Descended From the Sun: Episode 11

by LollyPip

There’s a different sort of war to be fought now, and the doctors are prepared to show the soldiers how they fight. The virus scare has the entire base locked down tight, and it’s the medical team who are in charge now, as they try to keep the illness from spreading. But just when things seem to be under some control, a new threat looms, and someone will decide that the only way to catch a rogue is to go rogue yourself.

EPISODE 11 RECAP

Myung-joo tries to push Dae-young off of her, worried that he’s breaking her quarantine. The desperation with which he holds her and the look in Shi-jin’s eyes when he enters the operating room betray the truth — Myung-joo is infected.

She admits for just one moment that she’s scared, then does what she needs to do. She tells Shi-jin to take Dae-young from the room, though he whispers that he has no intention of letting go or leaving her alone. But he’s now at risk for making contact, so he’s got to be quarantined away from Myung-joo, as a confirmed patient.

Mo-yeon takes a blood sample from Dae-young, and he asks what will happen to Myung-joo. Mo-yeon confirms that the virus has a fifty-percent kill rate, but she reassures Dae-young that the fatality rate is a lot lower for a young, healthy patient.

She’s a little more clinical with Shi-jin, explaining that a strong immune system isn’t necessarily a good thing. Myung-joo could experience what’s called a cytokine storm, an immune response that acts as a feedback loop, which can be fatal in and of itself. But Mo-yeon tells Shi-jin that fighting a virus is a doctor’s war, and she’s trained for this.

The Medicube is put to work as a base for treating the M3 virus. They set up an isolation ward, test everyone for the virus, and issue instructions about quarantines and hygiene to avoid spreading the virus.

Sang-hyun comes down with something and goes under quarantine, having been in contact with Young-soo before his surgery. He’s not too sick to flirt with nurse Ja-ae even as she’s drawing blood, and she says hopefully that she thinks he just has a simple cold.

This time it’s Dae-young who’s shut up in the supply cabinet, isolating himself in case he’s sick, and Shi-jin lingers around the door, lonely and whiny. He tells Dae-young that Myung-joo is still okay, and gives him a walkie-talkie so they can talk.

Dae-young and Myung-joo have a sweet conversation full of nothing-important, just reassuring each other that they’re alright. Dae-young looks like he might break when Myung-joo says she misses him, but he manages to eke out a small, “I miss you,” before he hangs his head in defeat.

Myung-joo mentions the white dress she wore when they went to his ex’s wedding, and remembers that he called her a ghost. Now she’s afraid it was a premonition, and that she might die and become a ghost for real. Dae-young counters that ever since they met, she’s been an angel to him. Myung-joo is touched, but she wonders what’s the difference between a ghost and an angel, when both of them are dead.

Until all the test results are back, the Medicube is under strict quarantine, and Mo-yeon calls Daniel regarding a vaccine they’ve requested. He reports that they should have it by the next day, and that UN forces have tracked down everyone that Young-soo came in contact with and had them tested, as well.

Shi-jin takes a report to Corps Command, where he learns that Myung-joo is to be sent to the U.S. military hospital as soon as possible. Shi-jin argues that they can’t send any actively ill patients out of the Medicube, and Lieutenant Park is aghast that he’s willing to flaunt orders again so soon: “Do you want to live here forever?!”

But Shi-jin stands firm, stating that this virus is their new enemy. If they don’t follow the rules, they can’t hope to win the battle.

Back home at the hospital, the staff watch the television worriedly for news of their friends and loved ones. Chi-hoon’s mother yells at Director Han again, for not doing anything to bring her son back home. She tells him to bring Chi-hoon back within 24 hours, or he’s fired, “And I won’t be friends with your mother anymore!” Well, okay then.

Sang-hyun uses his time to text Doctor Pyo, who does some research and sends him her findings. His hospital bed ends up looking like an office, with research notes stuck on the plastic dividers and books everywhere.

Myung-joo still looks healthy, but Young-soo isn’t doing so well. Private Ki-bum and patient Min-jae discuss the diamonds that were found in Young-soo’s stomach, and Min-jae says again that he saw those diamonds before, in Young-soo’s office. Min-jae asks Myung-joo how much those diamonds would be worth, gaping when she says it was about two million dollars’ worth.

