Doctor X: Mafia in White Episode 5 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Kim Ji-won as Gye Su-jeong
Lee Jung-eun as Jang Hui-suk
Son Hyun-joo as Bu Seung-gwon
Kim Woo-seok as Park Tae-gyeong
Lee Jin-hee as Jo Won-jin
Kim Young-min as Do Yun-sik
Choi Deok-moon as Yang Eung-gu
Jang Seung-jo as Na Dae-il

In an operating room at GUMC, the hospital in the fictional city of Seonam, Gye Su-jeong has just operated on Kwon Chung-hyeon. She is the freelance surgeon the show calls Doctor X, placed here as a locum by Jang Hui-suk's locum tenens agency, a firm that hires out freelance doctors. Mr. Kwon is a pharmaceutical sales rep whose last surgery was 15 years ago, during his military service. At the end of episode 4 she found the letters D.N on his liver, and now intern Park Tae-gyeong asks what he is looking at as they are photographed. Over the images, a voice remarks that the lettering did not come out as neat as hoped. Then Su-jeong sends Tae-gyeong out to tell the waiting family the surgery went well.

The team argues over the truth

Afterward, Su-jeong checks that Mr. Kwon has had no major surgery since his army operation, and as far as anyone knows, he has not. It was the work of Na Dae-il, the military doctor who saved him and has just joined GUMC's surgery department. They agree the marks are initials, and someone asks the others to stop talking because it makes them picture how it was done. Su-jeong will not tell the hospital, since it hired the man, and leaves for a team dinner at her agency.

Anesthesiologist Jo Won-jin wonders whether Mr. Kwon needs to know at all, since if they stay quiet, he goes home to his loving family short only a gallbladder. She asks them to see it through the eyes of a man who never saw it. Su-jeong thanks her for the interesting opinion and answers plainly: patients have a right to know what happened in surgery, and doctors a duty to tell them. Then she heads off. Tae-gyeong cannot accept Mr. Kwon treating the man who did this as his savior while Dae-il goes on operating. Reined in for saying such a man is no doctor, he asks Won-jin whether she is protecting a fellow doctor.

In the ER, Dae-il arrives late, apologizes to emergency doctor Kim Seong-jin and agrees he was stuck in car-accident traffic. He wants to know what Su-jeong said about the operation or Mr. Kwon's condition. Seong-jin mentions only adhesions from Dae-il's old surgery, and that Su-jeong went in with just Tae-gyeong and Won-jin.

At the agency, dinner is street food: sundae, the Korean blood sausage, with pork organs and liver. Su-jeong's friend Yang Eung-gu, the agency's traditional Korean medicine doctor, is ribbed for getting by on acupuncture for Yu Mi-gyeong's patients. When Su-jeong comes home, her phone buzzes. Tae-gyeong has sent the photos, offers to be her witness and asks for a reply of Y or N, and she asks how to block people. Eung-gu swears off liver, and Hui-suk wants the photos saved for her meeting with the hospital director, Bu Seung-gwon.

Later, Su-jeong judges the carving like a surgeon: it was clearly Dae-il's first time, because the pressure and depth are uneven. In a dream, she is back among armed men who carve crude marks to spread fear. They mock her as a medical volunteer for the insurgents and warn that if their commander dies, she will be carved too. One tells her to keep her blade sharp, because her turn is next. Someone wakes her and tells her to forget that incident.

Mr. Kwon sees the photo

In Mr. Kwon's room, Su-jeong shows him the photo, and he cannot believe it is his liver. Such cuts usually heal within a week, she explains, but the severe adhesions kept these intact, a very rare case. When he flips to baseball on a premium channel mid-thought, he is told hiding behind sports is not right. The anesthesia record shows no general anesthesia except for Dae-il's operation.

Mr. Kwon keeps thanking Su-jeong instead, as his daughter, A-rin, calls him out to play. His second child is due next month at this hospital. Maybe it was the price for saving his life, he says, and he will put it behind him. Over one more protest, Su-jeong accepts his choice. Told he can go back to his old life, he says he is good at playing dumb. It got him this far with no impressive diploma and no contacts.

Later, at his bedside, Dae-il and surgeon Do Yun-sik urge Mr. Kwon to keep his two-person room, and Dae-il says he could not even perform the surgery himself. Seeing the liver Dae-il once treated would have been a sentimental bonus, someone adds, until Mr. Kwon asks them to stop. When A-rin is called over to blow on her dad's sore spot, Su-jeong walks in and tells Dae-il to get away from her patient. Yun-sik is called off to a conference and takes Dae-il along.

Outside, Dae-il invites her to a meal and asks how the liver looked. Crude and sloppy, she says, like a first attempt. He was rushed back then, he admits, but no one can see it, it does not hurt, and Mr. Kwon got a family and a career. "He's alive, thanks to it," he says. Su-jeong tells him he should not have said that, then grumbles that he is making her ask Hui-suk for a favor. In the OR, meanwhile, Won-jin compliments senior resident Ma Seong-gyu on handling appendicitis without a flinch, which surprises him.

Su-jeong finds Mr. Kwon alone, with a note from his wife and a word his daughter has just learned to write, DAD. He says he drives doctors' kids around yet does not know where his own child's daycare is. He asks why she showed him the photo at all, when no one would have known. Whoever branded him would have thought the same, she answers. Mr. Kwon admits he now pictures his body used as a plaything, and today he felt as if the man could see it too. Su-jeong says that is surely what he wanted most.

