Faith / The Great Doctor

Originally posted on facebook, February 10 at 8:25pm but I want to be able to send it and look back at it myself. The facebook link is leading to the photo.


I just watched THE best program I've ever seen in my whole life. I don't say that lightly. Bummer it's not in English. Alex Polikowsky told me about it last May, and I was "ho hum, don't care." Don't be that way, then, people who read this.

ALSO don't read about it. You don't want to know what's going to happen. LOTS of things will happen. It's on Hulu plus, and (Alex says) another place or two. Maybe YouTube, I don't know. [2018 note: You might need to get it through VIKI or DramaFever. It's worth paying to avoid commercials, and for them to save your place.]

I watched the whole thing in two and a half days. Monday was dedicated to just that. I never even went into the kitchen. I didn't make tea. Keith took me for a hamburger in the afternoon, but I was in a hurry to get home.

Oh right. It's called "Faith" and it's a Korean TV series, 24 one-hour episodes. Historical fiction, 1300s, armor, swords, honor, redemption, politics, a bit of magic but that's not the main thing. Swords mostly, but some spear, archery, trickery, gymnastics, household items. Magic flute, steel stabbing finger ring (don't know the name). Hand-to-hand. Some horses, but no fighting on horseback. There's a fair amount of medically-related business, as the time traveller is a doctor. (There is a bit of time travel, but that's not the main thing.) There are aspects of vocabulary and of handwriting that I appreciated even though Chinese characters and Korean writing mean nothing to me—still, as elements of the plot I liked what they were doing.

The subtitles aren't great, but after a while I didn't care. I don't know (don't care, don't WANT to know) if the costumes and armor and weapons are period. REALLY I don't care and if people put stuff in the comments about it being not period, I won't be your facebook friend anymore.

When I looked something up and saw that there were 24 episodes, I was sad to know when the end would come. If you watch it, SERIOUSLY, just try it out and don't read about it first, because the joy of NOT knowing what's going to happen will be wonderful. From episode 18, I started thinking actively about what other movie or tv show I thought was better than this. From episode 20, I started to feel sorrow that I would never, ever again be able to see this program for the first time.

Alex says give it six episodes before you give up on it, but I was hooked by three.

Today I had other things to do, so wasn't able to sit and totally marathon, though I did want to finish it before Kirby and Destiny got here (and I did). Between times, I thought hard about what show might be comparable and honestly could not think of anything. I have loved a lot of movies in my time, and have had some TV series I obsessed about, but this is it for me. I wouldn't mind finding something better someday, but I don't expect to.

I didn't mention what Alex said to me before she even mentioned the series. [Came back to edit this. I still didn't. She raved about the lead actor being handsome.] The male star has a great voice (and many other attractive attributes, so I'll bring a photo of him so people don't accidentally read plot details looking for his picture. :-))

Sets are nice, cinematography is GREAT, direction, script—apparently, even though I couldn't understand them, I could hear when there were parallel phrases or lyrical comments or staccato comments, and those things aren't random, with good writers. Props and sets were fun. There was a wheelbarrow halfway between a European wheelbarrow and a Chinese mountain wheelbarrow, and I'll try to get an image of it for my wheelbarrow collection at some point.

The lead actor's name is Lee Min Ho. The character is great.

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