Looks like we won't be seeing the next subs for Suzuki sensei from Chuks until end of Jan next year and I'm waiting for ep 6 subs of Shinya Shokudo from earthcolors. It seemed a bad time for jdoramas at the moment until Nutcase released ep 1 subs for Doctors. On the surface. Doctors seems like another GTO style medical show. Corrupt hospital with with totally inept doctors and of course the usual useless directors. Where nurses down before the almighty doctors, where patient care is non-existent and doctors and staff only care about getting paid extravagantly from the budget.
Along comes this smiling surgeon Sagara-sensei (Sawamura Ikki) who had worked 12 years at Tokyo Medical University but is unknown because he had not written any papers. Sagara sensei drives a simple car and gives ningyo yaki to the staff on his first day. My first thoughts were not another Mr Nice Guy idealistic protagonist! However, there are moments when Sagara sensei lets his smiling face down and its obvious that not only there's a serious person behind the face but also that he is thinking.
Sounds stupid doesn't it. Praising a dorama for having a thinking character but what did Asada Ryutaro think about besides perform his miracle operations? GTO basically acted cool and just lucked his way into solving his problems, not that it wasn't entertaining. The best scene was when the nurse Higa Manami told Sagara that he needed the director's approval for an operation and he looked at her with a serious smile and said, "that's a load of crap".
Its funny how watching this smiling doctor who is not afraid to speak his mind and knows what he is doing politically just makes me happy. We don't get characters like this too often. Most of the time, if a character likes to speak his/her mind, the person is depicted as brash and does not know behavioural protocol. I guess this has to do with Japanese as a language where politeness is important and telling people no without saying it outright is the norm.
Back to the thinking point, yes Sagara sensei has a plan or rather knows what he is doing by pissing the other doctors off. At the end of ep 1, its clear that not only is he a super surgeon, he knows how to manipulate people. Doctors wastes no time in revealing Sagara's past and his reasons for acting the way he does and I think its pretty cool.
Come to think of it, the main protoganists in jdoramas are usually simple people who do not scheme. Scheming and manipulating people is usually for the antagonist and bad characters. The hero beats the schemes but being good at what they do and somehow turns everyone into good guys.
Right now I have nothing bad to say about Doctors. Usually I hate the everyone else in an organisation is useless bit but I want to see what Sagara-sensei will do about it. The only danger is overacting evil doctors but so far the overacting has not yet offended my senses.
Doctors is a pleasant surprise in some ways in that it doesn't follow some of the conventions we have grown used to. I've breezed past 6 episodes easily and I'm glad that it wasn't like Tomorrow which I initially imaged it to be based on the story synopsis. There is overacting, but it is tolerable. The treat is in Sagara's character and watching him manuever things to the way he wants them to be. Thankfully he's not some idealist blind to the thoughts and opinions people around him.
ReplyDeleteI rather surprise with Doctors too. Found myself repeating the first episode because I can't figure out why I like it. It's not flashy and it looks like it was made with less budget compared to other medical dramas out there. And there's a plotholes everywhere where logic took an exit.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm going to go with you guys and say Sagara is probably the one that made it work. Best moment?
Moriyama: I hate men like you, who looks down on people and think we're bad doctors.
Sagara: Yes. Absolutely. The lowest kind. (while smiling- hahahaha)
oh boy, i missed surgery.
ReplyDeleteso far so good. episode 1 somehow nailed it. the evils in the story seems to be pushed a little bit further to the point that they ignore lawsuits and patients. it could be possible that it can happen in any hospital about medical malpractice but i still think that they can't pass on the pulmonary embolism incident too easily. i mean, the moriyama dude came off from it way too easy. but that's ok.
in the Philippines, the rockstars in surgery are the ones who do surgeries in the esophagus. i didnt know that it could also be in Japan. the surgeries are very detailed though for a single episode. i hope it goes like that in the upcoming episodes. can't wait!
Jadefrost, good to hear that the Doctors doesn't turn into Tomorrow. That was a big waste of potentially interesting story turning into generic feel good crap.
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