MaryMeKpop

You ever just watch a drama or movie that seems like it arrived at the right exact time during a time in your life where you needed it the most? That was me with new Korean drama ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine.’ I’m not one to cry often watching Korean movies and dramas but this one moved me in numerous ways and I found myself crying several times throughout the show. Oftentimes, K-dramaland describes their dramas as “healing” to indicate a drama that is emotional and feel-good. ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ was that healing drama for me, both in the literal sense with its premise but also emotionally with its beautiful characters and impactful stories.

‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ follows Jung Da-eun (Park Bo-young) and her journey as a third-year nurse who was transferred to the Psychiatry department at her workplace hospital. There, we watched as she created memories with her patients as well as navigated the overwhelming experiences of being a healthcare professional, a working professional, and most importantly, a friend. In the process, she also learned more about herself, her capacity and bandwidth, as well as how valuable she was both individually and to the rest of her team.

I heard about this drama a while back and with my most favorite actress in the world, Park Bo-young, playing the main character in the show, ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ was one that I knew I had to watch. I was excited for it and that enthusiasm increased even more upon watching the teasers to the drama. I’m usually not one to watch teasers but I couldn’t resist the temptation with ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ and was easily intrigued by the previews. I jumped on the chance to marathon the entire drama and before I knew it, I finally finished it at 4am.

‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ was refreshing in that it followed a formula that we’ve seen before in K-dramaland but at the same time, also implemented its own style to add to the storytelling. I’m not the biggest fan of procedural dramas and I was afraid that the drama was going to focus on a different hospital patient for each episode. With this setting, I find it hard to get attached to the characters and to become invested in their stories knowing that they’ll only last for an episode before we move on to someone new in the next. Fortunately, ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ didn’t fully commit to this formula. The first two episodes focused on two different patients, but the third episode separated itself by focusing on Da-eun’s best friend, Song Yu-chan (Jang Dong-yoon), and his mental health. During this time, we also watched Da-eun navigate a new department with new co-workers and patients. She was learning new rules, she was working with new nurses and doctors, she was working with new patients – it was essentially a steep learning curve for Da-eun. So while the episodes did focus on the respective patients in the department, the drama also kept us occupied with plenty of other characters and storylines. The majority of these subplots were interesting, complex, and wonderful but there were also some parts that I thought didn’t add as much value to the overall show. I’ll touch upon this aspect later in this review.

There’s always concern for any drama centered around mental health and the stigma surrounding the topic. Admittedly, I was uncertain as to how the drama was going to frame and address the discussions around mental health. You want good representation, you want healthy conversations and discussions, you want the drama to tackle straight on the stigma around mental health. And thankfully, the drama made it clear what its stance and perspective was and what it wanted viewers to learn with each episode. You watched as Da-eun and doctor/Yu-chan’s friend, Dong Go-yun (Yeon Woo-jin), encouraged Yu-chan to get help. You learned about each patient’s story and how they ended up at the hospital and how human they are despite society telling them otherwise. You watched the challenges and bumps that our nurses faced as they went about doing their work, carefully treading the line between being a healthcare professional and then also being a friend. You watched as the chief nurse, Song Hyo-jin (Lee Jung-eun), advocated not only for her younger sister who was also a patient at the hospital but also for Da-eun who found herself in a work situation that she never asked for. The drama reminded viewers that there was nothing wrong with asking for help or for taking medication or for visiting a psychiatrist or for dealing with mental health issues. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it and it’s nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. The patients in the drama dealt with different illnesses and concerns; the guardians of the patients were discriminative and unjust later on in the drama in regards to Da-eun’s mental health. ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ consistently acknowledged the fact that mental health was important and that mental illnesses existed. It also reminded viewers that help and resources were available and that these patients in the hospital were still human.

