This review may contain spoilers
A gentle, funny and thoughtful drama with a big heart...
Hospital Playlist is a gentle, funny and thoughtful drama with a big heart. The casting is perfect, being both age appropriate and believable as doctors and friends of over twenty years. I enjoyed how the writer gradually reveals the character and back-stories of the five leads across the twelve episodes.The friendship between the five leads is well written and authentic. In real life, most of us have friends dating back to our student days despite not knowing every detail of each other’s lives or what they’re thinking. The writer has captured this, showing how the five of them accept each other without question. The one-to-one exchanges between the lead characters are quiet and thoughtful; and the eating, goofing around and band practice scenes with the five leads together are fun. I love the songs the band play each episode and applaud actress Jeon Mi Do’s (Song Hwa) singing - it can’t be easy for an accomplished singer to sing off-key without over-doing it.
Lee Ik Jun (Jo Jung Suk) is my favourite character; he's caring, selfless and the glue of the group. He also cares about his co-workers, his patients and their families, to the extent that he learnt sign language so he could communicate to his patient's young son. Time and again we see him putting other's needs before his own, first as a father, and as a friend and doctor. I love the scenes between Ik Jun and his son Woo Ju (Kim Jun). Woo Ju is totally adorable and the exchanges between father and son reveal another side of Ik Jun.
I also like the two mothers Rosa and Young Hye. In K-dramas the mothers of that generation are often portrayed as totally helpless with viewers left pondering the disconnect between their mothers' flaky characters and those of their children. But Rosa and Young Hye are both strong, smart and funny and would be the sort of mothers to have raised Jung Won (Yoo Yeon Seok) and Suk Hyung (Kim Dae Myung).
I dislike Jang Gyeo Wool and Ahn Chi Hong. The writer tried too hard to make Gyeo Wool special, for example, making her the only resident in a department of 8+ general surgeons – this is totally preposterous for a hospital the size and prestige of YULJE. There’s also zero chemistry between Gyeo Wool and Jung Won and the actress playing Gyeo Wool can’t act to save her life! Chi Hong is wet and his behaviour after Song Hwa turns him down is creepy and stalker-ish. Yuck!!
I enjoyed Hospital Playlist and seeing how and why Ik Jun, Jun Won and Suk Hyung became who they are. Since the characters Jun Wan (Jung Kyung Ho), despite his romance with Ik Jun’s sister and Song Hwa are still a mystery to me, I hope Hospital Playlist 2 will reveal more.
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Cool Hero!!!
I like the premise of webtoon characters coming to life and moving between the real and webtoon worlds, and liked the animation technique used for the webtoon characters and webtoon world.The opening scene in Ep1 was excellent and immediately established Kang Chul’s character: good-looking, charismatic, intelligent, driven and resourceful. Lee Jong Suk was well cast in the role and does a good job in conveying these traits. I also liked how Kang Chul changes after he learns the truth about himself and evolves from the 2-dimensional webtoon hero to a real flesh and blood person.
In terms of love interest, Oh Yeon Joo (Han Hyo Joo) and Kang Chul look good together. However, if the writer wanted Yeon Joo to be a wide-eyed and helpless maiden, they should've given her a different profession. Although Yeon Joo is not an accomplished surgeon in the story, her tendency to put her hands to her face while mouthing nonsense at the first sign of a problem are not traits associated with being a doctor, let alone a cardio-thoracic surgeon. I found this really annoying but I would’ve forgiven her if she had been given a different profession.
I also found the character Park Soo Bong (Lee Si Eon) really annoying, he panicked even more than Yeon Joo and all the screeching and wailing is very unattractive in a man in his thirties. Since Yeon Joo and Soo Bong shared so many scenes, it would’ve been more interesting for viewers if the two of them had different character traits; and I would’ve liked to have seen more of Soon Bong’s colleagues, Sun Mi (Ryu Hye Rin) and Yoon Hee (Yang Hye Ji).
Overall, the plot was good and the action well-paced although I got a bit confused with all the coming and going between the two worlds and the twists in Eps15&16. Nothing the rewind button couldn’t fix. The music was fair and not too heavy handed, although the romance theme reminded me of a something from Coldplay.
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Very disappointing!!
The premise of enhanced agents working covertly to bring down a criminal organisation isn’t new but I was looking forward to seeing actor Park Sung Woong as a baddie. Park didn’t disappoint as the charismatic, menacing and ruthless Hwang Deuk Goo. Unfortunately, he was let down by the writer, director and the rest of the cast. (Park deserves a '10' rating for his acting but he's let down by the rest of the cast so hence the '5' rating.)There are too many baddies we don’t care about vying for position when it is obvious to viewers that Hwang should be the kingpin. The same goes for the Rugal agents. It is customary to have a team of with complementary skills and personalities working together to take down the baddies. After watching the first few episodes, I got a gist of how each of the four became suitable recruits for Rugal but I didn’t get a sense of who they are as people. Aside from superficial traits such as Kang Gi Boem’s (Choi Jin Hyuk) tendency to go off on his own, endangering himself, his fellow agents, the Rugal agents and supporting team just aren’t interesting enough to hold viewers' interests.
Poor characterisation and a muddled story means I dropped it after only four episodes.
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