Start Date: Thursday, July 16th at 10:00 pm on Fuji-TV.... rating.... 10.2%
Main Cast: The action takes place at the Takatsu General Hospital
Satomi Ishihara as Aoi Midori.... Though just a regular pharmacist at the hospital her medical knowledge is greater than all of the other medical staff combined
Nanase Nishino as Kurumi Ihara.... Newbie pharmacist being trained by Aoi
Kei Tanaka as Shogo Seno.... Aoi's immediate supervisor, he was the person who trained her yet he often disagrees with her methods
Yuki Sakurai as Naoko Kariya.... Pharmacist who mainly works in the prescription room and there's no person in the world faster than she is at packing medicine
Miki Maya as Satoko Handa.... HR representative for the pharmacist crew
Kai Inowaki as Ryunosuke Haga.... Pharmacist
Sho Kiyohara as Ryo Onozuka.... Pharmacist
.... plus a few others that will be added if these recaps continue.
This opening episode really reminded me of season one of 'Code Blue' though much of the action takes place in a hospital pharmacy. That's where the comparison ends as this first show was so-so at best as every possible tragedy worked out so well in the end and to the point of it making you a tad nauseous. The main problem was the lead character Midori who is just a regular pharmacist worker and as she said in the beginning they're at the bottom of a hospital's totem pole.
Yet if it wasn't for Midori patients would be dying all over the place. She personally saved the lives of two patients because of her knowledge of medicine, it was hard not to have the impression she knew more about the health field than the rest of the hospital combined. Plus the fact it seemed she worked 23 hours a day and just had a hard time believing this character. Second half of the show was a bit better, it does show potential so will give the next two shows a chance. Satomi has been one of my top actresses for a decade, it's not that her performance was bad as it wasn't but the character she played here and in a few other recent dramas pales to her earlier roles.
Will try to make this recap a bit briefer than usual. Will cover the key points and introduce some of the main characters though won't go into too much detail. So will have segments for the top five characters above, will be viewing the next two episodes and if they're better than this show will explain more about everyone.
The main heroine in this drama is Midori as she had to be on screen 80% of the time. Above is her with the newbie Ihara who I'll introduce last, Midori was the person assigned to train her. As mentioned above Midori must know more about the medical field than the rest of the hospital combined. It occurred to me after but that's a huge negative about doctors and nurses, they were put in a bad light in this first episode as they were shown to be fairly incompetent. Some of the medical staff do respect Midori but the majority don't and another thing I noticed was how swelled her head became during this show as it's really only her that can cure patients.
As this first show began off we saw Midori in the ER where she saved a patient. The attending doctor had given this patient some drugs to reduce the pain, Midori though said it was the wrong one which was corrected, without it the person may have died. I personally don't know much about the medical field but had always thought doctors and nurses were quite good at their jobs, doesn't seem that way in Japan. Later on in the show Midori had a confrontation with a doctor named Hayashi, that's him above. He was treating a pregnant woman named Yajima who was going to give birth early. That wasn't going to be a problem but the medicine prescribed by him was according to Midori.
On that observation she was correct and to her credit she did save two lives, that first person in the ER and this woman named Yajima. She had been having severe headaches and such, she had a condition which was made worse by the medicine Hayashi said to take and he wouldn't listen to anyone, especially Midori. But Yajima's condition became so bad she was on the verge of dying, Hayashi finally had to admit her medicine may not have been correct and gave her the ones Midori suggested. All turned out well as Yajima quickly recovered, she was back to full health and was able to deliver her baby with no problems thanks to Midori. But Midori had other problems as Hayashi felt she crossed the line once too often with her meddling and brought her to the review board with those charges.
To my surprise Midori didn't attend her hearing, perhaps she wasn't allowed? Hayashi didn't go into too much detail about that patient as she didn't want to take a chance on coming off as being incompetent. He wanted a punishment for her but he couldn't figure out what was fair, maybe a month's suspension? A few in the crowd stood up to support Midori, one was the nurse in charge of Yajima and also Midori's HR representative Handa. Also saying something about Midori was her immediate supervisor Seno who is right above, to everyone's shock he recommended that the board fire Midori!!!! But it was all a smooth ruse by Seno as so many jumped to Midori's defense, there were so many good testimonies the charges against her were dropped. Unknown to everyone save for us viewers was that the person who helped Midori out the most was Handa. Quietly she had said a few words to Hayashi as she had all of the patient's medical charts, after that Hayashi too said the charges should be dropped lest he appear to be incompetent.
So it was back to normalcy for Midori which meant saving two more lives! They were two teen girls who were roommates, both suffered from diabetes and had to be admitted quite often as they weren't taking their insulin properly. One girl because she hated being so different from her classmates, when she entered the hospital she could be around others like herself. Actually the other girl had some of that same background as both hated being unlike girls their own age. Thanks to the wisdom of Midori she straightened both teen girls out and it appears they'll never make another visit to the hospital for personal reasons. But that incident led Midori to realizing she was kind of weak around patients as she couldn't always relate to them on a personal level. She has such a knowledge of of medicine and wonder if there was some event in her life which prevented her from becoming a doctor?
We didn't see as much of her supervisor Seno as I expected but there are many more episodes to go. He was the person to train Midori so obviously he must know a lot about the medical field too. Though he supports her to no end Seno doesn't approve of Midori's constant meddling, he's hoping that hearing before the board won't lead to others. With that same though was the pharmacy's HR representative Handa who really will go out of her way to help any of the employees at the pharmacy. I've never been behind the scenes of a hospital pharmacy but at the Takatsu General Hospital it's huge with well over twenty employees who fill thousands of prescriptions each day.
That's the pharmacy above and the best pharmacist there was my fave character, Kariya. She's played by Yuki Sakurai who has become one of my top actresses, have seen her in four dramas this past year and she's excelled in all of them. Kariya showed why robots can never replace humans as there's no way they could keep up with her. She works at hyper speed every second though never makes a mistake, a highlight was watching her use a stamper on the prescriptions and did they speed up the film? On the outside Kariya will say some bad things about Midori and had wished she wouldn't get so involved with patients. But deep down she cares about her co-worker and after the charges against her were dropped Kariya high-fived the entire pharmacy.
Now we're at the the final segment and a main reason for viewing this show was that it stars Nanase. She has the second largest role in the drama playing the role of Kurumi Ihara who is a newbie at the pharmacy and just graduated from Musashi University. Assigned to be her trainer was Midori and needless to say Ihara was shocked at this pharmacist, were they all like her? No is the answer and Ihara couldn't believe how much Midori would do for patients and have a feeling that attitude will soon be rubbing off on Ihara.
Ihara wasn't given any beefy assignments to begin off with, mainly just following Midori around and watching how the other pharmacists performed their tasks. Sure this role will grow as the series goes on, even though Nanase had the second largest amount of screen time her character wasn't overly important which for a newbie is to be expected.
Not as short as I hoped it would be but this first episode was close to 57 minutes in length, usually a show is about 46 minutes. Second half of this episode was decent enough and will check out at least the next two shows. Think this may be an okay drama if they down the character of Midori so she doesn't come off as being the 'savior of the world'. Plenty of screenshots for all to enjoy which really help you follow the action a bit better.
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