D-Day: Episode 3

by dramallama

This is what I’ve been waiting for. Exhilarating and fast-paced with sudden moments of poignancy, our first look into the disaster’s aftermath gives us an excellent overview of the conflicts our disaster response team will be facing. We’ve built up enough context for our marginal characters to care for the few moments they are on screen, and we also know that they’re instrumental in their respective roles. I love the birth of this new medical team, smashed together by chance and Hye-sung’s persistence. They’re daring and resourceful — I have a feeling I’m going to be a fan.

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

D-Day. While driving with her son, Chief Kang calls Ja-hyuk to confirm their lunch date. He apologizes that he’ll be late due to a meeting as he walks into said meeting. He yells at his team in frustration.

Woo-jin closes the blinds in his office to take a nap while Director Lee practices his golf putt in his office. At the pool, a boy practices swimming as a part of his rehabilitation. 1, 2, 1, 2…

1, 2, 1, 2. The team at the fire department instruct a CPR lesson. Captain Choi walks by and sits on the fire truck calling his wife, who doesn’t pick up. His “best friend,” Mr. Kang plays the ukulele for change on the subway, singing to children and making them laugh. The children communicate excitedly in sign language, and the man sitting across from them smiles.

We go back to Hye-sung and Ddol-mi, who run outside to look at the strangely lit sky. Slowly, the world starts to shake, the water systems explode, and the world begins to destruct.

Director Lee’s fish tank breaks, the subway screeches to a halt, Sister wakes up to a shaking hospital, and Chief Kang frantically carries young Dong-hwa out of the store. She puts him in the back seat of her car and struggles to pull her heel out of the cracked ground. Leaving her shoe behind, she scrambles into her car and instructs Dong-hwa to fasten his seatbelt. But as she takes off, we see his ambulance toy outside. She tries to drive away, but multiple cars crash in the chaos, knocking Chief Kang unconscious.

As the firetrucks depart the station, Captain Choi reports in and watches the infrastructure collapse behind him. Ja-hyuk crawls under the table (yes, duck and cover!) as others fall in attempts to escape. He grabs an injured woman under the table with him.

The hospitals are in chaos, with patients and doctors helplessly falling and swaying with the earthquake. The two unconscious patients at Han River Mirae lay still while the world around them trembles.

Bridges fall, highways collapse, and the Namsan Tower snaps in half. The ground beneath Hye-sung and Ddol-mi cracks, and they run away as fast as possible. Debris from a fallen building envelops them, and when the debris gradually clears, they’re shell-shocked.

A man desperately asks Hye-sung for help. Still disoriented, Hye-sung follows with Ddol-mi just as a fire explodes in a nearby building. They move a fallen fence, and the man tries to open the door to his car but to no avail. His wife hyperventilates inside, and the three outside notice a spark about to ignite an explosion. The man gets more desperate, pleading for help to get his 8-month pregnant wife out of the car.

Chief Kang remains unconscious until a man stirs her awake. She slowly regains consciousness and realizes that Dong-hwa is gone. She runs outside screaming his name as she sees more explosions. She finds Dong-hwa’s ambulance toy, and we see that he did run out of the car as soon as he got in. Chief Kang continues to cry out for him, but he’s nowhere to be found.

Ddol-mi runs into a bus and finds a fire extinguisher while Hye-sung figures out how to get this pregnant woman out of the car. He breaks the window with a rock and immediately checks if she’s been affected by shock-induced paralysis. Fortunately, she hasn’t lost all feeling in her hands, and Hye-sung orders her husband to carefully carry her out of the car.

Ddol-mi abandons the malfunctioning fire extinguisher and helps with the woman’s escape. As they run away carrying the pregnant woman, the car behind them bursts into flames.

Captain Choi and his team are delayed by a fallen tree blocking their path. They’re forced to reroute, and Captain Choi watches with disbelief as a tower crumbles and falls before their eyes.

Back to Hye-sung and the pregnant woman. He checks her heart rate and assesses that it’s faster than normal. She tells him that she feels pain, but there’s little that he can do. Surprisingly, he decides that he can’t help and advises the couple to find the nearest big hospital with an OBGYN to help her. He bows in apology and walks away.

Ddol-mi tries to get him to turn back, but he’s resolute that he’s not the best doctor for her needs. Also, they’ve got their hospital patients to return to. Before getting on their way, Hye-sung and Ddol-mi notice the fallen Namsan Tower. They stop in their tracks and absorb the gravity of this earthquake.

One hour after the quake. The doctors at the Mirae Hospital ER briefly gather before dispersing to deal with the aftermath. Director Lee looks at his broken ship and dead fish, wondering what just happened.

