The reason why I'm writing about 2 episodes at one go is because I literally have nothing much to comment about them.
Just where does the problem lie with this drama? Although it looked pretty promising pre-season, this has turned out to be such a huge disappointment in more ways than one.
First of all, what genre would this story fall under in the first place? Medical drama? Then again, the medical conditions and treatment methods are supposedly fictitious and not in line with reality. And half of the surgical process is handled by the AI while seemingly complex surgeries are conducted by two people only. Isn't it amazing or ridiculous that one of them is a surgical nurse who is so skilled that she can transform into a surgeon at will in case the chief surgeon cannot handle two procedures at one go?
So is this a story about eliminating evil from the world? The issue is, the group isn't doing things for free and charge exorbitant fees to make the bad guys choose between their lives and ill-gotten fortune. Just what is their ultimate motive? By this stage, I have already lost interest and feel like I have one foot out of the door to literally walk out of this drama anytime.
And is this an obvious homage to or carbon copy of Tsutsumi Yukihiko's past successes like TRICK to blend in similar-styled comedic scenes amid a serious backdrop? Otherwise, why would there be terribly out-of-place scenes like the wacky fortune-teller who spins a seemingly smart Joker around her finger at will? Or how about that female police officer who keeps falling down every time she appears? What worked then in TRICK or SPEC may not work here and those scenes and developments made me so annoyed that I felt like skipping them. Humour when not delivered in the right way and at the right time just comes across as lame and falls flat. A drama which tries to do a bit of everything may end up to have nothing to show for.
Seeing what is happening to the story makes me feel bad for the cast. With such a good lineup, you could potentially create a much better drama than this. I was so looking forward to seeing Tsumabuki Satoshi & Fujiwara Tatsuya battle it out onscreen but most of their scenes so far were simply flat and lacked the sparks. Most, if not all of the time, Ace is shown bulldozing his way through everything with his tantrums and take-it-or-leave-it attitude regardless of Joker's logical reasoning and convincing. Maybe there is a proper reason to show why Joker puts up with this nonsense and why Ace can afford to disregard the views of his team and apply his arbitrary sense of justice. However, I don't know if I can still stick around to wait for that reveal.
And putting in more big names like Suzuki Ryohei now isn't going to salvage this drama unless the story improves dramatically. Having a star-studded cast is simply not the easy way out to draw in viewers. I also feel bad for the guest stars so far who played the patients - they did a fantastic job in showing the struggle to decide between their health and wealth and how each baddie evolved into who they were. The story is simply not doing them any justice and it's such a waste of talent when this kind of thing happens.
One other thing which bothers me is the cake creations designed for this drama. Surely they didn't get a famous patissier to come in and design all these beautiful cakes for nothing? Considering that they bothered to show Ace assembling the elements to form the cake and have close-up shots to introduce these cakes, I find it hard to think that all these efforts would be wasted on something which has no further meaning. However, the first and second cakes named "Molecule" and "Divine Comedy" don't seem to have anything in common while there was no cake shop scene at all in Ep 3. So what is happening now? Did they decide to suspend that cake shop subplot for now? And did I overthink the significance of these new creations and their titles when they could have meant nothing at all?
Frankly speaking, I tried to convince myself that there should be more than meets the eye and I should be a bit more patient to wait around for the big reveal. The issue is, if the filler episodes are not only boring but feel like a total waste of my time, should I still hold on to the feeble hope that this will improve? Although the next episode is hinting at a big reveal of Queen's background, I am not so hopeful about seeing anything that will change my opinion of this drama. 4 episodes is definitely more than enough time to judge whether this is to be continued or dropped for the rest of the reason so we'll see by then.
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