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A Beautiful Mind korean drama review
Dropped 3/14
A Beautiful Mind
2 people found this review helpful
by Sarann55
Feb 25, 2021
3 of 14 episodes seen
Dropped 1
Overall 3.0
Story 1.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 1.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

Interim review

One reviewer advised to watch 6 eps before judging, but that's nearly half of this series. I wouldn't say I'm trigger happy about giving up on a dram, but nearly half before it becomes worth while to watch seems a lot. So far I have watched nearly three eps but my frustration is mounting. I wanted to like it, started watching it with great enthusiasm for Jung Hyuk, but ...
The acting is good. Love Jang Jyuk, and he nearly pulls this off - and I can imagine that he gets better as his character is revealed more. Other actors are fine too.
It's the writing. I am all for suspending disbelief whenever I possibly can, but, really?
First, ML has no affect at all, but is "allowed" to speak one to one with believed family, to humiliate his colleagues and other staff, as well as hospital managers, without repercussions. We know brilliant doctors get massive leeway for bad behaviour, but at this point he's been involved in 3 or 4 procedures and two of them have been fatal. Not a brilliant record - even though he asserts he did nothing wrong, muck will still stick. He seems to fear his father's opinion - unclear yet why this should be so. His father knows he is a liability and has to hide his condition - he's not stupid : he would have made damn sure that his son knew when and how to read a room (ignoring his own feelings, which he is not supposed to have anyway) and use his intellect to meet the needs of patients AND grieving family. There are just too many holes in the way he interacts with everyone, and frankly it makes me sorry - this was an chance to actually explore a mental condition with some subtlety, but it's badly botched at this point.
The writing. The FL is young, naive to the pint of stupidity, a prig, tries to bulldoze logic with her own over-enthusiastic and frankly ignorant assertions, instead of presenting actual evidence. She baldly states the first death was a murder and expects everyone to drop everything, but she never states - "Look I saw it - he was thrown out of the car after it passed me, and then the same car reversed into him at such seed that he was thrown into my windscreen, it's not something I could either mistake or miss - I work with traffic every day and I am trained to observe driver and vehicle behaviour". At no point does she make any kind of case for searching for the unregistered vehicle (itself a reason to search for the owner). There were no cameras nearby, but she never suggests tracing that vehicle by checking cameras elsewhere and following its route. I'm not trained as a Police person, but even I've seen this on other dramas - a cop should know many more. But she just stamps her little foot. OK she's only a traffic patrol officer, but even basic training should give her enough nouse to know that won't convince anyone. This child is thoroughly annoying and comes over like a spoilt teenager who just wants her own way without putting in any real or sensible effort.
And yet in Ep3, the "brilliant" surgeon - who has realised something is hugely UP, because his patient dies under HIS knife, and it clearly can't be his fault (so he finds out - as if by magic - that there's a medication which has been combined with diabetic meds and will result in death). - decides that he and this traffic cop now need to work together. Of course he's arrogant enough to know he can do it on his own - but why bring her onto his team - all she's done so far is prat about. At his point she is anything but an asset to anyone.
Both the leads are deeply unattractive at this stage, and deeply annoying. Not sure I want to spend much more time with them. I may well continue and watch more of this, and it may get better and I might forgive these crimes, but this is pretty heinously weak and perhaps lazy writing and hard for me to swallow.
If I was writing this the ML might be getting FL on board in order to use her as a disposable pawn, but I doubt it. Sadly I think it would improve things a fair bit! Why are so many women written so weakly - don't get me started on his "fiancee" (great actress badly underused here)!
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