I enjoyed ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ for its positive message and representation surrounding mental health but I also appreciated the other topics that it addressed such as grief and the loss of a loved one. It’s never easy to lose someone you love and there was a case in the drama where the death of a patient, Kim Seo-wan, greatly impacted the nurses and doctors in the hospital. It especially impacted Da-eun the most since she was the one who interacted with Seo-wan the most and her mental health quickly deteriorated as a result of his death. Seo-wan’s death was an example of how he was dealing with his own issues and situations in life and just how much he impacted people’s lives. His story was also one that I could relate to in that he was afraid that he had run out of time and he wasn’t so sure what to do with his life career-wise. He had failed the civil service exam multiple times but he also didn’t know what else to do so he was in this endless cycle of studying and taking the exam and then studying and taking the exam. And in the end, he took his own life because there was no way out. All of the patients in the drama had their own beautiful stories but Seo-wan was the character who I cared about the most. His story was a little different in that he wasn’t just a one-episode character. The show sprinkled his appearances throughout the first few episodes so that you saw a glimpse of him here and there. You learned about him little by little in every episode so that by the time it came down to his episode, you were already attached and invested in him. The drama actually hinted at his death before going into details about it, so even though I knew it was coming, I still was so heartbroken and devastated when the tragedy struck. Just like the doctors and nurses at the hospital, I too didn’t want to bid farewell with him. Just like Seo-wan did to Da-eun and the others, he also moved me with his story and life. Seo-wan was definitely one of the more impactful and memorable supporting characters that I’ve seen in a drama in a long time.

So with Se-wan’s tragic death, Da-eun had a challenging time processing her grief and mourning over the loss. She at first pretended like she was okay or that she had it together or that she had recovered. She suppressed her feelings. She thought grief had an expiration date. But as we saw shortly afterwards, Da-eun broke down into tears and she realized that she was not okay. She was depressed. She was in disbelief that she – a psychiatric nurse whose job was to treat patients – could become a patient herself. Her journey and experience as a patient wasn’t easy and she went through several stages of denial and rejection to eventually acceptance and relief. The truth was that she was depressed and that her position as a nurse didn’t mean that she wasn’t suffering mentally. Because she was. Da-eun was hurt and she did miss Se-wan and she was heavily impacted by his death. Combine Da-eun’s challenge to process her grief with the reactions of the other nurses and doctors to the death as well as Se-wan’s parents and I cried buckets of tears. I cried so hard. There was this scene when Se-wan’s dad visited the hospital and he sat at a bench outside near the building. Chief Nurse Song quietly joined him by sitting at another bench nearby and the two sat together in silence while staring at the building. My heart broke at the sight of this scene because there were no words that were spoken but just the simple action of Chief Nurse Song accompanying a heartbroken and lonely father who just lost his child to suicide was so loud. As someone who’s also lost a loved one for a little over a year now, I could definitely resonate with the characters and their emotions of grief, sadness, and pain.

Another thing that ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ did a wonderful job in highlighting was the workplace and the work environment. For Da-eun’s story, she was afraid of being a burden to her co-workers. She made sure to take her work seriously, to go above and beyond, to do the best that she could at work so that the other nurses she was working with didn’t view her negatively. She quickly learned on her first day of work that it wasn’t easy and that there were new things she was going to learn (including table tennis, haha). There were times where she cried because of how challenging work was. As much as I enjoyed the drama focusing on the hospital patients and telling us their beautiful stories, I also liked that the drama was focused on Da-eun’s character growth and development. I liked that the drama also pinned the spotlight on Da-eun and her journey to self-love. And it was the drama’s amazing ability to balance not only the patients but also Da-eun’s story that I enjoyed the show much more than I already was. Then there was also the other aspect about the work environment where the nurses had to learn to tread carefully with their relationships with the patients that was so interesting. Da-eun cared for the patients, she was a great active listener, she developed and maintained these connections with the patients, and she treated them with respect like they deserved. She had a kind and caring personality that extended into the workplace and her co-workers envied her for the way she carried herself. As we saw with Se-wan’s tragedy, Da-eun learned firsthand why her senior nurses were a bit more careful about setting boundaries. Da-eun’s coworkers still cared about the patients but they also knew how emotionally and mentally draining it could be to get attached. By presenting such nuanced and detailed examples of these sentiments,  ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ knew what it was doing and executed things in such a precise, emotional, beautiful, and impactful way.

