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randomthotz

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  1. Oh @40somethingahjumma I hope you don't take my post as refuting anything. I quoted that line only and called my thoughts the opposite of it because of the order of where you presented the burnout. I saw burnout->priesthood, your sentence meant to me priesthood->burnout.

     

    @smartiegal and others and I have been discussing all this on Twitter usually resulting in a lot of chaos due to too many conversations. I'm sure she'll appreciate a streamlined version hehe. I believe, my thoughts are a variation of yours that focuses more on psychological theories (which heavily influences my lens as a viewer) and we divert on how heavy to weight certain factors in the WG story, but like you said, end of the day he was ill-suited for priesthood partly due to his emotional fragility and thank god Gyeoul came in the picture.

     

     

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  2. 10 hours ago, 40somethingahjumma said:

    His over-empathetic nature would leave him burnt out in no time.

     

    One line from a mini-essay I fear will spark another essay as well. @smartiegal referenced my pre-coffee Twitter thread on the first page of this thread on this but perhaps here’s a more lucid, fluid version and not limited by number of characters.

     

    My views on Jeongwon and his trajectory in Season 1 is the opposite of that line. He is burnt out, as a result he turns towards an escape route, priesthood, in the pretense of a “childhood dream” partly due to his overly empathetic nature and not knowing oneself. Because I work in MH, I’m not sure how common the perception of burnout and caring too much is, but I can assure all, it’s a very real thing.

     

    I find Jeongwon to be a very lonely character. We meet so many in his inner sphere, his mother, brother, 99z. He tells them all about his priestly ambitions. His mother tells him to not talk about it, for good reason. She has lost 4 children to the church and was not keen on losing her baby. She doesn't want to lose her baby and the possibility of grandchildren. His brother tells him year after to year to hang on for another year. Maybe it’ll get better. Decide in a year’s time. In other words, Mama Rosa and Brother #1 tell him to stay. Just stay.

     

    I don’t recall many interactions around Junwan and Seokhyung with regards to the priesthood thing other than when Junwan finding out about the application with Ikjun. However, Ikjun and Songhwa tell him to stay at various stages. With Ikjun, it feels like he’s imposing his thoughts onto Jeongwon at times (this may be also due to translation errors). He also provides a way to externalize the conflicts in Jeongwon’s decision as well as his feelings towards Gyeoul. With Songhwa, she “reads his mind” towards the end of the season. Regardless, from all these interactions that we bear witness to, nobody asks Jeongwon the crucial questions, Why? And Why now?

     

    In the meantime, Jeongwon is overly attached to his patients. His friends know his emotional state if his patient is doing well, or whether the patient is doing poorly. He is already burnt out from the work. He struggles to contain his emotions and unfortunately, his “support system” is inadequate for him. He is unable to work through his burdens fully. In other words, they acknowledge that he feels these emotions, but are unable to validate them and tell him, “Yes, it’s okay to feel this way and it just sucks that happened.” It may have eased his emotional burden if he heard that (and understood it). 

     

    As a result, he is unable to express his emotions properly and looks for the nearest exit sign. Daddy dearest’s death provides a good point to start looking. Perhaps, his original inspiration to become a doctor stemmed from Daddy’s close work with Yulje throughout his life (and by extension, the Daddy Long Legs program), but with four siblings in the church, it may be easy to see why Jeongwon looked towards the priesthood throughout his life. Sometimes, we only know what has been modelled before us in life. Funny enough, one could say priesthood is quite the lonely occupation as well.

     

    However, I beg the question, where is Jeongwon’s emotions to be found? Just his, from the heart. I wonder if he would have been able to answer it himself. We never get a sense of who he is. Songhwa's line, "Seeing others enjoy good food makes you happier than when you are eating it yourself," basically summarizes this. It applies to his personal and professional life.

     

    Enter Gyeoul. Her first substantial introduction was him chiding her for not being empathetic to the patient’s mother. She was clinical in her understanding of the situation, but in no way, entirely devoid of empathy. If she was unempathetic, this scenario would have repeated itself, but it didn’t. She was unskilled. She apologizes for her bluntness and Jeongwon provides her first lesson here, “We will do our best.” The core of his identity as a doctor did not seem to match hers (arguably, his enmeshment with his patients may take his lesson a bit too far). He has already fallen victim to his first impression of her resulting in the poorly translated notmycupoftea scene.

     

    The maggot scene certainly shed new light on her character for us, the viewers, and for Jeongwon. Perhaps her best was not judging and fearlessly remove the maggots from the homeless man’s legs. It wasn’t her role to do that – she was only there for a surgical consult if they found the rotting was too extensive. His prejudice towards her definitely began to change in this moment, as we bear witness in the Chocopie scene where he “nourishes” her with food, perhaps unconsciously.