Hye-sung and Ddol-mi run back to the damaged Han River Mirae Hospital. Hye-sung orders Ddol-mi to attend to their other patients as he runs off to the ICU. He breathes a big sigh of relief when he sees that Ji-na is manually resuscitating their patient. Sister nurse isn’t in sight, and Ji-na says that the nurse left as soon as she arrived. He thanks her and tells her that she saved this patient’s life. He then runs off to check on his mother.

When Hye-sung peers into his mother’s hospital room, she’s not on any of the beds. He finds her on the ground and carefully carries her back onto the bed. He checks her limbs for any injuries and her heart rate. His mother hasn’t suffered any injuries, and he thanks her for it. Hye-sung hugs his mother close, and Ddol-mi happens to see this.

Giving Hye-sung his space, Ddol-mi waits outside to report on their other patients. They head to the triage, where everything is broken and scattered. He expects that they’ll have urgent patients soon and gives Ddol-mi the responsibility of reorganizing the room to make it suitable for basic surgeries. She does as told but asks herself what the hell she’s still doing here.

Hye-sung returns to the ICU, where Ji-na asks about the electricity and the reason for the disaster. He’s irritable because he doesn’t have answers, but Sister, with a wound on her head, returns in shock with the answer. It’s an earthquake. An earthquake just hit Seoul.

Chief Kang walks through the broken streets aimlessly looking for Dong-hwa. She steps on glass without care and hopelessly calls out his name. She carries her limp body with a numbness that’s starkly contrasted by the screams and anxiety surrounding her.

Ja-hyuk walks into the lobby of his building and receives the reports about the magnitude 6.5 earthquake. He directs his secretary to look into the casualties and impact of the quake. He adds that this major earthquake could solve what couldn’t be solved before. Buildings were prepared for 4.0 earthquakes, not an earthquake 150 times the magnitude. He looks up to the broken glass ceiling and wonders, “Should I be resentful or thankful?”

Listening to the radio, Hye-sung tries to gage the intensity of the 6.5 magnitude earthquake. There’s no electricity or water, and they know that their ICU patient needs to be transferred as soon as possible.

Captain Choi arrives on the scene and scolds his minions for sitting around at the sight of fire. They look hopeless as they report that all sources of water are cut off and the roads that would lead to water are blocked off by the earthquake damage. Frustrated that he can’t fulfill his duty, Captain Choi swings his ax at the concrete in anger.

The team carries the ICU patient down the stairs, and Hye-sung lists off the items they need to prepare for the influx of patients. Sister decides that she wants to have no part in this anymore and announces her leave. She needs to check on her family. Hye-sung tries to convince her to stay, claiming that she’s the reason why he stayed at this hospital. He reassures her that her family is okay because our hopes often come true as we believe them to be. She doesn’t believe a word and continues on her way.

As she leaves, Hye-sung asks her where everything is located in the hospital, and it’s apparent that she holds important knowledge to navigate the ins and outs of this hospital. She becomes frustrated with the realization, and Hye-sung uses her name to once again affirm her necessity: “We need your help, Kim Hae-sook.”

Captain Choi yells through a crack in the rubble, checking the state of a woman stuck under the concrete. He calls upon surrounding civilians to help raise the concrete, and they’re able to raise enough debris to carry her out.

Sister scrapes out all the resources left in the hospital and brings them to their newly rebuilt triage/surgery room. She knows it’s not enough, and Hye-sung knows it too. But he’s not giving up and tells his team their game plan. “We’re not using our ammo for the minimal and worst cases. Minimal — they’ll survive without treatment. Worst — they have slim chances of revival. That way, we can save more patients.”

Sister tries to convince Brother that they’re not an adequate hospital, but Hye-sung asserts that as long as they have doctors and medicine, they’re a hospital. They’ll start with the triage.

Ji-na and Ddol-mi go around and categorize patients based on Hye-sung’s directions. Red means urgent — send them to Hye-sung. Blue means minimal or worst — they won’t be prioritized. And black means dead.

In the triage room, Hye-sung realigns a patient’s leg and splints it. He advises the wife that they should head to a big hospital. She asks where to, and Hye-sung simply states, “Whichever hospital survived the earthquake.”

That doesn’t seem to be the case for Mirae Hospital, whose doors have been closed by authorities. Injured civilians angrily protest the hospital closing its doors, and they crowd around the windows, knocking on the glass while people inside stare back. Even the ER has shut down, turning away everyone.

Hye-sung has resorted to splinting an arm with newspaper, and he asks Sister how much lidocaine (a local anesthetic) they have remaining. She answers that they only have one bottle, and Hye-sung drops the patient’s arm momentarily in shock. It’s clearly not enough.

