Yong Pal (South Korea, 2015)
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| "There isn't anyone I can't save, trust me. I'm Yong Pal" |
Title: 용팔이
Also known as: Yong Pal: The Gang Doctor
Genre: Action, drama, medical, (melodrama), romance
Episodes: 18
Broadcast network: SBSBroadcast period: Aug 5, 2015 to Oct 1, 2015
Kim Tae Hyun is a talented surgeon. Desperate for money to pay his sister's medical bills, he adopts the code name Yong Pal and offers his medical skills to those in need of medical attention but who cannot do so publicly, dealing with gangsters and corrupt plutocrats. It is while making such a house call that Tae Hyeu rescues "sleeping beauty" Han Yeo Jin, a chaebol heiress, from a medically induced coma, leading to unintended consequences. - MDL
Overall Score: 8.5/10
Character Development: 9/10
Plot Development: 8/10
Acting: 9.5/10
Soundtrack: 10/10
So if Healer and Dr Stranger had a lovechild it would be Yong Pal. Add Joo smexy Won as the cherry on top and voila ~ perfection!
Or that's what I though...or that's what they promised me at least....I wanted a chocolate cake, and the thing that I got out of the owen was a cake, but it's not a pure chocolate cake, they mixed in some stawberries there too without telling me. I like strawberries but I wanted no strawberries in my chocolate cake...so I don't know how I feel about it....
What I'm trying to say is...Yong Pal was pretty messy and not what you think you've signed up for.
The Plot:
So we follow the main guy Kim Tae Hyun, who's working days as a surgeon and then during the night he becomes "Yong Pal" the gang doctor who basically treats and performs surgery on anyone who pays for it. He will accept any job, and it doesn't matter who is involved, it could be criminals, gang-leaders, corrupt plutocrats, everyone who pays enough money is his honorary patient. Obviously the police and government doesn't like this. With time Yong Pal becomes a masked "hero" to the underworld while he is seen as a thorn-in-the-side to the guys who try to uphold peace and order in the country. So from the very begining we kind of get the feeling that Yong Pal is kind of grey-ish character. He's not good but he's not exactly evil either, he's just a guy who doesn't trust anyone but himself and does whatever he thinks will benifit him the most. We find out the reason behind his actions is that he is in desperate need to pay for his sister's medical bills. And I really like the fact that in this world, things are so corrupt and messy that a guy like Tae Hyun doesn't know of any other way than to go against the systeme and do illigal stuff to make money. Right from the start this drama gives you a sort of dystopian feel to it, mostly because the machines and tecnology used at the hospital look like they're from 100 years into the future, but hey, I don't live in Korea so I can't tell how fancy the hospitals are, but if they really look like that irl o_o wow. However the time-period is never mentioned in the drama so I'm just assuming it's set in the future, alas the sci-fi genre is added (by me lolz). However, despite my love for action and dystopians, the first impression I got from the drama wasn't a very good one. I found the beginning slow, very very slow, and if it wasn't for the fact that I saw a video on youtube about Kim Tae Hee's character (who doesn't show up until much later <_< ....ugh) I would probably have put it on-hold or even dropped it, and I'm not one who drops dramas so easily. But something kept me going and I'm kind of glad that it did because this drama overall was an interesting one.
So the drama starts off as a pure medical. You see Yong Pal work as a surgeon during the day and then it's not until the end of episode one that you get to feel the action pumping. He's climbing rooftops and driving like a madman to escape the police that's chasing him and then everything crashes down in his "planned out" life, when he one day finds out that the doctors and head surgeons at his hospital are hiding a very dark secret. On the 3rd floor, there is a patient lying in a coma. She's the heirness to a company that basically controlls the economy and systeme in South Korea. So...it's a hospital right? Nothing special with a coma patient. They're everywhere, right? Except that this case is a bit different and when Tae Hyun unintentionall finds out about things he shouldn't have...things get pretty messed up. And I like that. In fact, I love complicated plots. Episodes 4-9 were some of the best of this year. I kid you not. They held me on the edge of my seat. But then after that, I got vanilla in a cake that was supposed to be pure chocolate. I would have been fine with it if someone had told me that it would have that too, but nope. They just threw that in and even forgot about the first half of the drama. Without spoiling too much, it pretty much makes a 360 degree change from the medical - action genre into becoming a pure melodrama. And if you've followed this blog for a while, you know that I love melodramas and I loved that part of the drama, but it still felt a bit out of place. Especially since they tried to press new big revelations into a drama already had too mcuh stuff going on and it just became a complete mess at one point and a very anti-climactic and odd ending in my opinion. Not so much the action last few seconds of the drama, but pretty much the entirely of the last episode. I saw hints how the scriptwriter desperately tried to tie the bag together, throw in all the loose ends and just fill in all the gaps...and failed big time.SPOILER DOWN BELOW!
