This review may contain spoilers
Gripping
This is an addictive drama that differentiates itself from typical medical and power struggle stories by focusing on genuinely interesting ethical questions and mostly believable situations and featuring some excellent performances . It's not without flaws though, with a few flat characters and some details that break the otherwise realistic feel of the drama. And whether you like the song Amazon Grace or not, you'll hate it by the end.
I actually side with Zaizen's pragmatic approach to medicine, which applies triage to provide expert care to the patients who benefit the most, makes quick decisions based on the best available information and probabilities, and cuts the losses and moves on when necessary. On the other hand, Satomi's idealistic approach seems foolish to me, since it spends too many resources on individual patients based on compassion at the expense of overall lives saved. This approach is also willing to sacrifice beneficial careers, families and colleagues, and future patients for the sake of truth, even though the issue involves a patient who would have died within a year or so regardless. I think this kind of stubborn, pigheaded idealism ends up doing more harm than good.
However, I can't fully support Zaizen either, even though I prefer his utilitarian strategy, because he unnecessarily mixes corruption and greedy ambition with his pragmatism. All the lies, bribery, manipulation, and pinning blame on others almost feels like the novelist and screenwriters needlessly stacked the deck against Zaizen to hit the audience over the head to make sure they rooted for Satomi. The story would have been much more interesting if it was more ambiguous and Zaizen wasn't so dishonest and scheming and Satomi wasn't such a saint, so that their different approaches to medicine could be compared more fairly.
And the melodrama, though kept admirably restrained through most of the episodes (for example, with the unusually matter-of-fact way the drama depicted Zaizen's relationship with his sympathetic mistress and his cynical wife), went out of control in the last couple of episodes and shattered the gritty realism that had been carefully maintained up to that point.
I actually side with Zaizen's pragmatic approach to medicine, which applies triage to provide expert care to the patients who benefit the most, makes quick decisions based on the best available information and probabilities, and cuts the losses and moves on when necessary. On the other hand, Satomi's idealistic approach seems foolish to me, since it spends too many resources on individual patients based on compassion at the expense of overall lives saved. This approach is also willing to sacrifice beneficial careers, families and colleagues, and future patients for the sake of truth, even though the issue involves a patient who would have died within a year or so regardless. I think this kind of stubborn, pigheaded idealism ends up doing more harm than good.
However, I can't fully support Zaizen either, even though I prefer his utilitarian strategy, because he unnecessarily mixes corruption and greedy ambition with his pragmatism. All the lies, bribery, manipulation, and pinning blame on others almost feels like the novelist and screenwriters needlessly stacked the deck against Zaizen to hit the audience over the head to make sure they rooted for Satomi. The story would have been much more interesting if it was more ambiguous and Zaizen wasn't so dishonest and scheming and Satomi wasn't such a saint, so that their different approaches to medicine could be compared more fairly.
And the melodrama, though kept admirably restrained through most of the episodes (for example, with the unusually matter-of-fact way the drama depicted Zaizen's relationship with his sympathetic mistress and his cynical wife), went out of control in the last couple of episodes and shattered the gritty realism that had been carefully maintained up to that point.
Was this review helpful to you?
