Review of Doctor Slump / 닥터슬럼프

I was in such a massive Korean drama phase in the summer before heading back to Korea. June to August 2024 I was slated to receive a full scholarship from the US State Department to study Korean in Busan, South Korea, so you bet I was mentally preparing for my trip abroad by watching a ton of dramas. Listening is an important skill!

Anyways, I kept seeing Doctor Slump at the front of my Netflix page, but was ignoring it. I was captivated specifically by the banner images Netflix was using for it, which I now realize was them trying to suck me in and watch the show, effectively wasting more hours of my life on another drama.

It was the image of Park Shin-hye kneeling down on the side of the road, which is from one of the early episodes where she keels over while crossing the street. But one day I actually stopped to read the synopsis of the show, then dropped everything to watch it immediately.

Something about depictions of depression keep me going. I love when it’s done right, and I wanted to see if this show did something that was really good for mental health representation.

Let’s get into the review!

Two former high school rivals find themselves down in their luck later on.

Our female lead in this show is Nam Ha-neul, who moves with her mother and brother from Busan to Seoul as a high schooler. In the flashback sequences of the show, we see she devotes every waking minute to studying almost, and even has some pretty weird tendencies to keep herself going and studying.

When she arrives in Seoul, her new high school’s top student is not going to welcome her with easy smiles. Yeo Jeong-woo is used to being the top student without even trying, but when Ha-neul unearths the ground he has been walking on so easily for all of these years, it unlocks a massive rivalry between the two.

Years later, which is the present day in the show, Jeong-woo owns his famous plastic surgery clinic. When he goes in for surgery one day, his client, the daughter of a big hotshot in Macau, bleeds out and dies on the table. The spectacle and court trial to come puts him out of business, and he’s forced to give everything up.

He moves to a rooftop apartment, which turns out is owned by Ha-neul’s family. She became an anesthesiologist, but her professor steals her work and makes her work to the ground. She’s depressed by her circumstances, and when she finally stands up to him and his abuse, she quits her job.

Unable to find a new one, she reconciles with Jeong-woo, the hostility between the two slowly fading as they commiserate in their collective misery. It’s obvious both are pretty depressed, and they spend their nights going to get bar food and drinking.

Eventually, this might turn into something more, and it does. But it’s not going to be a smooth ride for the two of them at all.

Jeong-woo still has a court case to get through, and no evidence to prove that he was innocent when it comes to the heiress’s death. Ha-neul is also continuously struggling to find a job, putting her into an even worse mental space as the days continue to drag on.

Eventually, there’s going to be a boiling point, and it’s not going to be pretty.

Overall Thoughts

While I found the character of Jeong-woo to be quite whiny compared to Ha-neul, I actually really enjoyed this show overall. I wasn’t expecting much, but the story really touched me in some ways.

I genuinely think this is a show I’ll revisit somewhere down the road. Not any time soon, but I am confident that I will be thinking about it. Not in the way that I’ll think of Daily Dose of Sunshine, which is spectacular, but it will live in my head rent free.

It’s not a perfect show though. I’d say it wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea for sure, but I found it was what I needed it to be at the right moment. I’m glad I gave it a chance.

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