Poong The Joseon Psychiatrist Season 2 Review – A wonderful historical healing drama

Episode Guide

Episode 1 -| Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 2 -| Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 3 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 4 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 5 -| Review Score – 4/5
Episode 6 -| Review Score – 4/5
Episode 7 -| Review Score – 3/5
Episode 8 -| Review Score – 4/5
Episode 9 -| Review Score – 3.5/5
Episode 10 -| Review Score – 4/5

Poong The Joseon Psychiatrist is a fun historical K-drama (sageuk) with rom-com elements. Season 1 focused on Poong losing his status as a royal physician as the King dies at his hands. He moves to Sorak where he meets the brash local doctor Gye, his bickering but friendly staff and the headstrong widow Eun-woo. As they get together to treat patients, they also attempt to solve the underlying mystery of who actually killed the King.

With the K-drama more or less being episodic in nature, season 2 is similarly lighthearted and escapes the gradual weighing down that sageuk plots suffer through after the first half of the story is complete. In season 2, Poong and Eun-woo are separated just as they confess their love for each other as the young widow’s family is assigned to Heuksan Island.

Meanwhile, Poong and Gyesoo move to the capital as the King starts favouring him again. This, as usual, irks the Royal Clinic who are worried they might get replaced by village hicks. But they need to work together after the court ladies start falling sick after seeing the ghost of the dead Minister Cho who was the antagonist in season 1.

Season 2 prefers to introduce and resolve all new problems in a couple of episodes allowing viewers to be simply interested in watching how our favourite characters deal with them. Sure, we have the main obstacle of Governor Ahn trying to take down Gyesoo with the help of Gwang-il but it does not take away from the incidental storytelling as this drama deals with the ghost’s curse, an angry Princess, the washerwoman with a skin rash, Ip-boon’s family, the concubine vs the wife, and so on and so forth.

All of the Gyesoo characters get their time to shine and develop. If season 1 was for Jang-goon and Granny, we get to see more of Nam-hae, Ip-boon and Man-bok this season.

This is why for those who want, viewers can just watch season 2 of Poong The Joseon Psychiatrist. It already gives us enough exposition of what happens in season 1 so viewers don’t miss out on the storyline and character arcs. We know that Poong lost his acupuncture skills because of the trauma of the King’s death and that while he and Eun-woo have feelings for each other, they cannot do anything as a widow cannot remarry.

However, there is no annoying love triangle like the usual K-drama that will have you frustrated; no silly obstacles to tear the couple apart. We get a nice budding romance as Poong and Eun-woo go about solving cases and treating patients. There is no melodrama that rom-coms tend to find themselves in as they forget the very premise as seen in some recent K-dramas that shall remain anonymous.

If we absolutely had to pick at the drama, it would probably be the unbalanced importance of the Gyesoo Staff to the main plot but that is also forgivable if we keep in mind each character’s own storyline that we get over the course of two seasons. Sure, the villains in season 2 are not as villainous as in season 1 and more like annoying hindrances, but we have to remember, it is not a murder mystery or a thriller suspense, but a laidback and light show.

Poong The Joseon Psychiatrist season 2 is the perfect healing drama set in the Joseon era. For those who want something light when they are down and with a good message about being true to one’s self, never giving up, and the importance of friendship and love, this manages to fit all of that in while giving us comedy, mystery and romance.

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