Mo-yeon is waiting for Shi-jin when he arrives back from Corps Command, and he tells her they should have everyone’s test results by the next afternoon. They flirt just a little, enjoying each other’s company, and Shi-jin urges Mo-yeon to win her battle so he can hold her hand and snuggle like he’s dying to do.

While Mo-yeon is checking up on the children, the base loses power again. Mo-yeon remembers that Young-soo is still relying on a ventilator to breathe, and sure enough, the lack of the ventilator causes him to go into shock. He has a sort of seizure, knocking equipment over and flailing out of control, and Chi-hoon jumps on his bed to hold him down from doing any more damage.

The soldiers want to help, but Chi-hoon yells for them to just fix the power — if they come in they could be infected. He holds Young-soo while Myung-joo readies a sedative, but before she can administer it, Young-soo reflexively bites Chi-hoon’s arm, hard.

The sedative stops Young-soo’s seizure but he’s still not breathing, and Chi-hoon does chest compressions while Myung-joo uses the portable air pump. Mo-yeon arrives to help them, but Chi-hoon seems a bit frantic by now. He’s finding himself in the same situation in which he lost a patient last time, and he refuses to stop compressions.

It works this time, and Young-soo is stable by the time the power comes back on, and Mo-yeon treats Chi-hoon’s bite wound, warning him that this increases his chance of infection. She also tells him that Young-soo would have died without his quick action, saying matter-of-factly, “You’re a real doctor now.”

Min-jae is still helping out in the quarantine room, and he witnessed the entire frightening scene. He watches Chi-hoon, and asks Mo-yeon if he’ll get infected. She says that she hopes not, and Min-jae says to Chi-hoon, “You looked like a doctor.”

Min-jae leaves the room and Chi-hoon bursts into tears, but now he’s crying with relief. He tells Mo-yeon “I’m okay now. I can call my family now.” Later he calls his fiancee, and he tells her that he might be sick, but he’s smiling again. She tries to stay mad at him, but she can’t stay angry when he happily chirps how much he loves her, sounding like his old self.

The blood test results come back the next day, and everyone tests negative. Dae-young runs straight to Myung-joo’s quarantine room to see her, though she’s sleeping, and Shi-jin says that she’s still not showing any symptoms. Shi-jin brags that the UN plans to give him a special award for his quick response which stopped anyone else from getting sick, but Dae-young is barely listening.

They’re called away to an emergency in the cafeteria, and after they leave, Myung-joo sits up in bed. Oh no, she looks deathly pale, and she has trouble focusing her eyes. So much for being asymptomatic.

Things aren’t much better in the cafeteria — Shi-jin and Dae-young arrive to find that Argus has come to visit. He cheerfully informs everyone that he tested negative for the virus — the U.S. Army even tested him personally. He pretends to be here to visit his “friend” Young-soo, but he’s more than willing to just take his “sparkly stuff” and go.

Shi-jin growls that this isn’t a lost and found, and gives Argus ten seconds to get lost. Argus reaches into his jacket and every soldier in the room pulls their weapon, but he just produces a couple of vials of vaccine that he brought with him. They’re for Young-soo, who Argus wants healthy as soon as possible so that they can “talk.”

Ja-ae gets to tell Sang-hyun the news that the test results are back, and he’s ready to bounce back to work. For a moment Ja-ae’s red eyes seem to say she has bad news — but she confirms that he only had a cold, and throws her arms around him. Ohthankgoodness.

She suddenly realizes that she’s given herself away and tries to back off, but Sang-hyun grabs her arm and whirls her back to him in slow motion. I just love how these two are living out a melodrama all by themselves, hee. He presses a note in her hand and tells her to read it — he’s thought long and hard, and he’s found the answer.

HA, it’s not a love note… he thinks he’s found a cure for the virus. Mo-yeon agrees with his research, but they don’t have the right medication on hand. Luckily Ja-ae already called Daniel and arranged for delivery, so it’s already on its way.

Myung-joo monitors her symptoms and calls her father, but he tries to stay positive and plays up her fifty percent chance of survival. She swears she’s going to fight this thing and live, but she asks him for two favors.

First, to forgive her for her threat to disown him if he didn’t let her be with Dae-young, which he easily grants. And second, if she doesn’t die, to let Dae-young stay in the army. She’d overheard their conversation, and she knows what her father demanded of him. She says that as much as her father worries about her, that’s how much she worries about Dae-young.

