Medical Brothers (DVD) (End) (English Subtitled) (MBC TV Drama) (US Version) DVD Region 1

While shows like Quincy were populating American television oh so many moons ago, the medical genre more or less started in Korea in the early eighties, when KBS' Hope started broadcasting. Mostly focusing on situation drama in the vein of its American counterparts, the genre carried on into the nineties with no real contender for Korea's first medical drama masterpiece. That day came in 1994, when young Choi Wan Gyu (of Jumong fame) started his career with a bang, sleeping and breathing the hospital air for months to write the superb General Hospital. Putting the spotlight on the life of residents and the grueling road to become a full-fledged doctor, the show made stars out of Lee Jae Ryong, Shin Eun Kyung and Jeon Gwang Ryeol. It combined up-to-then never seen before realism, convincing characters and drama that didn't simply have to do with who was prettier or whether their parents would sell their grandpa's dog to see them getting married.

The problem occurred post-General Hospital. The specter of Trendy Dramas hit this genre as well, with the kind of violence that would eradicate even the strongest tree. Eventually, even medical dramas fell into that magical formula, with pretty stars prancing around the hospital just waiting to go around the corner and meet their belle, who of course happened to be a ludicrously pretty doctor as well. The genre finally experienced a much needed shot in the arm (No pun intended. Maybe.) with 2007's masterful The White Tower, which is more a political than medical drama, but did indeed show hospitals are not all about teen idols treating their jobs as trait d'union between a kiss and a hug. Just where Medical Brothers stands in this totem pole of medical dramas is quite hard to say. It does have all the required ingredients to fall into the dating maxim game: secrets of birth, intra-hospital relationship, ad-hoc symmetrical character development, and exaggerated situations. Yet the weight of the profession itself is much stronger, and a little more realistic than its predecessors or the shows that followed it.

The brothers of the title are Kim Su Hyung (Jang Dong Gun of Typhoon) and Kim Jun Gi (Son Chang Min of Shin Don), who both work at the same hospital. The former is as good with the knife as he's popular with women, but on the personality side of things there's glass ceilings all around him, keeping his cold, selfish ego caged inside. The latter is the nice guy, certainly promising but a few steps behind his younger brother. Involved in their personal and professional lives is Min Ju (Lee Young Ae of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance), Su Hyung's girlfriend, who's been suffering his shenanigans for many years. You can pretty much guess where the story will go. Something happens in the middle putting the two brothers at a crossroad, their friendship and respect for each other as doctors challenged. But that something also slowly starts to crash Su Hyung's glass ceiling, he starts to open himself, becoming a better person, or maybe even a better doctor? After all, Hippocrates never said doctors should be cold and calculating machines.

Medical Brothers is a very predictable story then, with all the ingredients that made so many Korean Dramas of the nineties a bit hard to digest. But then again, there's also a layer of pathos and a pleasant familiarity which improves things considerably, especially the acting of Son Chang Min, Lee Young Ae, and even Jang Dong Gun, finally escaping from the pretty boy image of the early nineties which led him to fame. The realism here can't be compared to General Hospital and especially The White Tower, but all considered it's an acceptable level, particularly if you compare it with other medical shows from the late nineties and early 2000s. Dormant for years, the genre is now starting to reemerge, with shows like Surgeon Bong Dal Hee mixing some of the old tricks (intra-hospital relationship) with much more realism and better production values. A sequel to the great General Hospital is in the planning stages, hopefully bringing back the original cast, and many other shows are either in production or casting, showing that the next few years will probably mark the full fledged revival of medical dramas, this time done the right way. As far as Medical Brothers goes, it does show its age, but that sometimes is a good thing. Particularly if the nostalgia factor is high, you can do much worse than watch this show. It's like a bit of coffee inside a big block of sugar. You can't escape the bitterness, but then the aftertaste is rather sweet. If cavities pop up there's nothing to worry about. Don't know how many brothers sharing that profession are out there, but dentists are doctors, too!

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