I wrote and published about my love for Fiction in my previous blog post. Here, I will be saying about my latest love for a fictional story in the form of a particular K-drama.
I have never been obsessed about a K-drama in my eight months of K-drama viewing. I have never been obsessed about the characters of a K-drama, like ever. Waiting for second season does that. Hospital Playlist fandom does that. #WinterGarden fandom does that.
I will be truthful here. My K-drama obsession started from It’s Okay To Be Not Okay. It was in romance genre, had good acting, character arc was well developed, it touched on mental health awareness also. I cried and laughed almost every episode. Okay, I mostly cried, because it had broken leads healing from their past, and I am sucker for those type of stories, even though it had something I did not approve of in real life. Well, not to give spoilers for the readers waiting to watch, or want to watch it, I must say that it was cathartic for me. You can read my review for this K-drama here. I started crushing on the leads, I started to follow them, and tried to find any news about them. I saw their Behind-The-Scenes (BTS) videos, their fan-made music videos, listened to the K-drama’s Original SoundTracks (OSTs) and even downloaded them. It was third K-drama I watched, and I obsessed over it, not actually moving on from it. But gradually, I moved on, in search of new and old recommended K-dramas, so that I could watch new content with new stories, and new culture. I was hooked to K-dramas.
Going through the recommendations and the list of good K-dramas of year 2020, I came across Hospital Playlist, and found that it is a story of five friends who are doctors. I saw the trailer, got interested. But I found that there is a love triangle between friends. I personally don’t like love triangles, specially between friends, thus I was skeptic about starting it. Then I found that it will have a second season in 2021, and it ended in a confession by a person. Also, my recommendation list being small and completed, on one evening, I started this K-drama. Before starting, I only knew this that this is a story of five friends who are doctors and work in same hospital, and I was spoiled that there might be a friends-turning-into-lovers trope. I was not aware of any other love stories or love-lines, and was not aware of any other plot-lines.
I was impressed by the story. I was impressed by the chemistry of the five friends and how the story played out. I was impressed by how the love triangle played out. I cried and laughed with them and at them. I cheered for the characters, whether they were the main leads or whether they were the supporting characters. I was amazed by the story details when I re-watched this K-drama. I was like WOW! I missed it while watching! The OSTs of this K-drama became my new favourites. I started to look for fanfictions and blogs appreciating this K-drama. I started to scourge online for anything about Hospital Playlist. I found fanfictions in Archive Of Our Own website. I found a blog that beautifully wrote about this K-drama. You can visit the blog and read the posts about this K-drama.
So, as a result, I was hooked into this fandom of Hospital Playlist while I waited for its second season. Furthermore, all this made my wait for the second season sweet. It finally came on 17 July 2021.
So before getting into this rabbit hole of the fandom of this K-drama, what made this K-drama a worthy watch for me? What impressed me so much that I decided to become this obsessive fan that I was for Sherlock Holmes, Harry Potter and Shadowhunter series by Cassandra Clare in the past?
First season was a slice-of-life medical K-drama that gave us hopes and comfort in this lockdown and pandemic period. It was logical in plot and character development, had humane stories and was emotional. It brought to us stories that struck our heartstrings. It made me laugh and cry at each episode. It made me miss friendships. It showed us that you can learn from your mistakes and move ahead. You need to be courageous in your life, and you will get the benefits. It showed us there is happiness and joy in our daily life full of mundane-ness. It showed us the daily life of medical staff working in the hospital, and gave us so many comforting and emotional stories, to which we can relate. It showed us that we still have so many things to learn, even when we have reached the stage where we may feel like that there is nothing much to learn. The main leads play Korean songs that are comforting and touch our hearts. We cannot forget those OSTs, even at the expense of tone-deaf characters. Also, you cannot forget the friendship of the five leads in this K-drama, which has turned into real friendship outside the K-drama. Almost all the characters in this K-drama have a role to do, even the ones who are only for few seconds. It will make little sense at the start, but just like me, if you will move ahead with this, you will be get gold, for this K-drama is not on-your-face, but a K-drama, which is like a wine, gets better as it ages. So, after many re-watches, made me appreciate this K-drama so much. Like, this K-drama can only be appreciated when you re-watch it, and I think, if I would not get anything to watch, this K-drama would become a comfort watch for me, just like Friends.
Now, I might go into spoilery region, so if you have not watched it and want to watch it, then stop here.
Actually, my love for this K-drama increased when I re-watched it. I re-watched important scenes, many times even. As I got aware of all the important characters, I started to be aware of the character sightings in early episodes. I started noticing many small details, which I heard that the production team is famous for. It was good for me to not know anything about this K-drama from anywhere, only knowing that a Truth and Drink game happens, and nothing was given out too much of the story from it. It was more than a love story, it was more than a medical K-drama. It had slice-of-life moments, explosive friendship moments, cute son-father moments, and some angsty moments, where you might want to shout at a particular character for not doing anything. People say that the leads are very perfect people, but to me, they are as flawed people as we are. Their flaws get hidden by the their perfections. Like, Chae Song-hwa, the female lead is a perfect neurosurgeon and perform surgeries perfectly, is a perfect professor and perfect mentor to her students, is an emotional pillar to her friends, but she cannot sing beautifully to save her life. She is a tone-deaf person, and her friends don’t allow her to sing whenever they do band practice. She is also someone, who can lie to get something what she wants. We see it when she applies for the vocalist position in their college days. Lee Ik-jun, that one person who knows about almost every gossip in the hospital, did not know about her own sister’s previous relationship. Ahn Jeong-won, even though he is a giving person, he is kind of a cheapskate person to his friends. Yang Seok-hyeong is a reserved person, but he does not speak loud when something bad is going on. Last but not least, Kim Jun-wan is a good doctor and compared to other doctors, is much more better in explaining to them the facts and whatever is going on his patients’ body, but he deals with facts and is a little bit of rude sometimes. But those flaws make them much more real to me, even though it seems like idealised environment in the hospital. Still I love it and am loving it because of how the K-drama has been written. The writers have made this story detailed as they have planned for it for four years. I love how there are so many patients story, and they all make us understand our lives and others and help us understand life in general. It inspires us to be a better version of ourselves. The characters are developed accordingly, from the leads to the supporting characters. They are so good that I am not able to see any kind of mistakes. Also, them being forty years old does not hinder in making me relate to them, or to other supporting characters. The character development, from almost all the important main characters as well as supporting characters, bring a smile to me. Not knowing about it too much, managed to surprise me, and you can say, that surprise factor only, managed to pull me in its fandom.
Spoilers end.
Currently, I am watching Hospital Playlist Season 2, which is one episode a week and just like previous season, this season also serves comfort and laughter and tears, with me fangirling at each episode over those flawed yet flawless characters. Like previous season, this season also has emotional stories of patients, making us feel deep in our hearts. It has not completed yet, and we still don’t know where the characters would end up at the end of season 2. But am hoping for a good season, which promised us to give stories that will be deep this time.
I would really recommend this to people who know a little about Korean culture and is familiar with the world of K-dramas. Even though you don’t know, then also you can watch it, just because of its humane stories, that brings tears and laughter. It seems like a fictional story, but the medical terms and cases portrayed are real and universal. Along with the medical cases, there are stories of everyone who works in the hospital, and brings to us a story that is emotional and comforting, even when it is real.
Musings of an Anonymous Indian 
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