I finally finished watching a decent if longish c-drama, You Are My Hero. This series is quite long at 40 episodes, and takes its time depicting the romance between SWAT police officer Xing Ke Lei (Bai Jing Ting) and resident neurosurgeon Mi Ka (Sandra Ma Si Chun). I watched it mainly because I liked Sandra Ma from Love Me if You Dare, and I thought the conflicts that would arise in a cop/doctor relationship would be interesting.
This is a very slow romance. It starts with an unlikely meeting between the lead characters during a hostage crisis, and then restarts when they meet as the doctors go for emergency training with the SWAT team. Most of this bit was fairly realistic; I've done similar training myself during my AF days (which explains my military versus police comment later on in the post.) From there the extremely slow-burn romance between Ke Lei and Mi Ka begins, and while it seems unlikely that two people in their mid-twenties would never have dated, kissed or even held hands I didn't mind the pace. It's also the first time I've seen a drama depict a romance from the actual moment it begins all the way through the relationship.
There are plenty of conflicts for the characters to deal with, from providing rescue and medical treatment after a natural disaster to dealing with more hostage crises (there were four in all, which I felt was a bit much. Two would have been enough.) Both characters have to deal with their professional committments clashing with their relationship. I expected the cop would at some point become the doctor's patient (which happens) and there to be multiple you-or-my-job situations (not as many as I thought.) The misunderstandings are thankfully kept primarily to the secondary characters, although I did think for two inexperienced virgins the lead characters were astonishing in how much they empathized with and supported each other. Both are borderline Mary Sues.
I wasn't sure about Bai Jing Ting at first as a hero; he's definitely different, both in body type and attitude. Yet he grew on me a lot through the series, and I ended up really liking him. Sandra Ma was more mature this time around, and showed a range of emotions rather than playing just a cute girl. The secondary cast were superb, from Mi Ka's journalist best friend (who played the cute girl) to Ke Lei's older sister, both of whom fall in love with other characters. This series has a very big cast, but you do get the time to know them all very well, so I liked that.
The series didn't have many technical problems at all. Some of the medical bits were inaccurate, over-simplified or simply incorrect, but you'd have to be a professional to notice. They recycled some of the surgery parts, too; I was amused to see the same brain procedure shown for two different patients with different problems. I can't speak to the accuracy of the SWAT side of the series but it seemed more military-based than civilian-based to me based on the types of training they perform. That could just be how it is in China, too. I don't see why it was rated PG-13 when it's a solid G on the romance. Maybe it was the surgery bits.
The finale was exciting for me despite the reuse of a conflict, and I liked how it all wrapped up. Was it unrealistic? I'd say it's more idealistic, but I was fine with it. If you love someone, you're willing to do a lot for them. That's what you see in this series. Available on Viki.com.
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