In the lobby, Ddol-mi splits a man’s leg with cardboard. Ji-an is pulled away by a young man who asks for help. His mother is breathing but not responding. Ddol-mi joins them to assess the woman’s condition, and she shakes her head. It’s a basal skull fracture — black.

The son knows what black means and demands that Ddol-mi change the color to red. His mother is still breathing; they can do something. But Ddol-mi knows they can’t and refuses. In rage, the son races at Ddol-mi and throws her on the ground.

Ji-na quickly notifies Hye-sung, and he runs out to take a blow from the son. He’s hit badly on the arm but manages to throw him down. Other bystanders take a hold of the son, and Ddol-mi gets up to give it to him straight. “I want to save her too. I want to save her and return her home with you, but we can’t do anything if we tried. We don’t have medicine, blood, or anything to look into your mother’s skull as we perform surgery. If your mother comes back to life by hitting me, hit me all you want. I’ll take it and bring your mother back to life.”

The mourning son cries out helplessly for his poor mother, and our medical team look upon him with sympathy. Ddol-mi notes, “It seems that your mother won’t forget your voice.”

In the triage room, Hye-sung waits to get stitches for his deep gash. Ddol-mi asks hesitantly if he’s really okay without any anesthetic, and he nods with his brave face on. It’ll feel like a quick pinch, right? Ddol-mi seems to move painfully slowly, cleaning the wound and finally putting in the first stitch, enjoying the sight of Hye-sung squirming. Hye-sung convulses in pain but rejects the last bottle of lidocaine because other patients need it.

The pregnant woman and her husband from earlier enter the hospital, begging Sister to help them. Sister rejects them because they don’t have the resources to deliver a baby, but the man pleads them to help. Every hospital has rejected them because they don’t have an OBGYN.

Just as Sister is about to send them off, Hye-sung yells from down the hallway to accept them. They bring the woman into the triage — now surgery — room, and the medical team quickly gathers for their game plan. Hye-sung decides that they’ll use their last bottle of lidocaine, but then they look at each other blankly, none of them with experience delivering a baby.

Sister audibly complains about how crazy this is, since not a single one of them has delivered a baby before. Then, the couple clarifies that it’s not just one, it’s two. They team turns back to their mini huddle and gasp at the news. They’ll be delivering twins.

Preparing for surgery, Hye-sung nervously convinces himself that everything will be okay despite the fact that they have never delivered a single baby. They also don’t have an incubator, so there’s even more at risk. Ji-na decides that if it comes to it, they’ll prioritize the mother’s life.

Overhearing this decision, the mother shakes her head. She desperately wants her babies to live. Hye-sung makes it clear that he’s never delivered a child before but assures them that he’ll do his best. The whole team comes together to guide the mother in her breathing, beginning the birthing process.

Under the earthquake rubble, a father gains consciousness and calls out for his son. The boy answers weakly, and the father asks if he’s hurt. The boy doesn’t know, but his father notices his son’s foot under a big chunk of concrete. He tells his son to stay strong and throws him his jacket to wear.

In the subway, Mr. Kang finds his ukulele and announces to the people in the train that this area is his home. He knows his way around the subway lines and tells them to follow him. The people file out, and the kind stranger convinces the deaf children to trust him with the little sign language he picked up.

Hye-sung delivers the first baby, a boy who comes out the womb crying. The eavesdroppers outside celebrate the sound of the first baby’s cry. The mother pushes one last time for her second baby, who doesn’t make a sound upon birth. They all notice that something is wrong, and Hye-sung asks for the suction. But that’s equipment they don’t have.

After a moment of hesitation, Hye-sung uses his mouth as a suction device to rid the fluid that’s preventing the baby’s breathing. As he spits out the fluid, we hear the twin’s cry, a sound that relieves everyone in the room. Hye-sung instructs Sister to take care of the babies and Ji-na to take care of the mother. He orders Ddol-mi to follow him to find some Styrofoam.

They head to the old kitchen, where Ddol-mi clumsily climbs and falls off the counter. She successfully finds the Styrofoam, amusing Hye-sung with her successful blundering. Hye-sung quickly packs some essentials into his backpack, and they head back. They’re stopped by sudden debris falling from the ceiling, a sure sign that the building is falling apart.

Hye-sung creates an incubator with Styrofoam and hot packs, an ingenious temporary solution. But they don’t have too much time to praise his ingenuity. He tells the team that he fears the building is unstable and suggests that they all evacuate the building.

In the lobby, Hye-sung announces to the patients that they’ve run out of supplies and need to evacuate the building. Although the patients protest, Hye-sung makes it clear that staying in the building poses greater dangers. He asks Ji-na to lead the patients out while he gets his mother.

