Drama: Bull Doctor ep01

* The links to enlarging pictures got messed up for some of them and I won't be able to fix them unfortunately.

Plot:
Esumi’s character Tamami is the “bull doctor” of the show’s title, which comes from the word “bulldozer.” Ignoring any opposition from the people around her, she uses any means necessary to determine the truth behind the deaths of the bodies she examines. Because of her personality, she is constantly at odds with both Ishihara and Inagaki’s characters.
Credit: DramaWiki

Cast:
Esumi Makiko, Ishihara Satomi, Inagaki Goro, Shida Mirai, TOM, Ohno Takuro, Sakura, Ikeda Narushi, Anan Kenji, Ichikawa Kamejiro, Ichige Yoshie, Kohinata Fumiyo

Official Site: NTV - Bull Doctor

Comments:
The drama starts off in a lecture hall of Jyoto University for students of Forensic Medicine.  This is when we first see Takeda Mia (Shida Mirai) and Takeda Nobuo (Kohinata Fumiyo).  Nobuo is a professor at the school teaching about Forensic Medicine while his daughter, Mia, is a first year student.  When I read character descriptions, I didn't put 2-and-2 together that Shida was going to play a college student.  I think she comes off fairly young still, until I realized she IS 18 in real life.  Moving on, Nobuo introduces the character Odate Tamami (Esumi Makiko) as a new professor who is coming from the US.

We see her riding her bike to the University when a man jogging nearly collides with her.  He falls to the floor grabbing his chest and is taken to the hospital via ambulance.

Getting to the hospital, we see Kamatsuda Chika (Ishihara Satomi), an investigator for the police, get out of her squad car and into the hospital where she meets Tamami.  They exchange a few friendly words and head off into the hospitals mortuary.  Their first meeting was kind of awkward because it looked like Chika was trying hard to just get through her job.  It didn't really seem like she had any intentions to get along with Tamami in the first place.

Already we're getting that stubbornness that Tamami exhibits when she doesn't believe that Akai-san's death was just a heart attack.  While there aren't any bruises, cuts, wounds or anything that would indicate physical damage, she just doesn't believe that it was a heart attack that killed him.  When a thorough examination isnt permitted for her and refuses to just let it go, Chika heads into the faculty room calling for Nakura Junnosuke (Inagaki Goro) who is an assistant to the head of the department, i believe.  Nakura is quick to call the death a heart attack and puts an end to the matter.

 

(First meeting with Tamami, she still hadn't shown up to meet her colleagues yet either)

 While in the mortuary, Chika gets called to a different scene to investigate.  This scene looks like a murder.  There was head trauma to the male and they found sleeping pills in the bedroom.  This body versus Akai-san's body was sent to the examiners.  Tamami was the lead Forsensic pathologist and everyone in the room was shocked at the way she does her examinations (she didn't bow her head before starting procedure).  It already seemed like it'd be a homicide case, but of course, Tamami wasn't having it and did not declare it was homicide while Chika did.

*From here I'm going to bullet some points to shorten this post, and also because I dont have screencaps for them everything.  Caps will be placed where needed.*
- Chika vents her frustrations and concerns to her boyfriend who turns out to be Nakura.  Really.
- Chika interrogates Taguchi Yoshimo over the murder of her husband.  She thinks she has the murder weapon.
- Tamami tries to see if the murder weapon fits the wound, but doesn't. Chika tries to make it fit.
- Frusted Chika goes to calligraphy class and meets Odate Kousuke, who right now, doesn't know that's Tamami's son.  This scene was really cute though.  They showed off their inky hands and at first it seemed like Chika was just showing off her inky hands as like "im an idiot" kind of way, but when I rewatched that scene, it seemed she genuinely showed them off to say that her and Kousuke are alike

- One last look at the Taguchi household trying to find any chance of a murder weapon, Tamami, Chika and Mia (who happened to tag along) meet the Taguchi families daughter who's trying to clear her mother's name.  From what I've seen so far, Mia is very ambitious to become a great forensics doctor, like her father, so ends up tagging a long to the scene of the crimes or during examinations with Tamami.  I see this as a trend for the series.
- They find out that the father and mother, even though tended to fight, were actually trying to find a way to reconcile.  Because their anniversary was coming up, they wanted to do something special for each other in secret.  The father actually passed away because he slipped and hit his head on a cinder block and lost a lot of blood pressure to the brain when he fell asleep.  This was a really touching scene and I did get teary eyed.  I was just lucky to be home alone at this time haha.

(The scrapbook the father was making)

So in the end, still not convinced that the Akai-san had died from a heart attack, Chika went on a stake out and ended up overhearing some stuff between Akai-san's wife and a friend of hers.  Tamami also had found something out doing her own investigation and in the end, it turns out Akai-san was poisoned by his wife after taking a "vitamin capsule".

Before we find out that they ruled Akai-san's death as a homicide, we get Tamami's monologue about why she became a forensics doctor.  It's really inspiring, at least to me, on why she changed from the emergency to forensics which is that life just doesnt end at death. She wants to know why it happened.  As she says, she can't pray for the dead until she finds out why.  It's really touching... it reminds me the other drama that Ishihara Satomi was in about forensics which was "Voice."  Forensic doctors are the voice for the dead, they want to know why it happened and let them rest in peace.

Ok so,
Strange, I'm not much of a fan of doctor dramas, shows, movies, etc, but I tend to like Forensic and Forensic Pathology ones. It's most likely because I major in microbio, so a lot of things that have to do with microcultures and discovering reasons why certain things happen appeal to me.

The story so far is keeping me interested.  I thought Bull Doctor would be a drama I'd drop after the first episode, but it seems interesting enough to keep going, even without a cliffhanger from the first episode. I don't see much character chemistry yet, but it is only the first episode and we havent gotten a chance to see character development yet. This is the first time I'm seeing Esumi Makiko in anything so I wasn't sure what kind of acting style she has. To be honest, I'm not really impressed yet. Her stubborness comes across poorly in acting like you know she's acting stubborn, but she really shines when she smiles. I really liked the way she was with her son at the end of the episode, it's really precious.

I've seen plenty of dramas with Ishihara Satomi (which is one reason why I picked up this drama).  I have a love/hate relationship to this girl, I really do.  Some roles where she has to play a serious character are usually the ones I tend to hate because her acting gets a bit overdramatic and fake. Going through the first episode, I thought it was gonna start going that route, but she didn't overact this time around and delivered well.

I'm ready to watch the next episode just to see where things go after this episode. There's more to this drama than having the two leads butting heads, but the other characters need to unfold their backstories as well.