I honestly could go on and on about all the things that I loved about this drama from the little things to the more general items. But the drama wasn’t perfect by any means and there were a few characters or subplots that I just wasn’t as invested in as the drama wanted me to be. The first being the romantic relationship between nurse, Min Deul-re, and doctor Hwang Yeo-hwan. I feel bad for even saying this but I think the drama wanted me to care about this couple more 1) than I wanted to and 2) more than I actually did. It felt as if the drama was throwing their relationship onto viewers and I’m not exactly sure what they were trying to achieve with this or what they were aiming to achieve with their relationship. It didn’t help that their scenes felt a little out of place in every episode. Every so often, I was interested and intrigued by what was going on in the drama only to get distracted with scenes of Deul-re and Yeo-hwan arguing about their feelings for each other. They had this push and pull dynamic and they often went back and forth (for completely valid reasons though so I understand why their relationship didn’t develop as quickly). I often felt like they were sort of the odd one out of all the subplots and storylines. Deul-re and Yeo-hwan were sort of meant to be the second lead couple so their relationship was given a decent amount of screentime but I just couldn’t find a reason to care about them. I cared more about all the other things that were going on in the show instead.

The other minor hiccup that I had with the drama was the love triangle between Da-eun, Yu-chan, and Go-yun. It’s not even so much that I was disappointed that Da-eun ended up with Go-yun instead of Yu-chan. I mean, I did suffer from second lead syndrome and was definitely rooting for Yu-chan and Da-eun who were best friends since childhood. And honestly, I don’t really care that much for the childhood friends to lovers trope but I actually thought ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ executed this concept really well to the point where I was pulling for Da-eun and Yu-chan. It helped that Park Bo-young and Jang Dong-yoon had great chemistry but their characters were also compatible and they had so much history with each other. I liked Go-yun as a character but I wasn’t completely sold on his relationship with Da-eun. I understood how and why he developed feelings for her and he’s not a bad person by any means. He’s actually a nice, quirky, funny, and caring guy whose feelings towards Da-eun was genuine. But I sort of felt like ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ contained romance just for the sake of having some romance and, therefore, brought Da-eun and Go-yun together. Don’t get me wrong – I love romance and relationships and lovey-dovey stuff. I eat that stuff up all the time. But ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ was one of those instances where I actually would have been okay with Da-eun’s relationships with both Yu-chan and Go-yun staying platonic. I would have been okay with the alternate universe and ending where Da-eun wasn’t ready for love just yet because she wanted to still focus on herself and her mental health. Again, I thought Go-yun and Da-eun were cute together and their interactions, both serious and funny, were wonderful. And I’m not complaining about how they were endgame. But I do feel as though their relationship was a little rushed at the end and we went from watching Yu-chan debate on confessing his feelings to Da-eun to watching Da-eun and Go-yun hold hands in the next episode. A little bit more time to hash out the details on the romance between Go-yun and Da-eun at the end would have been nice.

All in all, ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ was exactly that for me – a daily dose of sunshine. And when the drama told us the stories of the patients or showed us the characters struggling to process their grief and pain, I couldn’t help but just relate too. I couldn’t help but just cry my eyes out because the characters and stories spoke to me in a way that I haven’t quite seen in a very long time. It hit close to home for me. Whether it was their work or personal life, I found that I had a few things in common with the characters or that I saw little bits of myself in their stories. And for that, I’m grateful. I’m grateful for the drama. It came at a time when I needed it and it’s been a while since I’ve seen a drama this impactful. ‘Daily Dose of Sunshine’ was a drama centered around characters on their respective journeys to healing – mentally and emotionally. I think it’s safe to say that the drama allowed viewers to do the same as well: heal.