When I first saw these stills, I honestly thought it was an old article about Ji Sung’s (Familiar Wife) 2017 thriller Defendant, especially in his prison outfit. But, no, these stills are curiously for SBS’s new Friday-Saturday medical drama Doctor John, starring Ji Sung and Lee Se-young (The Crowned Clown) as doctors who specialize in pain management and anesthesiology.
While previous stills of the show showed the two leads in their white gowns, as would be expected from a medical drama, these show Ji Sung in an inmate outfit. There’s no explanation as to whether Ji Sung’s character ends up in prison during the events of the drama, or if his stint happened before he became a doctor. If the latter, I hope the drama does a credible job of explaining how he became a doctor despite his record. I’m not sure how it works in Korea, but at least in the US, from what I understand, it is quite difficult to get licensed as a medical practitioner if you have a felony record.
This drama generally has a lot of question marks surrounding it, especially regarding what subsection of medical genre we’re getting with Doctor John. Are we mainly dealing with surgical operations, since the two leads are anesthesiologists? Or is it more rehabilitation-focused, given they’re both specialized in “pain management?” And then, how does the “Doctor 10-seconds” nickname fit it, then? Are they engaging in diagnostics, a la House? It’s definitely more questions than I’m used to going into a drama, and I can’t really decide whether that’s a good or bad thing.
Well, we won’t have to wait too long to get these answers: Doctor John will premiere on July 19.
