I chose to study Medicine last minute, and just before starting, I wanted to know how it would feel to be a doctor. I had a couple of friends who were medical students already and I still had the contacts of some of the doctors on my multiple trips to the hospital.
So, I did the most logical thing I could think of; I watched dozens of episodes of different medical series. And to those who said I wasted my life watching them, take a good look at me now!
I’ll walk you through my experience with them and probably give you one or two suggestions on the way.
- Code Black
Dubbed the most medically accurate. If Grey’s was written by the people of Hollywood with inputs from doctors, Code Black was written by doctors with the minutest of inputs from Hollywood.
If you’re looking to learn anything that’ll help you with the Medical Boards, you should probably watch this series. The storytelling is also quite decent.
I watched every episode in this series and enjoyed every bit of it. Well, that was until it was cut off abruptly in the third season. It’s still a good watch though.
- Grey’s Anatomy
This has to be the first series that comes to your mind when thinking about this genre of film. It’s been running for about 17 seasons now and I think it’s high time Shonda thought of ending this thing.
Personally, I found it really hard to watch beyond the third or fourth season. The storyline was great; character development, awesome but you see sometimes Hollywood might just want to tone down the sex and romantic madness.
Sometimes I catch myself watching hours of YouTube clips from the seasons with the original cast members. You can take the man out of Grey but you can’t take the Grey out of the man (or some other random thing your favourite Instagrammer said the other day)
Grey’s is a solid 8/10 in my books
- The Resident
No, I won’t give you the plot, not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t need to. Think of a generic medical series and this is it! Nothing out of the ordinary drama you’d expect in Hollywood.
If you like a plain old drama with some excitement here and there, this is your series.
Although, to be fair, the way the series manages to zoom into the lives of each of the characters is actually quite interesting. We don’t get to see one character over and over again until we start to hate them for just being there. Good stuff!
One episode from the series that I really disliked was S2E15. One of the characters who was supposed to be a medical doctor from Nigeria made reference to Sokoto being in the Eastern Part of Nigeria.
Call me petty but I heard what I heard.
Speaking of overuse of sex and romance, this would come second on my list.
- Scrubs
If you’re a fan of good comedy, welcome to the best series you’d ever watch as a medical student. It follows the life of John “JD” Dorian (played incredibly well by Zach Braff) and his friend Turk as they navigate through life as interns and best friends.
The way the show manages to deal with serious issues in lighthearted yet heartfelt ways is beyond me. Fantastic writing on Scrubs!
If you decide to watch the show, remember season 9 never existed.
Every fan of the show knows that the show ended in Season 8. That 9th season was unnecessary, the finale of the 8th season was sufficient enough
- New Amsterdam
For some reason, I love series with tragic twists.
I believe one of the signs of good writing and acting is the ability to communicate emotions like grief, sadness, anger. These are not regular everyday feelings and the ability to evoke that same feeling in your audience is just magical.
If there was one to recommend, this would be it!
Honourable Mentions:
The Good Doctor: I tried watching some time ago but I didn’t like the first scene. It had too much of this hero-esque theme to it.
As it turns out, I was wrong and there was much more to it than what my close-minded self thought then. I hope to binge-watch this in the nearest future.
Golden Nugget:
Who says you need to learn metabolic pathways when you have thousands of hours of medical series to watch
