Review of Nurseman ga Yuku ナースマンがゆく

Finally finished this drama (8 episodes)... but somehow, it's left me wondering whether I should have watched it in the first place.

Well, I watched the first series before so watching the sequel seems like a logical thing to do BUT I must say that most sequels do not fare very well in my personal opinion no matter what the ratings say. Maybe that's why I'm not watching the second season of Gokusen even though the ratings are very high for a NTV drama. Primary reason would be the lack of interest in the cast (students are mostly Johnny Jrs) but anyway, that's not what I'm trying to get at even though both dramas are from NTV. Nurseman ga yuku was made because the first series fared reasonably well (at least above NTV's expectations) so they actually wanted to make this sequel just for that reason. I really think some of these TV management people should understand that the sequel is usually in a disadvantage as compared to the original series, often suffering from the problem of a stale topic being revisited. There is only so much that can happen so unless you have a good story like what Kyumei Byoto has done, I would prefer to see things remain as it is.

To be frank, the first series was just OK in my opinion, nothing spectacular except that it was fun to pass time. And since I like Mabo, I must say that I would probably not have watched Nurseman in the first place without him. As for the sequel, it's more of a continuity issue and I can anticipate that there should not be any sequels given the lacklustre ratings.

What got me upset was that the themes and so-called "moral lessons" from the 2nd series is very predictable and there's really not much character development. It's as if I can predict what's going to happen next and that's not fun at all. I can't say which cast is much more appealing since I didn't like Abe Natsumi and Uehara Takako in the first but adored Kobayashi Satomi since she was very interesting. However, in the second series, Karina, Sato Tamao got on my nerves so much that even the appearance of Zaizen Naomi did nothing to soothe the irritation.

I'm not saying that you should skip this sequel but I just feel that the time spent on this could have been used elsewhere. Well, not even Mabo could reduce the disappointment of watching this so you can imagine how unhappy I am with regards to the quality of this drama. It really makes me wonder why I wanted to watch the sequel in the first place when I had a hunch then that this is heading nowhere. I should have given up after Ep 1.

Ratings for the entire season:

1) 11.5%
2) 10.3%
3) 11.8%
4) 6.7%
5) 8.6%
6) 11.0%
7) 8.0%
8) 9.7%

Average: 9.7%

I dread to look at the ratings above...It just goes to show that sequels are mostly jinxed and rarely exceed the predecessor. Sometimes, people must know when to stop in order to spoil whatever was good. I remember Nurseman got average ratings of 16% in its debut season which was an unexpected good result. However, the number of episodes for the sequel is lesser than usual (which gives the indication that NTV cut the drama shorter so as to cut losses) and a single digit average would seriously dent any chances of it ever making it back to our TV screens...