'Ghost Doctor' is the first kdrama of 2022 that I've religiously been keeping up with every week. What attracted me to it was the premise of ghosts and comedy within a hospital setup with Rain and Kim Bum as the leading stars. While this drama just screamed funny to me looking at the poster, I admit I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated while not having much expectations from it. The combination of Rain and Kim Bum didn't strike me as interesting upon first preview but the bromance is what hard carried the show.

PLOT:
The plot was pretty straightforward and predictable in the sense that I could sniff Cha Young Min's redemption journey from the very first episode. It's basically an opposites meet premise only that here there's a rude professor "haunting" his kind student Seung Tak - both while alive and unconscious. The first half of the show was pretty funny and I would just keep laughing out loud for majority of the times. Here the ghosts in the hospital are used as a comic relief rather than as a horror angle. There was also a deeper side to things that showed that even dead or half-dead people are ultimately humans and all of us struggling in ways others might not know of. I did like the emphasis it placed on compassion and friendship for people we even choose to dislike. While the drama maintains its light tone throughout, the supernatural angle itself was very inconsistent. The drama lost a lot of direction in the later half which left much more to be desired. The ending wasn't the worst but it was very dragged and the mystery of Cha Young Min ever waking up stopped mattering to me by ep 13 or so.

CHARACTERIZATION:
One of the weak points of the drama is the writing itself and while it set up the first half wonderfully, a lot of subplots started going stale and forced very quickly following ep 10. There were a lot of repetitive scenes and some of the potential character development just didn't happen. Go Seung Tak's development was IMO one of the key aspects of the story but it was done very half-assedly. Cha Young Min's plot was mostly fine but the strong bro vibe I felt between him and Seung Tak was quite weak in the later half. Other than that the female characters served little to no purpose sadly. The supporting cast of ghosts was quite okay but they got more screentime than I thought they deserved. There were few brief episodic cases which I found to be fine. The baddies in the plot seemed unnecessary and very unconvincing to me most of the times.

CAST:
I thought Rain and Kim Bum were well-casted and I also enjoyed Sung Dong Il's performance in the drama. I really think comedy is Rain's strenghts when he acts. While neither of the main male leads are strong as actors, they were fine enough for me to continue watching. Uee and Son Na Eun's characters didn't have much impact on the drama but I thought they did alright. Na Eun has improved a lot from her previous roles. I liked the supporting cast who played the ghosts and their emotions were very much believable to me.

OST:
It was alright. Not many memorable tracks for me from this drama.

OVERALL:
I recommend to watch this drama without much expectation because the comedy is really well done. While the plot itself makes no sense most of the times, it was still a light-hearted drama to watch in one's free time. It had the potential to be much better but alas it missed its marks in many areas. I don't regret watching this and did enjoy some moments from even the worst episodes.