I'm enjoying season 2, but I do think it has a different vibe to it that I could see being off-putting to people who enjoyed season 1. Part of the charm of season 1 is that we got to learn about the main five, their personalities, who they were as doctors, who they were as med students, and how they played off of each other as a group of friends. In season 2, we already have a fairly grounded sense of who they are as people, and the show naturally seems more focused on the people around them, such as their families, patients, and hospital staff. I don't see this as a bad thing.
That being said, I do have two complaints about this season: How they handled the time skip and the lack of flashbacks to when they were younger.
I feel like, rather than have a time skip, they could have made time pass by quicker by skipping ahead gradually and making those events from the first few episodes be more spaced out over a year rather than be crammed into the first month or two of 2020, which would have been more reminiscent and consistent with how the story was told in season 1.
The lack of flashbacks also makes this season feel different from season 1. I wish they had showed progression and mirrored the passage of time by having flashbacks be when the 99 Crew were residents, kind of like what we saw with the Ik-Jun and Jung-won drawer incident.