After episode 9 it was as if the fact that Tae Hyun was Yong Pal, a surgeon, a freaking genius surgeon was thrown out the window. We rarely got to see him perform any more surgeries. Suddenly he became a lovey-dovey close-minded puppet who just ran around his girlfriend/fiancee whatever -cough- manipulative queen -cough- day in and day out. I understand that he still played a big role as her moral and mental support and all that, but the drama was supposed to be a medical one. Where he heck that the medical story-line go? It suddenly turned into a full-fledged melodrama with the focus on Yeo Jin's revenege plans (which were awesome and creepy and I loved them) but yeah.
I did like the fact that Tae Hyun stood up and spoke his mind at that one scene at Yeo Jin's house and told her how he regretted that he saved her life. That b**tch freaking used him! And then threw it into his face how he was "the perfect person for the plot to work since no one would suspect him. He's a pure, kind idealistic humanist"...wow, those sweet words sounded like poison ._. I have to say I also kind of hoped she wouldn't go that far. I mean, okay, sure she got betrayed by pretty much everyone she trusted, her own brother kind of wants to kill her, and she was forcefully put into a coma and slept for 3 years, constantly fearing for her life without being unable to do anything about it....I guess she kind of went a bit insane but the the way she killed her brother was pretty cruel. An eye for an eye.....she'd crossed the line so I was totally on Tae Hyun's side and that that moment was so intense and epic. During the entire revenge-plotting part of the plot I held my fingers crossed that Tae Hyun would snap one day and tell Yeo Jin how he truly felt about her plans, I mean, it was obvious from the very beginning that their point of views and ideals would clash and that moment when he finally told her and walked away. Woah. I literally got up and started to applause. I loved to see Yeo Jin slowly loose herself to the hatred and the darkness but I also really looked forward to the day when Yeo Jin and Tae Hyun's love would be put into test. Would she truly choose revenge over a lovely and calm life with him? I love those complex stories that make you question things. There is no right or wrong, only different ways to look at the same thing, of course through different perspectives. Yeo Jin's was a "justice" kind of perspektive, she wanted to punish evil, even if it meant that she herself had to become evil, while Tae Hyun was the idealist who just wanted to live a carefree life. xD. The fact that the two main characters were so different from each other was definitely one of the dramas strong points, and that scene at the dinner table was mighty. It was during times like those that made me remember who Tae Hyun truly was, in the core he was a man who followed his own rules and believes, even if he was love-struck by an angsty heiress driven through life by pure hatred, and I'm happy we got to see that small glimpse of his past self in that scene, because honestly, during the entire revenge-plotting part, I felt like he was just "there". He was just Yeo Jin's boyfriend/fiance -cough loyal servant -cough-. Was this drama even about him? They should've named it "Yeo Jin the revenge-plotting Heiress" instead because at one point I even forgot that Tae Hyun was the main character -.-*.
And then that anti-climactic scene where the servants, butler-guy and the other people who worked under Yeo Jin and were now going to back-stab her and take over the company realized that Yeo Jin was awake. They just looked at her with big eyes when she like a complete badass went down the stairs and shouted out to the guards to throw them out of her house. After that we didn't see them anymore. So...that was it? Their big plan, evertything they planned out in detail, all the revenge and evil-genius-plotting was thrown out the window just because Yeo Jin (who could barely stand at the moment and looked like a walking ghost) shouted at them to leave? Um....that's some very deep determination you got there Chae Young. You kept hinting how you were going to get revenge on Yeo Jin for what she did to your husband for episodes and episodes and then you just stop like that? Okay..whatever. -applause- villain fail at being villains. They should take lessons from the main villain from Mask.He didn't stop at anything, even when it was so obvious that he was going to get caught in his lies he still managed to figure out a better lie to cover the first one. He didn't waver or blink in fear for even a second <_<.