Mo-yeon enters the room to examine her, so Myung-joo hangs up the phone. But as she hangs up, she passes out. At the same time we see Daniel heading toward the base with the delivery of medicine, but he’s pulled over by a group of armed men. Oh no.

Mo-yeon determines that Myung-joo is experiencing the cytokine storm that she feared, and they put her in an ice bath to try to bring her fever down. They’re counting on Sang-hyun’s cure, but Mo-yeon gets a call that the truck carrying the cure and the vaccines has been stolen.

There’s not enough time for them to order another delivery, and they only have an hour to find the truck and get the medicines back. Argus calls Shi-jin, right on cue, and Shi-jin knows right away that he’s got the medicine. Argus wants to make a deal — the medicine for the diamonds.

Shi-jin meets with Argus’ man, readily handing over the diamonds for the keys to the truck. Daniel heads to the base with the meds, leaving the soldiers behind, but something about the lackey’s smirk infuriates Dae-young. He punches the guy right in his smug face and proceeds to beat the stuffing out of him.

Myung-joo is conscious again, but there’s a new problem — Fatima is taken under arrest for selling stolen medicine on the black market. Mo-yeon lies to the cops that Fatima didn’t steal those medicines, she gave them to her. But even if that were true, it’s still illegal to sell them on the black market.

Ki-bum helps Ye-hwa make an herbal concoction to bring down Myung-joo’s fever, but Daniel soon arrives with the medicine. Myung-joo and Young-soo are both given the cure, and Dae-young sits by Myung-joo while they wait for results. Finally her fever breaks, and he lifts her back to bed.

Shi-jin doesn’t hear about Fatima’s arrest until the next morning, and he’s instantly suspicious that it was even the Uruk police who arrested her. He rushes to town, but on the way he nearly hits Fatima, who’s standing in the road with her hands tied. He pulls over and runs to her, but a shot rings out and the girl collapses, hit in the leg.

Shi-jin’s instinct was right — it was Argus’s men who took Fatima, and now they have Mo-yeon as well. They bring her out to the road with a gun to her head, and Shi-jin quickly drops his own gun.

Argus arrives and plays the gentleman, wrapping Fatima’s bleeding leg and telling Shi-jin that it’s his turn to give the orders. Shi-jin asks what he wants, and Argus motions for Mo-yeon to be taken to his car.

Argus explains that the guns he’s selling will be delivered to North Uruk at midnight, after which he expects the U.S. soldiers to try to kill him. But he wants to live, so he tells Shi-jin to help him escape after the sale is made.

Furious, Shi-jin says (in Korean) that he will kill Argus with his own two hands. Argus doesn’t understand him, but he laughs in his face, gets in the car with Mo-yeon, and drives away.

Mo-yeon still has her walkie-talkie, and Shi-jin talks to her through it (still in Korean, so that Argus can’t listen) as she’s being taken away from him. He tells her that he will find her and save her, so she shouldn’t be afraid or cry. “Just wait for me. I’ll be there soon.”

Argus takes the walkie-talkie from Mo-yeon’s pocket, tells Shi-jin he’ll see him soon, and tosses it out the car window.

Shi-jin reports the situation to Lieutenant Park, who is predictably not pleased at the idea of staging a hostage rescue. He forbids Shi-jin to go anywhere, but Shi-jin says softly, with tear-filled eyes, that he’s going.

Lieutenant Park waves for Shi-jin to keep quiet while he answers a call from the Chief of Foreign Affairs, but when he says this isn’t exactly a hostage situation, Shi-jin interjects that it is. The Chief tells them to stand by while they get the details from the U.S. Army, but Shi-jin again interrupts to say they don’t have time.

The Chief tells Shi-jin that he won’t look the other way like he did with the Abu Dhabi prince — this is bigger than one possible death, it’s a national-level situation. Shi-jin goes frighteningly still, and says that if the nation is indifferent to a single person’s death, then that seems like the bigger problem. “I don’t know which nation you serve, but I will serve my nation.”

Shi-jin is fully prepared to drive through the gates to get out if he has to, but a soldier runs up to him with an emergency call from the commander of Special Forces, Myung-joo’s father. Without preamble, he tells Shi-jin that for the next three hours, he doesn’t know where he is. He’s not the captain of Team Alpha, or a member of the Korean Army.

