'Doctors' Is a Middling Medical Drama

My expectation for Doctors was that it was going to be a remarkable medical thriller.  But though some interesting medical cases were touched upon, Doctors is no thriller at all.  It’s primarily a romantic drama which happens to have doctor characters and set in a hospital.  The medical aspect felt incidental.

The series is about two neurosurgeons who first met when the girl (Park Shin-hye) was still a high school student with a gangster personality and the man (Kim Rae-won), a freshly minted doctor taking a sabbatical, was her Biology and homeroom teacher.  The teacher influenced and inspired her to redirect the path of her life to a meaningful direction.  However, circumstances led them to have somewhat of a falling out.  Thirteen years later, they reunite as co-workers in the neurology department of a hospital, reconnect, and start a love affair.

If the synopsis seemed to have come out as lazy and indifferent, it’s just that this K-drama never really impressed me.  There were moments when I thought it could get interesting, but it was unable to do anything worthwhile with them.  It does explore some thoughtful themes, but I’ve seen these things utilized many times already and with much better execution.  It has tons of subplots but none resulted to a gratifying narrative payoff or excellent character arcs.

Doctors is easily the least of all Koreanovelas I’ve watched so far.  I didn’t hate it.  But I didn’t like it either.  I found it middling.  I still watched it till the end though.  By the time I was certain this show wasn’t going to be rewarding for me, I was already at its 15^th episode (of its 20 episodes).  Obsessive compulsive nerdery simply dictates that I should finish – and review – it then.

Miscellaneous musings (with some minor spoilers):

• It has some comedy that got me chuckling.  But the only time I laughed was when the antagonist of the story did some “dramatic scene” in the last episode.  The acting was hilarious rather than dramatic.
• Kim Rae-won’s character is a fun smug character.  I would have liked him more if he had a significant character arc.
• It’s weird seeing Jang Hyun-sung play a likable good guy in this series when he was a fantastic bastard of a bad guy in Signal.  Great actor.
• I was slightly surprised to see Park Shin-hye in it.  I initially had no idea she was headlining this series.  She looks nothing like the girl in the promo poster (see the photo at the top of the article).
• Park Shin-hye’s character has some decent fighting scenes here.  She has the aptitude to be a badass.  She should do a drama or movie where her character needs to kick a lot of butt.  I’ll watch that.
• Park Shin-hye has some of the most adorable GIF-worthy expressions ever.  Here are some of them: