Hello, and welcome to ScribblerAlliance. With the new year already advancing to March, we’re back with another drama review to entice you with. This year’s first drama selection—Doctor John.
Drama Name: Doctor John
Genre: Drama, Suspense, Medical
Cast: Ji Sung, Lee Se-Young, Hwang Hee and Lee Kyu-hyung
Episode: 32 (30-35 minutes per episode)
IMDb Ratings: 8.3/10
Personal Rating: 6.0/10
Plot: This is a drama based on the Japanese novel, On Hand of God by Yo Kusakabe. The drama begins with Kang Si Young (Lee Se-Young), a second year medical resident who for unspoken reasons deems herself unworthy of being called a doctor. Kang Si Young is recruited by her uncle, a prison warden, to work as the temporary in-house physician at the prison. In the prison, she meets the strange inmate everyone is scared of—inmate 6238. Despite her uncle’s warnings against the man, she feels a pull toward him.
Inmate 6238, or “ten seconds” as he’s more commonly known to people due to his ability to diagnose a disease in ten seconds, is in fact a doctor. Dr. Cha Yo-han (Ji Sung), is an anesthesiologist who has been imprisoned with charges of murder because he assisted a terminal patient to end his life with euthanesia. In the few days Kang Si Young works as the in-house physician at the prison, Inmate 6238 helps her save patients with uncommon conditions, and in the process, he makes her face her own demons.
Once Inmate 6238 gets released from prison and leaves without so much as a goodbye to her, Kang Si Young decides to go back to her real position as a second year medical resident. She returns to the pain management center only to learn that there’s been a new recruitment there … Dr. Cha Yo-han. What happens from that point is for you to watch and find out.
(Spoilers ahead…)
Personal Review: As always, let’s start with the positives. The first thing that made it stand apart from a generic medical drama is the introduction and how our Inmate 6238 helped patients in the prison without proper equipments. It’s impressive and uniquely refreshing.
Secondly, I have to mention Ji Sung’s acting. Just like his other dramas, Ji Sung’s acting was phenomenal. Although he gives little vibes of Shin Se Gi from his other drama, Kill Me, Heal Me, at times, Cha Yo-han has his own charm and rather I say … swagger? His acting was one of the major reasons why I decided to continue watching the drama till the end.
Thirdly, as a healthcare professional, I appreciated how the drama tried to address the blessings and curses of the medical profession. Euthanaisa is quite a controversial topic. Deciding whether you would save a patient that will make him suffer longer or would you help a patient to end his life and thus save him from the pain is such a paradox. This drama managed to depict that paradox quite well.
Another thing I must mention is the second lead. Hwang Hee’s portrayal of medical fellow, Dr. Lee Yoo Joon was certainly praise-worthy. I also appreciated that they didn’t create a love triangle with him and instead made him a strong supportive second lead.
Now for the negatives. Let’s first get to what bugged me the most about this drama—the character of nurse Chae Eun Jeong. I understand that she became vindictive because in her eyes Cha Yo-han helped her daughter’s murderer to end his life and escape the law but for a nurse to suddenly become a criminal mastermind like that? That’s something I could not get used to. I feel instead of making her such a conniving character who had eyes and ears everywhere, she could’ve just crossed paths with Yo-han by chance and seek vengeance. I think that would’ve been more believable.
Another thing that I wasn’t happy with was the unnecessary family/ political drama included in the whole plot with Si-Young’s family and the hospital management. I would’ve much preferred if the drama was based on the prison set up instead of this but I can sort of see why they needed this to make the plot move along toward the climax.
One other thing that really ticked me off was the fact that the hospital seemed to revolve around JUST the anesthesiology department. As a healthcare professional, I have a basic idea of how a hospital functions and that was not it. The anesthesiologist, no matter how good he is, does not perform surgeries! Yes, he should be present in the OT, but not cutting the patient open without any surgeons present. That was just wrong. Honestly, with the way it was shown, at times it seemed like the anesthesiology department was functioning more as an ER than themselves. I came to this close to quitting the drama because of this.
Lastly, when I started the drama, I had high hopes for Lee Se-Young’s acting, mostly based on her portrayal of Jin Bu-Ja in A Korean Odyssey. However, I can’t help but express how disappointing it was to see her acting like a mope-y love-sick girl throughout this drama. At times it looked like her character wanted to be strong but she just ended up looking like a whiny doormat who lets her younger sister behave horribly with her.
Final Thoughts: So do I love the drama? Certainly not. Do I like it? Eh, let’s say I don’t hate it. Do I feel that there was a lot of room for improvement? Yes, I do. However, that doesn’t make this the worst drama I have ever watched. No, that title still belongs to another. So my final thoughts are if you are a fan of medical drama and enjoy watching doctors tackle unique medical conditions, you might want to give it a try. This drama is available on all the popular drama websites.
That’s it for my review of Doctor John. If you’d like us to review any drama, movie or hollywood shows, please let us know in your comments. If you’ve watched this drama, you’re welcome to share your views with us. Thanks for stopping by. We’ll return with another review very soon. Till then, love you all!
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