The secret lives of a Joseon acupuncturist and a modern-day surgeon

by tipsymocha

Ha, I have high hopes for this show. We’ve got two new teasers for the upcoming time-slip medical comedy Live Up to Your Name and I can’t wait to see Kim Nam-gil (Pandora) in action as the irreverent, mischievous Heo Im who gets thrown into present-day Seoul. There, he’ll meet Kim Ah-joong’s (Wanted) surgeon character Choi Yeon-kyung, who hilariously mistakes him for a mental patient.

The first teaser isn’t really relevant to the plot at all, but it does give off a cool summer vibe, and I hope that light touch is indicative of the show’s actual tone. Kim Nam-gil and Kim Ah-joong strut their stuff in their medical uniforms, him in his Joseon garb and her wearing a doctor’s coat. They get their model poses on as the show’s title appears in the sky. Kim Nam-gil’s mad cackle at the end is hilarious.

We get a closer look at the two medics as they go about their duties in the second teaser, with Kim Nam-gil sticking needles into his patients with precision and intense concentration, and Kim Ah-joong in the operating room, avoiding spurts of blood. However, once off-duty, our heroine relieves stress by letting it all out on the dance floor, and I love that she can hold her own when she’s approached by a couple of sleazy guys at the club, crotch-grab and all. Our Joseon hero, who should be providing his services for free as a member of the Hyeminseo, has his own nightly escapades moonlighting as an acupuncturist-for-hire and amasses a small fortune catering to the rich and privileged: “How could I ask that you receive treatment in such an undignified place, among lowly commoners? But of course, I should serve you separately, as hardworking officials of the government!”

Heo Im somehow gets caught up in some palace politics when he’s called in to treat the king, and later gets an arrow to the chest. He falls over a bridge and wakes up in a stream right in the middle of downtown Seoul. He’s taken to a hospital in an ambulance with an unconscious Yeon-kyung, and when asked, replies that he is her boyfriend, lol. His line delivery is pretty funny because he’s using sageuk diction but says the modern slang word for “boyfriend.” Also, no wonder he’s taken for a mental patient, given his strange hair-twirling in one scene, and the lion-mane mop he has for hair in the next. “Could you do something about that hair?” Heh.

But comedy and club-hopping aside, they both take their professions and its importance seriously: We see a sick, young girl close her eyes in someone’s arms as Heo Im asks, “Do you know when it is most difficult? When you lose someone you wanted to save.” Yeon-kyung goes, “You better keep that promise, to save them.” The two doctors face each other as Heo Im muses that he has arrived in a world with female medics. Well, you sure aren’t in Kansas Joseon anymore, Dorothy.

Live Up to Your Name will start its run on August 12, in tvN’s Saturday-Sunday slot.

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