After watching Mask, I have decided that I love Joo Ji Hoon. I mean, I liked him in Goong (aka Princess Hours aka Imperial House), which came out in 2006. But I just liked him. But his performance in 'Mask' has made me a definite fan, to the point where he replaced Hyun Bin in my list of Acting Favorites.
So, since I finished Mask and didn't feel like taking up recapping the rest of Oh My Ghostess quite yet, I thought I would check out his 2013 drama, Medical Top Team. Ji Hoon played Han Seung Jae, the youngest chief ever at Kwanghye University Hospital. He just happens to be the son of a Chairman and the mistress. His father is a dictatorial piece of bat guano who doesn't want to acknowledge Seung Jae as his blood and who treated Seung Jae's mother horribly, to the point that the woman became a drunk.
Seung Jae spends most of the drama trying to win the Chairman's approval, which leads him to make some terrible choices and to act like a horse's heiney. Seung Jae carries a torch for fellow doctor, Seo Joo Young, who is also a brilliant and ambitious surgeon fighting for respect from the doctors around her. And if that wasn't enough, he's at odds with his sister-in-law, the Assistant Director of the hospital, who has plans for Top Team that don't quite jive with what Seung Jae wants it to stand for.
You might think that this would mean that he is the lead of the drama. But he's not. That 'honor' went to Kwon Sang Woo as Park Tae Shin, an exceptionally brilliant doctor that Seung Jae hires, whose primary mission is to treat the sick, NO MATTER WHAT. And, even when this means that he disobeys his boss, hospital policy or even his team's decision, this is supposed to be admirable. I did not find it so in the least. Frankly, it really made me not like Tae Shin. Not being a team player on Top TEAM really rubbed me the wrong way and how he constantly made Seung Jae's job more difficult by how he acted didn't help things. (Even if Seung Jae wasn't played by Ji Hoon, I still would have sympathized with Seung Jae and not liked Tae Shin.)
For the most part, this drama was forgettable. I remember Joo Young frowning a lot because she wasn't being acknowledged and Tae Shin being a jerk. One of the other doctors slept in a supply closet and had some sort of love plot with the chief nurse. Alex's character was a tattletale to his uncle, who was trying to undermine both Seung Jae and Joo Young.
Do I remember any of the cases? Maybe. One was a little girl who had something wrong with her. There was a chaebol's son who didn't want his surgery to be done in Korea. And there was a girl in a horrible accident who used to call one of the interns 'Oppa.'
But for the most part, the surgery scenes were overly dramatic, with the characters over-reacting to things to show the audience how dramatic things are. (And since Seung Jae basically was never in the operating room, Joo Ji Hoon's nuanced acting couldn't save this part of the drama.) The Good Doctor came out in the same year and the surgery scenes and drama during the surgeries was so much better. Even if that wasn't the case, all those years of E.R., Grey's Anatomy, and House would make the operating scenes lame and overly dramatic! acting.
Even the love stories fell flat. Tae Shin seemed self-absorbed and I don't think Jung Ryeo Won could really have chemistry with anyone. (And that's not for Ji Hoon's lack of trying, either.)
In fact, the only thing that I distinctly remember is Seung Jae's journey. Dealing with an alcoholic mother... Struggling for recognition from a father who is never going to give it... Fighting to save the life of a loved one and failing... Crying bitterly afterward... Yearning for a woman who won't admit she likes him... Trying to do the right thing while navigating hospital politics and having to deal with a turkey who constantly undermines his decisions. In fact, Seung Jae's character was the only one that I actually cared what happened to him. The rest -- meh.
That being said, Joo Ji Hoon made this a drama worth watching. And I might actually watch it again, just to see his pained expressions when he's rejected or upstaged by someone who should do what he says.
My Rating: 6/10 (Joo Ji Hoon saved it.)
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