[K-Drama]: Golden Time First Impressions

Mr. Voice! Welcome back to dramaland baby! I'm not sure many of you actually understand just how much love I have for Lee Seung Gyun. He amazed me in Coffee Prince ( I was actually second lead shipping for a while until I realized that it would be the death of me and jumped back onto the Gong Yoo ship) and made me want to become a pasta chef (I mean chep-nim!) in Pasta. And because of my love for him, I obviously have been waiting for this drama since the news hit that Mr. Voice was going to be starring in it. 


There seemed to be a lot of hype before it aired but once it did the ratings kinda flopped. It opened with a 8.7 which isn't great, but there have been worse ratings for a first episode, but then they dropped to 7.8 [AGB Neilsen] the second episode, so things aren't looking to great for this drama. I can understand the ratings but I for one will be sure to keep watching this drama. 

I mean Lee Seung Gyun, Lee Seung Min and Kwon Suk Jang all reuniting for a drama? Count me in! I loved Pasta to bits and I'm hoping that these three can bring back the magic. Looking back at the ratings, Pasta didn't start out that great either, hovering around 12~13 but it ended  near 20! Lee Seung Min totally stole my heart in TK2H so I'm hoping that he'll get some more story + back story as the show progresses. 


I can't say much about Hwang Jung Eum since... I actually haven't seen her in anything, but she seems nice enough so I guess I'll waiting until later on in the drama to talk about her. 

There was quite a lot of hype for this drama before it began but for some reasons I haven't been able to find many reviews / recaps on this drama since it began to air. So I decided that I would write a post about my first impressions of this drama ^^

So, the basic plot. The story follows Lee Min Woo (Lee Seung Gyun), a doctor who has a medical license but has never done a residency at a hospital. He works at a traditional medicine clinic, using his license to order test like MRIs and CAT scans for the patients of the other doctors. He only goes into work 3 days a week but easily makes a six figure salary. One day he is subbing in for a friend at the ER of a small town hospital that rarely has any patients when a young girl with asthma comes in. Unable to successfully intubate her, the girl dies and makes Min Woo think about what he has been doing with his life. He makes the decision to start as an intern at a big hospital in Seoul. Kang Jae In (Hwang Jung Eum), is the successor of said hospital (among many) and also begins to do her residency there while hiding her identity. Jae In is Min Woo's best friend's girlfriend and Min Woo and Jae In begin their residency working together. Choi In Hyuk (Lee Seung Min) is the head of the ER and a trauma specialist who seems to do nothing but work, early on he takes an interest in Min Woo. 

The drama sure started with a bang. Min Woo was driving Jae In into Seoul as a favour to his friend when he got cut off by a car that was weaving through the streets. Min Woo then pursues the car with some fancy driving of his own only to follow the car onto the site of a multi car pile up but is able to avoid being hit. This scene already shows us a lot about the characters. The moment Jae In sees what has happened she is out of the car and ready to help, where as Min Woo is just looking around at the scene and taking pictures of everything. He's reluctant to help even though he's a doctor and continuously tries to talk Jae In into just leaving the scene for the paramedics to arrive. 

It's obvious that they had different reasons for getting their medical licenses. Jae In sincerely wants to help people (though she probably was influenced by the fact that she's an heiress to a few hospitals) and Min Woo is in it for the money. They follow a boy and his seriously injured mother to a hospital where it seems that Min Woo has his first encounter with what a real ER looks like when it's in an emergency situation. He's completely fascinated with everything that's going around him and is also able to identify the problems that a lot of the patients have. (He has excellent observation skills honed by watching many american medical dramas) 

It is after this encounter that he decides to do his friend a favour by working the graveyard shift at a small hospitals ER. There are no other doctors there because of a storm and when a little girl suffering from a severe asthma attack comes in Min Woo is the only one available. He attempts to intubate but is unable to because the they don't have the right size tube and because the girl's throat has closed up due to the wound from a previous throat surgery healing wrongly and closing up the throat. The girl dies there, but Min Woo cannot come to terms with this and so he continues to administer CPR while asking the parents to drive them to the hospital that Min Woo visited after the car accident. It is there that In Hyuk tells Min Woo that the girl had been dead for a long time and In Hyuk learns that Min Woo doesn't know how to announce time of death. 


