Healing Hands I - why I liked it, mentions HH 2

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I admit that sometimes I'm a strange fish.  :) I actually like HH1 more than ER.  Is HH1 unrealistic?  Absolutely.  But is ER unrealistic?  Absolutely.  It's television, most everything that is called a drama is unrealistic.  I think the Brits make some of the most realistic dramas for tv but hey, they aren't always exciting and event filled etc. 

I find that I don't particularly like US hospital dramas or even cop shows these days.  They are always full of angst... unhappy people with unhappy pasts, presents and futures.  They are mostly pessimistic and even their optimism is often tinged with sadness and a feeling of inevitablity.  And often times, the series just keeps going on and on and on and on till it gets cancelled and by that time it's old and boring.

I loved HH1 not because the storylines were so original or the production values so high.  I loved it because to me it was a series that had similar goals with Lost and Found (Kelly Chen, Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Cest La Vie Mon Cherie (Anita Yuen, Lau Ching Wan.)  It's not living and dying that matters in these shows, it's how you live that matters.  It's the affirmation of life, love, friendships, relationships etc that I loved.

I don't think the scriptwriter/producer wanted us to treat HH1 like a regular soap.  Just check out some of the dialogue.  There seem to be more quotable quotes in HH1 alone then there are in 10 years of TVB dramas put together.  Somehow there seems to be more of a personal touch to HH1 then many series out there (including US series.)  I wonder if the writer actually feels this way about life.

There is a certain optimism in HH1, L&F and CLVMC that I find absent in a lot of American programming these days.

I also didn't find the doctors in HH1 annoying.  I liked most of them.  They were rather endearingly flawed characters and I loved the way they interacted with each other ala File of Justice.  But I know this is a major bias on my part because I loved FOJ.

HH2, however, is a different story.  The absent or reduced roles of the bulk of the main cast from HH1 in HH2 means a loss of a lot of the charm that HH1 had.  With the change in producer, the focus also shifted and a lot of that optimism is lost and HH2 feels like just another soap to me.

enjoy