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Pierce Conran

This article contains minor spoilers.
Lead cast: Go Youn-jung, Jung Joon-won, Shin Si-ah, Kang You-seok, Han Ye-ji
Latest Nielsen rating: 5.97 per cent
Following their rocky first few weeks on the job, the new obstetrics and gynaecology residents at the Yulje Medical Centre have started to get the hang of things in Resident Playbook, the spin-off series of the hit medical drama Hospital Playlist.


Now that we have been introduced to these new characters, the show seems less preoccupied with their personal experiences than their function as our eyes for the emotional scenarios that crop up in their workplace. This proves to be both a blessing and a curse.
The show’s leading quartet of characters – Oh Yi-young (Go Youn-jung, Moving), Pyo Nam-kyung (Shin Si-ah, The Witch: Part 2. The Other One), Um Jae-il (Kang You-seok, When Life Gives You Tangerines) and Kim Sa-bi (newcomer Han Ye-ji) – were aggressively introduced in the opening episodes, but most of them were frustrating caricatures.
After settling into its midseason, the show has tempered some of the more exaggerated characteristics of its youthful protagonists – particularly egghead Sa-bi, who is far more normal than the emotionless study bot she was initially presented as.
The superficial eccentricities of vain fashionista and serial dater Nam-kyung and former K-pop idol Jae-il have also been less prominent.

The reduced focus on Sa-bi, Nam-kyung and Jae-il is probably for the best, but it makes it that much clearer that the show is sorely lacking in charismatic doctors, a concerning state of affairs for a medical drama.
This applies less to Oh Yi-young, the de facto lead played by Go, whose personal tribulations have been consistently woven into the narrative.
We were introduced to her when her financial woes pushed her to try her hand at a residency at Yulje once again, after dropping out the first time. In later episodes, her trajectory has shifted from an economic one to a romantic one as a love triangle involving two of her colleagues has steadily come to the fore.
Chief among those is Goo Do-won (Jung Joon-won, Believer), a fourth-year OB-GYN resident who lives with Yi-young and Yi-young’s married sister and husband – Do-won’s brother.
Yi-young begins to demonstrate feelings for Do-won and cautiously but repeatedly confesses to him: “Is it OK for me to like you?” He never clearly responds, instead shifting the conversation to work.

Seemingly suffering from unrequited love, Yi-young is somewhat receptive when another colleague, Ham Dong-ho (Kim Yi-joon), a third-year anaesthesia resident, begins to show an interest in her. But when Do-won notices the pair getting to know one another, he begins to feel jealous.
Dong-ho later admits to Yi-young that he knows the feelings she has for Do-won, but is adamant that he will try to win her heart anyway.
Beyond that, Sa-bi experiences being a patient in her own hospital when she needs to undergo a minor procedure, and Nam-kyung is mortified when her mother is admitted.
That is about it as far as the main characters are concerned, with the bulk of the long episodes devoted to the various patients admitted to the hospital and the odd mistake made by the young doctors, who are routinely chewed out by their stern seniors.

Admittedly, this is par for the course for hospital-set television dramas, but aside from its weaker characters, Resident Playbook can also be a frustrating experience thanks to the low stakes of its medical cases.
There is the occasional cancer patient, but most of the episodic characters that are rolled through Yulje’s doors are pregnant women. Consequently, the cases tend to be emotional, and they are occasionally flat-out saccharine, such as a scene where some of the residents pour their feelings out to an aborted fetus.
Another example is Nam-kyung’s mother imploring her doctor daughter to eat a proper meal, followed directly by a scene in which Yi-young implores a patient to eat the meal in front of her to feed the dead child inside her, who will be surgically removed the next morning.
It does not help that the show feels the need to fill up the stretches between the emotional beats with all manner of corny sound effects.

Hospital Playlist never shied away from mawkish sentimentality, but with its stronger lead characters and richer range of life-and-death situations, the show’s emotional core was enhanced by the tension generated by some of its medical scenarios.
We never expected Resident Playbook to replicate the breathless medical bravado of Dr. Romantic or The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call, but a little chutzpah would go a long way in its coming final four episodes.
Resident Playbook is streaming on Netflix.


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Where Hospital Playlist was compelling, spin-off struggles with its low stakes, syrupy-sweet moments and lack of charismatic characters


Where Hospital Playlist was compelling, spin-off struggles with its low stakes, syrupy-sweet moments and lack of charismatic characters.


Netflix K-drama Resident Playbook midseason recap: Hospital Playlist spin-off lacks stakes

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Where Hospital Playlist was compelling, spin-off struggles with its low stakes, syrupy-sweet moments and lack of charismatic characters

Where Hospital Playlist was compelling, spin-off struggles with its low stakes, syrupy-sweet moments and lack of charismatic characters