Min Woo emotionally scarred by this and won't leave the villa that he is sharing with his friend for days. Jae In visits him on the request of her boyfriend and they talk about what it means to be a doctor and why they both decided to be doctors. This leads Min Woo to go to apply for residency at Haeundae Sejong Hospital: the place where he saw doctors doing something worthwhile and saving lives. He finds that both he and Jae In are able to pass the interview and become residents at the hospital. 

Once they enter the hospital Min Woo seems to be the one who is more inept at handling cases though his observation skills help him save the life of one of their patients. Throughout the second episode we are introduced to a lot of hospital politics which consists of the different departments fighting for OR space and power over other departments. In the middle of this dispute is In Hyuk who is constantly fighting with others because he needs ORs for his emergency patients which doesn't bode well with the doctors who have scheduled their surgeries long beforehand...Though this made me wonder if their overbooking their ORs. Shouldn't they have free ORs open for the trauma department anyways? Why would In Hyuk even be in the place where he needs to go around begging other surgeons for an OR when his patient is dying? 

The second episode ended with a MAJOR cliffhanger with one of the patients that Min Woo was taking care of going into heart failure and I seriously can't wait for the next episode to air so that I can watch it.

So here's where I'll talk about some of the characters that I didn't really mention in my semi-recap of the first two episodes. First of all, because I just ended up with the ending about the dying guy. The surgeon that was in charge of him ... the douchebag ortho guy, what is up with him? How can someone with such an inflated ego even be a doctor? He calls himself a god and then won't accept the praises of a lowly intern because they aren't even at a place where they can judge him? Seriously dude, get off your pedestal and go do something productive instead of drinking yourself silly. Sure he may have skills, but what does that matter when he doesn't even have the proper work ethic? He won't do surgery for patients that he thinks won't make it. Seriously... this guy just annoyed me so much! 

Amd then there is Min Woo's friend who is also Jae In's boyfriend who is also an asshole but for different reasons lol. Basically he's a player who's probably dating Jae In because she's rich and graduated from Seoul University. At the same time he's also dating a plethora of different girls. Jae In is so invested in the relationship though and thinks that things are starting to get serious though the friend is only playing around with her and thinking of ending things because she's too clingly. I didn't even bother to remember/look up his name because this guy is so freaking annoying. Good riddance that we saw him enter the hospital because of a wound in the teaser for episode 3. 

I haven't watched any other Korean medical dramas (other than Thank You... but I don't think that really counts), so I don't have anything to compare it to. But I HAVE watched every episode of Grey's anatomy that has ever aired ... twice ... some up to three or four times ... so even with my limited experience with the genre I'm still enjoying the show. If this goes well I'll probably find to time to watch White Tower (which is apparently really famous and also has Mr. Voice, though apparently it has no romance which I live on >.>) and Brain and OBGYN. 

All in all this was a pretty good start for a drama and I'll for sure be tuning in (well actually maybe not next week since I'll be busy) to see how it progresses! 

[K-Drama]: I Do, I Do

Okay, so I totally thought that my first real post would be a book review, but as it turns out, my reading of White Queen has declined to a snail's pace. I'm close to completing it, but not quite in the reading mood these days, hopefully that'll change soon enough. 


But something that is working out for me this summer is my drama watching, well at least for this drama. Currently my drama watching/ reading recap schedule is working out like this:


Reading:
-Dr. Jin (and I don't plan to watch it any time soon considering how dramabeans continues to talk about how bad the directing is... maybe it'll happen once it's over and I have nothing better to do.)


-Big (Which I am also watching ... but kind of slowly, I don't sit on the edge of my seat waiting for the subs to be complete so that I can watch it.)


Watching: 
-My Sweet City: My love for Ji Hyun Woo (QIHM I will re-watch you once you have been fully subbed on viki oh how you're so wonderfully cracktastic that I even lived through really horrible quality to watch you!)  has made me want to look back on his older dramas. And considering this drama also has Choi Kang Hee and My darling Mr. Voice, well there was no way I wasn't going to watch it. It's amusing enough, but not really that special so far. (I'm currently on episode 8) 


-I Do, I Do : 
So this is what led me to post in the first place. I just finished episode 9 (and when I write just, I mean I literally just finished it like not even 10 minutes ago) when I decided that I just HAD to talk about the love I have for this drama somewhere. I had been happily enjoying the fluff and laughter until this episode 9 cemented for me that this is probably going to be my crack drama until the end of it's run. 


