I genuinely think of myself to be a little stingy when it comes to rating dramas. No matter how much I like it, if something small throws me off, I might just cap my ratings at 9.5, but for Hospital Playlist, I didn’t hesitate when I rated it 10/10. There is something about this show that makes you happy. During and after your experience, the happiness sticks with you for awhile. It’s been a day since I’ve finished it and I’m feeling very happy. I do hope the happiness sticks with me for a very long time.

Fundamentally, it’s a show about friendship that continues strong after two decades, but it also encapsulates the tough work those in the medical field have to go through daily as well as the pain of the patients and their family members when they have to face a difficult obstacle in their lives, which is to battle an illness. I have watched just a few Korean medical dramas, but because of the genre difference, I was for the first time in Hospital Playlist, rewarded with the opportunity to see for myself just how tough their job is, which other medical dramas seemed to fail to strike it in me. Doctors don’t just study for years and then land themselves in a supposedly good paying job. They don’t just sit there and prescribe each passing patient a random medicine and call it a day. For me, that’s what I’ve always known, but I’ve never really thought much of it and just brushed it off. But Hospital Playlist has excellently portrayed the hectic life of the medical field that made me reconsider my so-called apparent appreciation for those in the medical field. Watching them drop everything they’re doing — be it any meal they’re eating or any destination they’re travelling to — and without hesitation return back to the hospital was something very commendable, because I couldn’t imagine how many times they had to do it and how many plans they had to forgo just for perhaps the smallest malfunction that may not even require immediate attention. But then they would, with patience, return back to their personal lives like it wasn’t anything big. This was what I was rewarded with — the deepest gratitude I could ever have for you doctors, surgeons, nurses, etc. I truly cannot imagine the countless amount of sacrifices made and I’m forever grateful for it.

Of course, this whole fat paragraph I had just written wouldn’t be possible for the actors who have excellently portrayed their respective characters. Our main 5 was amazing and I don’t think anyone else could have played their roles better than they themselves. Fun fact: many of the casts are also theatre actors, and for Jeon Mido who plays Songhwa (one of the main 5), it’s her very first major television role other than 1 or 2 super minor ones and she seriously slayed it! I also want to commend the side characters who did an equally fantastic job. There were many touching moments in the show that rendered me a few drops of tears, but there was one particular scene that truly broke me. It was when Cho Yihyun who plays a female medical student Jang Yunbok, tells Songhwa ‘I miss my mother so much’ and then breaks down in her arms. I wasn’t awe-struck by her acting initially because her roles didn’t seem to have any proper room to truly showcase her skills, but that one line brought out some kind of pain in me I didn’t think I would have had. In that split-second, I suddenly missed my mother more than ever, even though she was just in the room next door sleeping. What I wanted to say is...every actor in Hospital Playlist is deserving of a proper recognition because they have successfully brought the script to life, in a very interesting and enjoyable way, and that’s what makes the show a success.

Hospital Playlist isn’t just a television series. It’s an eye-opener to the daily struggles of different parties, it’s a recipe to everlasting friendship and it’s a form of enlightenment to you, that there is beauty in this world, in small ways that has the potential to amount to a lot when you slowly build it up.