Hye-sung runs to his mother’s side and piggybacks her out. He’s extra careful while walking through the building, aware of the building’s instability. When he arrives at the lobby, the patients are still gathered there. He yells at them that the building is collapsing, and they laugh off his claim until things actually start to fall from the ceiling. Then they run out in an instant.

The ICU patient’s vitals and the new mother’s blood pressure are wavering, making their search for a new hospital more dire. Hye-sung decides that they’ll walk to the next available hospital with an incubator for the sake of the babies, but it’s a long walk outside of Seoul. The husband offers to drive a boat there — he’s an electrician, but he’s watched how to operate a boat. Hye-sung agrees that the boat option would be the fastest, and they lead the exodus of hospital patients towards this port.

The patients walk through the unstable streets, helping each other and pushing the gurneys. Hye-sung leads the group with his mother in a wheelchair and stops suddenly at the sight of a sinkhole. He warns the patients to avoid the hole, but two patients decide that they want to avoid this effort entirely. They run back towards the hospital despite warnings from Ji-na and Ddol-mi.

They yell at Hye-sung to stop the two desperate men, so he chases them. Hye-sung sees the men racing into the hospital building, and he demands that they escape. They don’t listen to him, and Hye-sung runs towards the building right as it crumbles from the top down.

From afar, Ji-na and Ddol-mi see Han River Mirae Hospital collapse. They watch wide-eyed, unsure about Hye-sung’s safety.

 
COMMENTS

That was a lot of crashing and burning, quite the opposite of what I expect will happen with this drama production. After this episode, I’m pretty convinced that the pre-production aspect to this drama is in its favor. I think the writers got the narrative and character moments down, and though they may have benefitted from slight character changes based on response, I don’t think there would have been any significant changes to what we have now. At this point, I would actually prefer to see the original thought in the story and character development over the live writing and shooting.

Regarding the crashing and burning, I think the CGI effects work well to make this earthquake believable. I believe the catastrophic destruction and the characters’ reactions. If they’ve been working with the green screen the whole time, they’ve got me fooled. Narrative-wise, however, I think the explosions and building collapses happen a little too conveniently. I get it, the buildings and cars need to explode behind the people just as they escape for the thrills and cool explosion imagery in the back. But having every explosion happen that way completely kills the suspense. I just expect our characters to escape now, so I find myself just enjoying the nice screencaps I get.

I don’t mind that the effects may be mostly plot devices or cliffhanger mechanisms because I mostly care for the characters. I enjoyed watching how scrappy and resourceful Hye-sung was in creating a “hospital” for incoming disaster patients. But I was completely taken aback when he very quickly (almost too quickly) decided that certain patients would not be prioritized. It was strange to hear those words come out of his mouth, especially since he’s built up a reputation of treating anyone and everyone. When he left the pregnant mother and husband to fend for themselves, I found myself in Ddol-mi’s shoes, expecting and wanting Hye-sung to turn around and help. But I guess that reputation only applies in the luxury of electricity, running water, blood supply, and solid facilities. Contrary to what we’ve seen thus far, it seems that Hye-sung does know his limitations as a doctor. He knows what he’s capable of, and delivering babies was not one of them… until he had to.

The baby delivery scene was surprisingly hilarious and oh so heartwarming. The moment where they stare at each other like soooo… no one has delivered a baby. Ha, that literally threw everything Hye-sung said about priorities out the window. It was a classic Hye-sung moment, and I’m glad we were reminded that Hye-sung is an impulsively good doctor who prioritizes saving lives out of everything.

Ddol-mi keeps growing on me because she’s got this clumsy charm and assertive personality. I wouldn’t say that she’s the best doctor, and she doesn’t pretend to be. In fact, most of the time, she takes orders from Hye-sung in the hospital. Mark foreheads, done. Find Styrofoam, done. But her personality really shines in her contentious interactions with Hye-sung and in her encounter with the grieving son. Her words were painfully accurate, brutally honest, almost too much for the son to handle. She speaks the truth, and she’s not intimidated by the consequences of that truth.

I found this episode to be a great introduction to our earthquake guides. I loved that Mr. Kang was an unexpected addition to this group of disaster leaders. Completely unexpected, given that our first impressions of him were an improv poetry performance and drunk antics. We were given most of the good guys this time around, though, and I’d like to see how Mirae Hospital responds to this earthquake. Definitely not the action that Hye-sung took in leading the exodus of patients to a safer location. That scene almost gave me goosebumps, seeing how much Hye-sung cared for his mother and all of his patients. It was the manifestation of his admirable passion for saving lives, and now, I can’t help but be increasingly invested in his mission to lead his patients to safety.

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