I can't for the life of me understand why the ratings for this drama are so dismal, the nationwide ratings hovering at around 9% while the seoul ratings are only around 10%. I know that those aren't horrible, but considering Kim Sun Ah -who is usually able to hold at least a steady 15% average in her past two projects- is headlining the whole she-bang... these ratings are kind of sad. 


Maybe it's the fame factor, Lee Jang Woo, no matter how cute he is, isn't a Cha Seung Won or Lee Dong Wook, but I would've thought that he would have brought in the younger crowd and the WGM viewers (though frankly WGM seems to be a sinking ship these days ratings wise). But I just can't seem to see why. It's the perfect, fluffy summer drama. Though a lot of people my disagree, I find this drama much more interesting than Big (which is what the internet seems to be completely fawning over these days). 


But if I'm going to blame something for this wonderful drama failing, then I guess it has to be Gaksital, which is doing so well that they're thinking of extending it's already 24 episodes. If things continue the way they're going, I DID is sadly going to be overlooked for the entirety of it's run. I guess this summer just isn't going to go so great for MBC which I guess is fine for them since they were such a giant in the previous two dramas in I DID's timeslot, TMTETS and K2H which were both amazing. Seriously this timeslot on MBC has been magic for me so far, so I can't wait to see what's going to happen after I DID. 


Well enough about why I DID isn't doing well... Now I'm going to show you why it SHOULD be doing well. 

Lee Jang Woo in drag. Like seriously. I laughed out loud the moment he came out onto the screen like this. This is after I had already seen these pictures online but once I saw him in motion I just couldn't stop myself. I DID is wonderful with it's comedy, it's typically pretty slapstick, but it also has those quieter funny parts that aren't so in your face, but still work well with you're overall tone. Like the entire character of Eun Sung, he's shouldn't be so funny, but almost everything he does has me dying with laughter. (Oh Mascara man, I know that some people are annoyed with you. But I love you just the way you are. Please keep massaging your man boobs in public places!)

This in no way means that I DID isn't serious when it needs to be though. Kim Sun Ah is obviously killing it in her role as Hwang Ji An, the (not so) cold executive shoe designer whose life has been entirely changed by one stupid mistake. Ji An is so lovable because even though she seems like a cold city woman, she's actually someone who really cares about all the people around her, especially her estranged parents and her unborn baby. It would be so easy for her, with all her success and money to just let the relationship that she has with her parents drift away and have an abortion of a child that she hasn't even met, but she's choosing to work on both of those relationships and try to make them work. Ji An is someone that you can't not root for. 

Lee Jang Woo is also doing quite well as Park Tae Kang, a young underdog trying to make it in the world of shoe design with nothing but a high school diploma and a lot of spunk. (And the added plus of being Ji An's baby daddy... though he doesn't actually know that the baby is his at the moment). His comedic timing is great and he's perfectly serviceable in his role. It helps that Tae Kang should naturally fall into the background in his scenes with Ji An due to the age gap and the manager/worker relationship they're in. But he's just so freaking earnest in his one sided love for Ji An that I can't stop rooting for his adorable puppy love. (Though is it still puppy love if he's willing to take care of her child?! But then again, he still needs still needs someone to take care of him >.>) 

And did I mention how hilarious Park Gun Hyun is as Jo Eun Sung? Been there, done that? Well let me say it again. I LOVE THIS MAN. His character is just as adorable as Tae Kang is in his own love for Ji An, and he's currently mulling over taking responsibility for her life. His anger when he learned about her pregnancy was completely warranted and now that he's calmed down he's willing to do so much for her. Ethical medicine practices be damned, he can be her doctor if he wants to be! Just look at that face! How can you not love him?!?! 

The script is superb and the directing is pretty, so I'm really hoping for ratings to go up soon. We're already well past the half-way point (only 7 more episodes *SOB*)  but I'm hoping that the ratings get a little better (or at least stay this same! I will not be able to comprehend why there would be any reason for the ratings to drop lower than they already are). But then again, ratings aren't everything right? I'm still enjoying every moment of the show, I just wish there were more people who also love it as much is me! ^^  Anyone who's looking for a light and fluffy drama to watch should really try this drama out!