Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim

I'm so sad Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim is over. Firstly, this was the first medical drama I haven't watched through my fingers - my fear of fake organs has been cured! But other than that, Romantic Doctor, despite the high stakes, felt like a very pleasant watch. Since the main characters in everything else are risking death (ahem, Legend of the Blue Sea), it felt nice for the main characters to be the ones preventing it for a change.

Kang Dong-joo is a boy who experience the corruption in hospitals first-hand when he was young; his father's surgery was ignored so a VIP surgery could go through first. His father died. After running rampage through the emergency room, he's taken down by a mysterious doctor, who tels him get revenge by becoming someone far better than those who wronged him. Therefore Dong-joo becomes a doctor and works within that same hospital. He meets and falls in love with Yoon Seo-jung, a sassy older doctor who treats him like a puppy. But Seo-jung and her boyfriend get into a car-crash, which kills him. She disappears not long after. Five years pass before he finds out where she went. After (very much like the doctors he once despised) Dong-joo pushed back a surgery for his patient to perform a VIP surgery was failed, he was sent to a countryside hospital called Doldam. Seo-jung is there. Dong-joo can't fathom why she likes it there so much - the staff are weird, the equipment is outdated. And the worst thing of all is the Head Surgeon, a ridiculously skilled man who goes by Teacher Kim. 

I've seen a handful of medical dramas: Emergency Couple (which frankly only sticks in my head because Lee Pil-mo was the best second-lead ever), Faith and Thank You. Since I don't have a lot of experience with the genre, I immediately found the premise and opening to the drama impressive. The first two episodes were an intense and powerful way to start the show. After that, though, I generally found a lot of the conflict to be fairly boring. Whilst I wasn't massively invested in the medical aspects of the plot at first, the rapist storyline changed everything. Basically, a patient who had been stabbed several times entered the hospital. A man soon came after him - the characters, and frankly me as well, all thought he was some kind of gangster. But the man who'd stabbed the patient was just a desperate father who was unable to protect his wife and daughter from being violently raped, and wanted revenge. That arc made me cry. After that, Romantic Doctor consistently packed in heart-warming and beautifully inventive medical cases - whether it was a horrific multi-car accident, or a contagious disease scare, I was happy to go with where the story was taking me.

  The crew of doctors and nurses within Doldam were wonderful. Watching them interact and laugh and grow closer was possibly what I liked about Romantic Doctor the most.  They were all different ages, with different personalities, but acted like best friends and worked together as perfectly as clockwork.

  The trajectories and the overall growth of the main characters was really satisfying. One thing Romantic Doctor did really well was the way the characters were built. At first, it seemed as if I wasn't even supposed to like the titular Teacher Kim, but I really grew to love him since he was always watching over everyone and putting their well-being first. Plus, at one point he learnt from to smile, and admittedly that was very useful. What's hilarious is that he would literally face the villain and talk down to him, and I still can't get over how awesome that was. Seriously, the villain caught win a fight if it's Teacher Kim he's up against. No wonder Han Seok-kyu won the Daesang for his performance. Anyhow, Dong-joo's character arc was incredibly painful, but it was great to watch for develop from a self-centered idiot to a kind, respectable doctor - props to Yoo Yeon-seok for making his suffering so real. Seo-jung, on the other hand, grew in a subtler way. She was initially meek and dealing with PTSD, but became stronger and outspoken as she began to heal herself. I feel like, for a medical drama, you have to either really like the surgeries or really like the characters to keep watching - I'm a lucky someone who can tick both boxes. 

Seo-jung and Dong-joo had sweet romantic chemistry. Although there wasn't a lot of focus on that plot line, I thought it was handled adorably. Not a lot of romance for a show with the word 'Romantic' in the title, but then again that word refers to Teacher Kim's romantic ideals for life (it's a funny Korean word that doesn't read quite as well in english). His first priority is always saving patients, and the rest of the staff in Doldam are exactly the same. Watch Romantic Doctor Teacher Kim for doctors who want to make a difference, fights (so many fights), stories that make you think, and an underdog tale to beat all others - in the medical world, at least.