A text from Hui-suk threatens to dock Su-jeong's pay, every last penny. Then Dae-il's health screening results surface: the checkup from his hiring found something in his liver, and he has taken leave. Su-jeong's dream line about whose turn is next plays again.

Dae-il on the table

Ten days later, Dae-il comes out of anesthesia and is told the operation went well. Curious about his biopsy, he wants to watch the CCTV video. Colleagues explain that the surgeons fought the law putting cameras in operating rooms, then tweaked it so viewing needs everyone in the room to consent. When Su-jeong drops by, someone snipes at her as Gye-snake, a nickname built on her surname, but Dae-il says he is fine with her there. She writes D.N in ketchup on his omelet rice, a silent warning.

Dae-il's mentor, Dr. Mun Yeong-jong, refuses to consent, and when Dae-il reminds him how much he has done for him, the truth comes out. Before the operation, Dr. Mun played golf with a drug rep who had just been discharged, won, and then drank. In flashback, Won-jin blocks him from the OR and the standoff turns ugly. Dr. Mun sneers at people who never felt the pressure of a scalpel. Seung-gwon, a surgeon himself for over half his life, calls a disciplinary hearing. Whichever general surgeon is free is sent to OR 4, and that, Dr. Mun tells Dae-il, was Su-jeong.

Dr. Mun consents, since his name is on the case. He mentions that Magnolia, the circle of Guseo University medical alumni, is shielding him from the hearing. In the footage, the whole team suddenly looks startled; an ER drill set off a siren that day, Dae-il is told. He cannot zoom in, because the other doctors mounted the camera as far away as possible, and he curses them.

Dae-il confronts Su-jeong in the ER

Hui-suk arrives in the ER with fried chicken, proud to see where Su-jeong works, and invites Tae-gyeong and Won-jin to the agency's dinner. Then Dae-il appears, demanding to know where Su-jeong is. She tells him that however good her sutures are, he still needs rest. He asks what she did to him, and she answers with his own defense: something that does not hurt and that no one, not even he, can see. It will fade in a week, she adds, then asks if he really thinks she only branded him with her initials.

In the scuffle that follows, Dae-il cuts Su-jeong's arm with a scalpel and threatens her hand next. Hui-suk tackles him with wrestling moves, furious that he hurt the agency's biggest cash cow, who, Su-jeong learns, is paying for tonight's dinner. Eung-gu's needles join in, and one of the pair reminds Dae-il that saving lives in North Korea was not all they did.

The ER wants Dae-il transferred. He accuses Su-jeong of planning this, and she asks whether he means the ketchup on his omelet rice. Someone saw her whisper something to him. When a voice declares it time to terminate her contract, Hui-suk tells him to check his phone. She warned she would clean him out, and now she is collecting.

The cut is a simple surface wound, and suddenly everyone wants to stitch it, some of the surgeons hoping it stings. Su-jeong picks Tae-gyeong. When warned the intern might leave a worse scar, she brushes it off.

A notice announces Dae-il's suspension and dismissal, and word is he will be arrested. Mr. Kwon, back at work, claims to be as baffled as anyone. A second notice appoints Su-jeong as a general surgery locum, and the narrator calls her a lone wolf in the era of the mafia in white.

Seung-gwon visits Dae-il

Seung-gwon goes to see Dae-il, who never expected the director to visit. Hui-suk sent Seung-gwon a photo to cut a deal, he explains, which landed Su-jeong in general surgery. Doctors learn through patients' bodies, he says, rather than amuse themselves with them. Dae-il expects leniency as a first-time offender and a longtime military doctor. Seung-gwon swears on his own license to get Dae-il's revoked for good.

In the operating room, meanwhile, Tae-gyeong asks Won-jin whether she thinks Su-jeong really did it. She tells him to ask Su-jeong herself, though she does not think so. Back with Seung-gwon, Dae-il says Magnolia has hired him a lawyer, who is due to see him next.

Later, Dae-il opens his pathology report. The ER confrontation replays with Su-jeong's last words to him: she cannot wait for his results, and "I don't ever fail." The tumor is benign, but she has promised to be the surgeon who opens him up whenever he is sick or hurt, anywhere in Korea. Back in the OR, Tae-gyeong explains why he asked Won-jin. He is afraid that if he asks Su-jeong, she will say, "I branded him."

Thoughts

The best thing here is that the doctors never settle the ethics debate. Won-jin and Tae-gyeong both make real arguments, and then Mr. Kwon takes the decision away from them with a line about being good at playing dumb. His second scene with Su-jeong quietly proves Won-jin half right. Once he has seen the photo, the peace is gone, and the cruelty is that he now feels Dae-il looking at him too.

I do not think Su-jeong carved anything into Dae-il, and I think the show wants us to wonder. The camera that cannot zoom, the siren, the ketchup and the benign result all point to a doctor who branded him with fear rather than a blade. Tae-gyeong being too scared to ask her is the funniest and most telling beat of the hour.

Hui-suk's favor and the well-timed health screening sit side by side without explanation, and I am curious what she actually did. Dr. Mun is shielded by Magnolia while Dae-il gets a Magnolia lawyer. Seung-gwon has now sworn on his license against one of their own, and my bet is that the circle turns on him before it turns on Su-jeong.

Up next: Doctor X: Mafia in White Episode 6 Recap. See every episode in the Doctor X: Mafia in White episode guide.