t touch my daughter,” he threatens.

Ki-tae sneers that they’re fakes — she’s not even his real daughter. She’s someone else’s child. Yeol snaps and pulls back his fist when Mi-rae runs in. She pleads with him to stop. He lowers his arm — but Ki-tae raises his. To everyone’s astonishment, Mi-rae drops to her knees and bows her head to Ki-tae.

COMMENTS

Aw. This last few minutes pulled out some real emotional substance, and it’s surprisingly gratifying to have Yeol openly and genuinely step up as Sa-rang’s father. Peril has a way of bringing people closer, and it may have worked some magic between Yeol and Sa-rang, at least. I’m beginning to feel invested in their relationship, because when she’s not being a brat, she’s a fierce, proud little thing, but also terribly vulnerable, and it’s hard not to respond to that.

It gives Mi-rae’s struggles as a single mother a little more dimension, too. Because despite being a professional and top in her field, she isn’t protected from the social stigma her single mom status brings, and neither is her daughter. For someone with so much pride, she’s willing to trade it in for living quietly. This isn’t the first time — she’s constantly smoothing over with people and apologizing. Her opposite behavior with Yeol just drowns it out. But that’s an interesting point which we can add to the explanation of their relationship — Yeol is someone she doesn’t (need to?) lower her head to.

Still, the main drag on the story comes from the push and pull between the two of them. Excluding the last scene, she constantly toys with him, and it’s not funny. Actually, I think I never find that dynamic funny. It’s the kind that tends to happen between second-lead couples, but doesn’t work as a primary dynamic, because it’s too unhealthy and too unequal to root for. While he offers (token) resistance from time to time, the fact remains that he’s a pretty willing participant in their folie à deux, and his moments of clarity (where he realizes it’s all nuts) don’t last long.

I can understand his desire to try the relationship again, and I understand Mi-rae’s desperation as a mother on limited time, but the bottom line is that I can’t simply root for her because she’s dying. The room-for-growth argument only works for me if there is at least one sympathetic (and self-consistent) aspect to moor you to a character even through their lows, and I can’t find hers. Mi-rae calls all the shots all the time, and has zero boundaries. Like why the heck does she walk in on him in the bathroom? WHY, SHOW, WHY. She knowingly uses the latent sexual tension between them to manipulate him, and — I repeat — it’s not funny.

Why none of these things are funny is because they’re symptomatic of an underlying and basic lack of personal respect, and that’s not attractive, ever. She keeps hammering at Yeol that he’s Sa-rang’s dad, blah blah blah, but how can she expect Sa-rang to look at him as a dad when her mom constantly belittles him? And when he does exactly what she says (find the problem and fix it), she rails on him for that! MAKE UP YOUR MIND, WOMAN. And don’t even get me started on the ten thousand mixed signals, the baiting, the attitude that he owes her something. The contract doesn’t count, because you can’t contract for emotional investment, and that’s what she’s demanding. (Also why the hell she’s still doing surgery in her condition WHYYYdfajg kjfalkf)

She’s relying on accidental connection between him and Sa-rang, which strikes me as inefficient for someone on a schedule, and all that’s done so far is produce fumbling efforts and heaps of frustration and disappointment for both of them, because they’re in it for different things. Excluding the last few minutes of this episode, Sa-rang and Woo-hyuk’s relationship has been the most warming so far, and while he might not be a conventional father figure, he’s a damn good substitute. With their well-cultivated rapport and affection, he looks out for her, and after her mom, Sa-rang comes to him next. There’s no point asking why it can’t be him (the show doesn’t want it, people — and we don’t want Mi-rae’s Choice all over again), but still…why can’t it be him?

Sa-rang made a better impression this episode, although the line between being a brat and being an actual kid is a fine one. Her reconciliation with Bo-mi was touching. It’s more affecting to make her distress about the girls’ long friendship rather than a crush, and it’s a shame that Ki-tae’s actions at the end might have taken them back to square one. But let’s hope not, because it would be so much better if their friendship stuck it out this time.

On the whole, what I thought last week stands. This is a show where the trajectory was clear from the outset, but the interest lies in how we travel it. Its vein of contrived conflicts are dealt with so unimaginatively, and the mechanical point-to-point progression doesn’t really offer any fulfilment…but every so often, it nails a moment, or hits an emotional beat that juuust keeps me from giving up on it.

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