code blue season 3

The Code Blue series has always ranked amongst my favourite Japanese dramas, up there with Nodame Cantabile and BOSS, even back in the days when Yamapi and Gakki's acting frustrated me, and to this day I still think it's amongst the best Asian medical dramas I've watched (the ridiculously popular Doctor X is an absolute joke by comparison).

These days, both Gakki and Yamapi's acting is much more mature, and as a result, the emotionless Aizawa and overly-soft Shiraishi feel much more like flesh-and-blood people than avatars of a string of adjectives.

I read somewhere that while most of the Code Blue team has remained the same, the scriptwriter has changed, and that's perhaps the most obvious shift in tone. The good parts are still there - the tight-paced editing that gives a sense of speed, activity and urgency. What it's missing from the old format, especially in the first 2 extended episodes, is an emotional arc that holds the episode together. Some of Code Blue's best scenes were some great ethics questions that arose from patient-doctor interactions. There are still "emotional" scenes but they end up feeling shoehorned in and didn't have the fine touch of previous seasons.

There was a lot of concern about how the script was going to balance the 3 new doctors against the old team. Let's just say - the first 2 episodes show that those concerns are fully justified, and certainly feel like they've wasted 3 up-and-coming stars with Arioka Daiki, Narita Ryo and Araki Yuko by what they've done.

I'm going to take an aside and say I'm not familiar with the Japanese training or medical system. The system I'm familiar with has emergency medicine as a separate specialty, though I know in some countries the A&E is run by surgical and medical on-calls rather than specialised emergency doctors. Based on the skills set of the old cast, they appear most similar to dedicated "trauma doctors", essentially dual-trained in critical care and trauma/general surgery. The young doctors are called "fellows" in Japanese, which over here means they've completed their specialty training, but judging by their skill level at the beginning of Code Blue 1 and the new kids in Code Blue 3, they're at most fresh trainees/residency level.

Now, I know there are some useless residents out there, but the level of retard in these 3 new trainees is a whole new low. What Code Blue 1 did very well was show a bunch of new doctors who are being dropped in the deep end, and though they are terrified they're not useless, and it's as much a journey of growth as self-realisation of their strengths and weaknesses. Aizawa has amazing surgical skills but is a terrible team player. Shiraishi has great theoretical knowledge but not enough confidence or practical skills. Hiyama, while not being outstanding in any particular area, is well-balanced in terms of skills, knowledge and assertiveness, but can get bogged down with her emotions. Fujikawa's skills and knowledge aren't quite up to scratch, but he works hard and can handle being put down.

To be honest, 2 episodes in, I still have no idea what the 3 new doctors are like. The 2nd episode focused on Araki's Yokomine, and I flat out wanted to slap her when she burst into tears because Aizawa told her to put a chest drain. I mean yes, Aizawa's impersonal, "he's sedated so won't complain, so he's the perfect subject for you to practice" isn't exactly how you want to break the ice, but Yokomine's bawling, "OMG THAT IS SO MEAANNNN" is so primary school level I don't know even.... In fact, the 3 of them are so bloody incompetent they should be pulled from the floor - they're functioning like medical students that are only semi-interested and a bloody menace. I mean in episode 1 of season 1, Shiraishi was doing an arterial line - in episode 1 here, the kids "only understood half" of what the "massive transfusion protocol" (or equivalent) is. Hiyama even said, "Just do what you learned in JATEC" - which according to Wikipedia, is equivalent to the American ATLS, and that is absolutely NOT the level of skill these retards are functioning at.

I don't want to hate on the characters or the actors, so all I can do is call out the scripts for how stupid the 3 young doctors have been written to be in order to show the old cast as being wiser and more knowledgeable. It's rating well so far and I do enjoy it when the old cast is on, but the new characters have ruined the magic a bit for a series that has been reasonably realistic (compared to most other medical dramas out of Japan recently) in portraying the hospital environment.