Shi-jin takes a minute to call Dae-young, who tells him that Myung-joo is responding well to the medicine. He apologizes for not being able to say goodbye to Dae-young, which worries his friend for a moment, but Myung-joo stirs and he drops the call.

Shi-jin takes off his uniform, dressing in serviceable black. He buys a non-army-issue gun from the waitress in town, looking determined and ready for battle.

Argus takes Mo-yeon to an empty building and removes her gag, and when she tells him in Korean that she has no money if that’s what he’s here for, he pistol-whips her for not speaking English. He taunts her with comments about Shi-jin, mentioning how he sometimes disappears, is hard to contact, and that one day he’ll never come back.

He tells her that she should break up with Shi-jin now, and though tears are streaming down her face, she says calmly that those sorts of things should be said with an offer of money and a cup of water (for throwing in the person’s face, like in dramas, ha). She continues speaking in Korean, knowing it frustrates him, but Argus holds his temper.

Dae-young is worried now, since he can’t reach Shi-jin anymore. But he knows that whatever is happening, it’s bad — Shi-jin not only left his uniform behind, but also his dog tags, which they never take off except when they don’t want to be identified.

Shi-jin drives alone, and makes one more call, this time to the Abu Dhabi prince’s right-hand man. His request is simple: “Let me use your last card. I need a chopper. I have a date again.”

COMMENTS

That’s pretty freaking brilliant thinking on Shi-jin’s part, to use his favor for saving the prince’s life to save Mo-yeon’s in return. I knew that card would come in handy eventually, but it’s been long enough since we heard anything about it that I had forgotten it entirely. Well played Show — well played.

I’m still not sure if I really feel Argus as the Big Bad of the drama, and I can’t exactly put my finger on why. Maybe because it seems like he just tries too hard to be menacing (the character, not the actor, who I think is doing a pretty decent job with what he’s given). I think that if we’d been shown more of his past with Shi-jin, and how they used to be close, then the antagonism between the two men now would land a bit harder. Or maybe even if his betrayal had been more immediate — something he did to Shi-jin directly — then the reversal of Argus going rogue would feel more personal.

But the way things have played out, with Argus’s going turncoat happening offscreen and while he and Shi-jin were out of contact, just takes the punch out of the situation. We still don’t know when it happened, or why, we just know that he used to be a soldier and now he’s a smuggler. There’s nothing that happened to make it personal and immediate, so there’s no reason for us to see him as anything but the generic Bad Guy. Of course Shi-jin takes it personally, but he knows their history, while we still don’t. And I worry at this point that we never will, which is a shame, because it’s a setup that could have been mined for so much drama and angst for our hero. As it is, he’s feeling the angst, but we as the audience don’t really feel it with him.

But regardless of that one glitch, I loved all the small revelations in this episode, none of which were surprises to us as viewers but which were lovely to see play out for those involved. Most particularly Myung-joo and Dae-young’s relationship, since they seem to have finally gotten past any obstacles (real or emotional) and are finally admitting their true feelings for each other. Seeing Dae-young so helpless in the face of Myung-joo’s illness was heartbreaking, but also satisfying, since he’s the one who’s been fighting so hard to keep it all inside. I also enjoyed seeing Sang-hyun and Ja-ae finally come to an understanding, even if it’s still a reluctant one on her part. I don’t know why she’s so shy about admitting that she likes him, but she’s so adorable about it, and his happy smirks when he gets a tiny bit of anything from her are totally worth it. And lastly Chi-hoon’s redemption as a doctor, when he got to be the hero who saved a life rather than the one who made the mistake that cost one. I just hope he’s not infected, and gets to go home to his wife and child.

I completely agree with everything javabeans said last week about how good it was to have a medical case that finally impacts our main characters in a way that seems relevant and interesting. Not that previous events have been boring, but none of our main players were really in any danger during say, the earthquake or the Abu Dhabi prince’s surgery. Not in a real, direct way anyway — not in a way that made me fear for their actual lives. This virus scare, though, was something that felt immediate and terrifying, and I’m genuinely scared for the first time that not all of our doctors might make it out alive. I definitely hope that this is a sign that we can expect more of the same, because yes, now that you’ve shown us that you can tie the relationships and the events they’re dealing with together in a cohesive way, we’re going to expect more of the same from here on out. The show is still good without that, but with it, we could really see this thing go out with a bang. But not too much of a bang, because we want everyone to get home safely!

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