     

    Similarly we have the abused dad scene and her running to the OR with the liver where again Gyeoul displays a different manner to “doing her best” that may not have matched Jeongwon’s definition. Both don’t think of their own well-being when it comes towards patient care – him, emotionally, and her physically – but they do their best for their patients.

     

    At a certain point, Jeongwon develops feelings for Gyeoul in the midst of everything. Jeongwon’s emotions are so enmeshed with that of his patient’s, his mother’s, his friends’ that the seeds of his romantic feelings were lost, not even including the newness of it all. This results in so much of the conflict in his actions towards her – being unable to walk into the ER but running towards her, the ghosting of her after the proposal prank. I love her line, “Just the two of us” when asking him for a dinner. Not even a date. Just the two of us, when he is grappling on finding out what “just one” or “just me” may signify. No room for another at that point, hence, the poorly constructed Yangpyeong lie.

     

    Little focus is given to Gyeoul calling out the drug addict, but it is again “doing her best”. She recognized the dependency on the patient’s addiction and called him out on that, believing that it could potentially be an overdose. Sadly she was reprimanded but Jeongwon managed to keep a distance from her but kept tabs on her perhaps out of guilt or curiousity. He’s been keeping tabs on her from a distance as evident by his observations of Minha’s friendship with Gyeoul (on the flip side, we know Gyeoul got to know him through Dr. Bong, Ikjun).

     

    Finally we get to see Jeongwon’s smile towards her when she heeded his advice on talking to parents and found a way to do it in her style. It’s a mini moment, but there was so much validation between the two of them just in that interaction. She’s finally recognized by Jeongwon as a doctor while he saw his words mean something to somebody.

     

    Leave it to Jeongwon to be the one to recognize/gain awareness of his growing feelings towards her through his role as doctor. He begins depending on her in many of his surgeries, as we were reminded of the fact that he was used to working alone in their first meeting flashback. She slowly becomes his support pillar as a doctor. He gives her her first lead surgery. She’s allowed into his inner sanctuary, the OR, where it may have been the only place where he was in charge of his emotions and actions. But he’s able to tolerate, rather, invites her into it because she was a somebody to him. He probably felt guilty that one time where her stomach rumbled, recognizing again, the physical suffering Gyeoul went through as part of her “doing her best” as a surgeon – put the patient first - while at his beck and call. I’ve heard surgeries metaphorically drawn out as choreographed dances. They are dancing with each other in their own innocent/inexperienced fashion – WG style?

     

    Why did he wait? Who knows, he might have grappled with how to do it. At this point, Ikjun has clued into the fact that she is very single and perhaps Jeongwon knows of her feelings for him. Probably overthinking. 

     

    In time, she gave him the space to find himself and through her actions, a validation of his role and philosophy as a doctor. As the lines are blurred between professional and personal for Jeongwon, it's all that more special that Gyeoul came into his life, as somebody who can, and I think, will find separation between those two with him.

     

    And then we have the confession, where all she asked him not to run away, stay by my side and I will be there for you.

     

     

     

     

     

    This essay is too bloody long. I only wrote it to procrastinate. I have so much empathy for these two. That’s it for now.

     

     

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  3. 3 hours ago, wallflowersforjane said:

     

     

    Happy to see the gang gathering again! 

     

     

    Actually I thought this ER mention was in reference to the maggots scene rather than later because he talked about the kalguksu dinner scene just before.

     

    TBH I think that ShinLee are still being quite ambiguous in this special ep edit when they mentioned to YYS that he has a loveline. We don't get explicit mention that GU is the loveline BUT she is purposely referenced so often that it's not possible to think of it any other way. 

     

     

     

    Ahh thanks for the correction. I just rewatched the maggot scene earlier and got squeamish (for the first time) and blocked it from my memory heh, Yes it's totally that scene. I had a wish he was talking about the allergy scene.

     

    I do hope SHB gets her own video as well. For those that don't know, Na PD's channel is celebrating 2 million viewers this week and they have had a few extras from his shows. Hosp Playlist is scheduled for Thursday as usual, but I'm hoping we get a lot more this week.

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  4. Hellooooo all! It's nice to see the agency open again!!!

     

    I don't about y'all, but I can the summaries still of my old posts in the thread. Of course, can't open them, but at least they...appear?

     

    Hehe @smartiegal I still need to finish my thoughts! I think Gyeoul plays a larger role in his life if I go by the theory that he isn't quite "repressed" just didn't recognize his feelings for Gyeoul. More Lizzy than Darcy. (Been re-reading JA of late due to all this chatter here and on Twitter)

     

    @kiklaminHo I think the PD+writer like to tease YYS, especially they worked together in Reply _____. I bet they told him his storyline since he had soooo many questions for them with the script. It sounded like he went up to Ep 6 in that video. Pretty sure he knew it was going to be Gyeoul by then since he's asking what is his feeling towards Gyeoul being in ER. 

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