D-Day (2015)

Catastrophe on an epic scale

I love love love disaster movies, and D-Day has some of my favorite stars and character actors, so I was popcorn ready for a binge fest. But catastrophe on an epic scale can describe both the plot and the series. There was a master adrenaline punch, some intriguing moral dilemmas, a cast deep with truly talented actors - and some ridiculously cheesy directing with a script that relied on action to cover pedantic dialogue and story flaws. So much going for D-Day, but nothing could save this disaster of a disaster series from being 20 episodes of one-note melodrama, full of one-dimensional characters, and devoid of nuance.

The first half of the series is worth watching for the depth of acting talent, all of whom delivered outstanding performances, and some of whom deserve kudos just for showing up to work every day to slog through this cliche fest. Gold medals to:
- Kim Hye Eun (a stoic and principled character played perfectly),
- Yoon Joo Hee (a subtly strong performance that made her character the backbone of every scene she was in and the voice of conscience for the story's throughline),
- Kim Jung Hwa (I was rooting for her to ride off into the sunset with the ML. Compelling character, but underused here; later notable as the heartbreakingly devoted Suzy Choi from "Mine," and criminally underused in that series also),
- Kim Jae Hwa, & Kim Sang Ho, character actors who each made their role's total into more than the sum of the parts.

Extra special hats off to Jung So Min for playing a witless, silly, giddy, immature, ill trained, and emotionally/intellectually stunted doctor to a T. It had to be painful. We get an early glance at Jung So Min's characters proclivity to threaten low-level violence when things don't go their way, a trait that's almost a signature of her characters (see "Love Next Door" for more examples).

Honorable mention to Kim Young Kwang who played both a Labradoodle and a cardboard caricature of the heroic, wounded, noble savior - a veritable Superman of the operating theatre - and did it well, such as it was. I do wonder if even he tired of his character's many, many self canonizing monologues delivered over the open bowels of his patients.

Neither Jung So Min nor Kim Young Kwang, as talented as they are, could make the romance between their characters feel anything but awkward, forced, and painfully unbalanced.

This is the kind of drama that makes a remote control with fast-forward a handy thing to have. Even so, I almost dropped the series in E9 for gross script stupidity when a critically short-staffed ER Director sent off a single patient escorted by THREE doctors AND a surgical nurse. Later, that same ER Director let another doctor walk out in a fit of petulance without informing him that his career would justifiably end RIGHT THERE if he took another step. Though, tbh, maybe it was because he was a pathetic excuse for a doctor and a ticking time bomb of malpractice.

I figured it would only get more stupid from there and I was right. The only kiss of the series happened in the least romantic setting ever, with no romantic build-up, between the two least well developed characters. Yes, they were the leads, so of course it had to be them, but I still get to whinge that they were one-dimensional and not even especially likeable.

I slogged through until E15 when it was clear the plot had nowhere to go and I, fortunately, did.

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