by riri, May 30, 2020
19

Fix you

Synopsis :

The drama is centered around the story of psychiatrists and their patients. It asks where happiness comes from and has a heartwarming message of comfort. Lee Si Joon is an eccentric but passionate psychiatrist working in a hospital. He cares deeply for his patients, whom he tries to help through valiant, yet often unorthodox efforts. Han Woo Joo is an up and coming musical actress. Honest and principled, her efforts on the stage seem to be paying off, but she struggles with anger issues and recurring mental breakdowns that threaten to derail her career. With compassion as his tool, can Lee Si Joon help mend her soul and let the healing begin?

Episodes: 32 / 35 min. each (or 16 episodes - 1 h. each)
Aired: May 6, 2020 - Jun 25, 2020 (Wednesday, Thursday)

Shin Ha Kyun as Lee Shi Joon
Jung So Min as Han Woo Joo
Tae In Ho as In Dong Hyuk  
Park Ye Jin as Ji Young Won  
Park Han Sol as Gong Ji Hee 
Kim Kang Min as Kim Young Seok  
Jung Hae Kyun as  Park Dae Ha
Jang Yoo Sang as Im Se Chan 
Shin Ha Young as Gang Neu Ri
Ahn Dong Goo as Noh Woo Jung

The drama focuses on the imperfections of life and explores experiences like stress, trauma, disappointment, and investigates the way they can have an impact on one’s thoughts and behavior. It tries to erase the negative view associated with people with mental health issues and shows different psychiatrists’ methods. You can see some of them prefer healing before medication, which I’m 100% pro that. Medication is the easiest answer and some doctors think it’s the only one but I have to disagree.

Lee Shi Joon does whatever it takes to treat his patients, to me his methods are quite questionable but he's a really respected psychiatrist by the hospital and his colleagues. Although he's always spreading positive energy, Shi Joon suffers from chronic depression caused by PTSD (something happened to him 8 years ago). He connects personally with his patients' struggles, which is okay but often crosses the border work-life - personal life by bringing them to his personal life. I think he tries to compensate for the thing that happened a long time ago because you can see it still haunts him every day. 
I like the way the drama introduces every case and the way it presents the information to us is easy and accessible. The first episodes show two patients with delusional disorder and somatic disorder, and also our second main lead - Han Woo Joo. She's a rising musical actress and it's revealed that she visits a psychiatrist (Ji Young Won) for her own mental (anger) struggles, and she may suffer from an intermittent explosive disorder or possible borderline personality disorder. Her emotions are like a rollercoaster and in the extremes. She's really talented and builds up her career with a lot of hard work and practice.

Han Woo Joo is a really likable character because she's kind-hearted and generous and some of her scenes are truly heartbreaking.

She acts really well, especially the way she portrays anger and a combination of feelings all while looking so stunning. Both main characters meet under a series of unfortunate events.  
The drama is really easy to watch even though it's a medical drama about serious themes like mental health, there's no slow pacing. It will be exciting and interesting to see how every character progresses throughout the drama and also how the producers will reveal their pasts. I like how every episode has a meaningful message that really sets the episode.
Working in this field I have to say that some of the scenes and methods are really accurate. I like how they represented the stage/drama therapy and the way it helps the patient to face and admit the problem. 

I really love the theme of paraphilia and voyeurism in the last two aired episodes because this is a huge problem and almost nobody talks about sexual harassment and abuse in this form, and also the importance of treatment of everyone involved.  

Beautiful OST

There are only two songs released from the drama but they're really calming and meaningful. 

If you click on the picture, you'll be redirected to YouTube.

If I just smile, pretending I’m okay, will things get better?
Then will I be able to protect myself?
In this world that’s only harsh to me 

I'm fine

When the endless and dark night
And the road is narrow and far
When you don’t know where to go
I’ll be right there
At the corner of the road
It’ll be alright so don’t worry 


Life lessons - meaningful and touching quotes

"Everyone creates a basement in their heart and in that basement, they hide their secrets. Things that other people don’t know. "

"Don't lock yourself into others' standards. Compliments, criticisms, it'll all fade away like the wind. It'll pass in a flash."

"If you get sick, don't just keep it to yourself. The moment you acknowledge your pain; it begins to heal."

"The number of times you made mistakes is nothing compared to your achievements."

"In order to escape from darkness, you must walk into the darkness and face it. And you start by saying goodbye to all the hurtful memories."

I also like:

  • the way the drama shows light, comforting and serious themes
  • that Lee Shi Joon has a podcast and always ends it with a beautiful message
  • they don't force a possible romance
  • Han Woo Joo's fashion style
  • that the supporting characters aren't there just to fill the episodes with unnecessary scenes 
  • healing > medication

I hope you enjoyed my article (it's my first time writing about a drama that I'm currently watching) and also the drama! Keep in mind that at some point some scenes may trigger an adverse reaction. It's okay to ask for help even if you're not sure what's going on with you. It's the first step to be and feel better, accept your feelings, and never deny them. Don't let people downplay your problems and feelings. 

credit: OST images and lyrics, characters images, and also here, gifs are from Tumblr, I made the headers with pictures from Google.

Editors: BrightestStar (1st editor) & Jojo (2nd editor)

jung so min fix you shin ha kyun tae in ho park ye jin jung hae kyun