So yeah, let's throw in that cute final scene when Yeo Jin wakes up by his voice and see if that'll save the plot. Nope it didn't, but nice try.
END OF SPOILER
The characters:
So yeah, as mentioned before, I really liked Tae Hyun as a character. Well, at least during some parts of the story when he actually got his shit together. He was a nice idealogic contrast to Yeo Jin who was just strict and hottempered. The parts where Tae Hyun's character was lacking was purely flaws on the scriptwriters side, Joo Won did an remarkable job in yet another drama but not even he can pull of something when he doesn't have the right or good tools. He did his best and you can definitely see that in the acting, but sadly the scriptwriter made the character a bit too "meh" at times. However, while Tae Hyun's character had his good and bad moments, Yeo Jin shone like the sun through-out the entire drama, kudos to Kim Tae Hee, big time!
Yeo Jin, I didn't like her at first, mostly because I didn't know where I had her. I was so scared that she'd turn out to be blend, quiet and boring but she wasn't. She wasn't "yet another submissive female lead in a kdrama", she was a badass queen who would without an unce of hesitation chop of the Queen of Hearts's head. She was scary, manipulative, anti-heroic and just....epic! I loved Yeo Jin's character and I think she fitted so well in the melodrama-part of the story (Now I suddenly realize why they didn't introduce her until much later, obviously she wouldn't been kind of out of place in a pure medical plot...oh...I see what you did there scriptwriters <_<). Yeo Jin was, hands down the best thing of this drama, and also one of the best female characters in any drama I've seen so far (and I've seen quite a lot of them) and I really hope to see more characters like her in the future, not just in melodramas (even though I feel they would fit the best in these kind of darker psychological stories since she was tecnically an anti-hero) but also other genres. Another character I feel is worth mentioning is the head surgeon, played by Jeong Wung In. Gosh, this guy truly loves to play the antagonist in dramas. In this one however, I didn't really feel as strong hatred towards him as I usually do, but rather than the fact that it was his fault, it was probably because in this drama, everyone was pretty much an antagnoist or anti-hero in their own way. Therefore none of the "real" villains stood out as much, definitely not. Chae Young was probably one of the weakest villains ever <_< gosh.....wtf was that anti-climactic scene anyways? I seriously almost started to laugh out loud because it all seemed like one big joke. I was just waiting for Tae Hyun to be like: surprise, surprise ~ let's stop back-stabbing each other and just go sing around a campfire. I'll bring a guitar and marshmellows :D yaaaay"....so bad...so so bad -.-* It makes me wonder why they didn't just kill her off? Then again, with a character that was that useless, not even I would bother <_<
The OST:
Overall:
-Sigh- so, depsite all the negativity that i've written above, I overall, enjoyed the drama. Perhaps it's a bit biased to say it, but it was probably because it was 70% melodrama, 20% medical, 10% romance. If the melodrama and medical had switched places, perhaps I wouldn't have been so positive towards it, but yeah, what can I do? I love m angsty revenge-driven anti-hero-characters xD But even that couldn't really save this drama. So even if I some parts of it were 10/10, like the scenes 3-9 that I pointed out above, some parts, and the very slow beginning, pulled down the rating for me. Then it shy-rocked again during ep 16 and got a bit downhill during ep 18. As a result from the roller-coaster ride, it became an score of 8.5 xD.
As for character development, it was purely Yeo Jin to be honest, since Tae Hyun's ...eee.....whatever. Yeo Jin was a very complex character. (Mark to see spoiler)She went from a helpless girl who struggled to survive into a cruel and merciless heiress who crushed all enemies,and then back into a woman who realized that perhaps revenge isn't the right way.(okay after she killed her brother....well, she still kind of felt guilt in the end so that's a good thing right? (End of spoiler) either way, that journey was very enjoyable to watch. Yong Pal is a drama worth checking out, if you know what it truly is: a melodrama (which I wrote in the genre-section above. It was written down from my own taste, i've looked around on various websites and they all write down Yong Pal as a medical...how missleading <_<) So if you're going to watch it just for the romance or medical parts, don't. This is the wrong drama for you. But if you want to see some adrenaline-pumping anti-hero - complex story, with perhaps not the best side-villain characters, then this might be your cup of tea :3
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