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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Doctor Frost" Episode 10

Final episodes normally do lots of callbacks, and "Doctor Frost" is no different. Unfortunately, "Doctor Frost" decides to call back to all the least interesting parts of the drama, creating a finale that's about as uninspiring as most of the normal episodes. There's little to no actual psychoanalysis, as usual, and the final plot unfolds about as predictably as possible. Only the exact details and motivation of the villain are new, and these story points are rather uninspiring.

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What's worse than that, though, is that drama expects us to feel a huge emotional impact about the fate of one character whose name I can't even remember because he's never actually done anything. If we were supposed to care about someone who works at the university, it might have been a wise move to actually set most of the drama's events at the university rather than the police station.

It's the same old problem. The original webtoon, and all the characters therein, are only interesting to the extent that their experiences relate to psychoanalysis. "Doctor Frost" didn't become popular because the protagonist has white hair and a weird name. But then, this entire project has ended up bearing such little similarity to the webtoon that even comparing them in the same context is frankly misleading.

The characters have had no meaningful arcs. What has Seong-ah learned from her time as Doctor Frost's assistant? What has Tae-bong learned from his time working with Doctor Frost? What has Doctor Frost learned? What have we learned? These are all very basic questions that any drama should be able to answer at its conclusion. Even a multiple season drama like "God's Quiz" has some character growth, or at the very least characters clearly defined enough that I can come up with a few adjectives to describe them individually. By contrast, pretty much everyone in "Doctor Frost" is a blank generic archetype.

This drama has been in production quite some time. And yet this was the best OCN could come up with? I'm not even sure who this drama was supposed to appeal to. Fans of the webtoon will be disappointed by the lack of psychoanalysis, crime procedural fans will be confused by the convoluted framing device, and people who just like television will just be frustrated by the sheer pointlessness of the whole endeavor. So much potential, so much of it wasted..."Doctor Frost" is just plain boring.

Review by William Schwartz

"Doctor Frost" is directed by Seong Yong-il, written by Heo Ji-yeong and features Song Chang-eui, Jung Eun-chae and Lee Yoon-ji.

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