Faith @ The Great Doctor

Faith @ The Great Doctor

Cast :
Lee Min Ho, Kim Hee Sun, Ryu Deok Hwan, Park Se Young, Yoo Oh Sung, Phillip Lee, Sung Hoon, Shin Eun Jung

Language : 
Korean 



Synopsis :
In the mid-1300s, approximately 1351, Choi Young is a bodyguard to King Gongmin of the Goryeo Dynasty. He’s 29 years old and has no regrets in life, no ambition for women or money, and whose hobby is sleeping. Because he lives a life of no regret and gave up on love to be an unflinching warrior, he’s not afraid of death. He is a brave general of the Wudalchi warriors and loyal to the king. Choi Young believes that people who do not fear death need not spin their wheels scheming, so he takes that to the extreme — he’s a warrior who doesn't strategize, so much as attack everything head-on. If he happens to succeed, great; if he fails and dies, so be it.

Yoo Eun-soo is a 33-year old plastic surgeon in the year 2012. She was originally a general surgeon, but quickly found that it was an overworked, under-paid profession and jumped ship to plastic surgery. Her dream is to someday open her own practice. But one day a strange man she thinks is dressed as a drama extra kidnaps her and takes her back to the Goryeo era. In Goryeo, she is believed to be the apprentice of the famous Chinese surgeon, Hua Tuo and from heaven. Their love story spans centuries but also warring beliefs.

Remarks :
I’ve been waiting for this like ages due to its scandal. I had anticipated a lot from this drama, especially with a team who did ‘The Legend’ back in 2007. Though it did disappoint in certain parts.

This drama is such an interesting case of having solid parts… but put together all wrong. It’s painful to know what a scene is intending to do, and then have to watch it flounder time and again. The end result is that no matter how impactful a line of dialogue or a written heroic action, we don’t feel the full effect onscreen. There’s nothing worse than seeing the emotion that you know is supposed to be there, but not getting to feel it with the characters. And for me, there’s no coming back from that, as a drama. I enjoyed the characters and I liked the setup and the world. But the directing and the editing left me cold, which means I watched it all at arm’s length, excavating what was intended from what was given. There were certainly moments that got through to me, but they were far too few in 24 hours of screen time to get me on the hook.

I don’t even think that it’s a case where they took stellar writing and just shoved it through the wrong delivery device either, because there was maybe enough story for a 16-episode series. I feel like precious time was wasted recycling a handful of conflicts over and over, and meanwhile all sorts of things just fell by the wayside. And if getting the lovers back together was going to be the only central conflict we really deal with in a satisfying finale-worthy concluding arc, then why did we spend so much plot time in the political arena? I expected a much grander closing for King Gongmin, who carried so much of my interest through the show.

All told, it was still a fun show. I can’t in good conscience call it an excellent show, but it was enjoyable, mostly because of the hilarious band of baddies (I’ll miss you, Ki Chul!), and the thread of wit that carried through. That was something evident in the writing that the directing couldn’t mess up; in fact, the wit was probably this show’s saving grace. I came to this party for Epic; alas, it was a no-show, and instead I walked away with a sweet love story^^