Fantasy and history will meet. Person and person will meet. Person and heaven will meet.
Faith (신의; Sinui; also called The Great Doctor in some Western translations) is a Korean fantasy/historical/medical 24 episode series aired by SBS from August 13 to October 30, 2012. It stars Kim Hee-sun and Lee Min-ho.
Yoon Eun-soo is a struggling surgeon who left general surgery for the prestige of plastic surgery. Choi Young is the General for the Wooldachi (Royal Guard). He is tasked by the King to get a Doctor from the Heavens to save the Queen of Goryeo (Korean Dynasty). Choi Young travels to modern day Seoul, finds his way to Gangnam, and then runs into Yoon Eun-soo.
The series can be watched on Viki
with English subtitles.
Faith contains examples of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – History: Quite a few but, the most obvious one is that several of the characters (including the historical ones) have some kind of elemental power, like lightning, fire or ice.
- Amazon Brigade: Queen Nogook's has an all-female bodyguard squad, presumably to protect her virtue.
- Badass Crew: Plenty of them! You have the Woodalchi, in charge of the protection of the Royal Couple, the Suribang that have all the street connections and, of course, the Big Bad's crew.
- Big Eater: Eun Soo. At one point, Choi Young susses that despite being held hostage she is being treated well: she didn't complain about the food.
- Bodyguard Crush: Most of the Woodalchi have a soft spot for Eun Soo, who also cares a great deal about them, but this applies especially with her and Choi Young, with whom she has a pretty romantic relationship almost from the beginning.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Choi Young sees no problem with slashing open the throat of an innocent guard as a human guinea pig to see if Eun Soo can save him.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?:
- The King often asks himself this, especially in the earlier episodes when the rest of the characters would go against his express wishes and commands, implying that he doesn't know what he's doing nor that they care much for what he thinks.
- The Chief Advisor Jo Il Shi feels this way when the King starts listening more and more to Choi Young and starts leaving him to the side and out of the loop. Prince Deok Heung takes advantage of this to have Jo Il Shi help him perform a coup.
- Establishing Character Moment: Used for both the leads in the tag of the first episode.
- Eun Soo's scene sets up her character as energetic, slightly ditzy, and unlucky in love.
- Choi Young shows his fighting skills, apathy, leadership style, and sense of humor.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: A lot of the times when they see one of the good guys do something entirely selfless and sacrificial the Big Bad and his crew are stumped and try to rationalise using an explanation that fits their motives.
- Evil Is One Big, Happy Family: Surprisingly yes - while Ki Chul can be rather dismissive, he cares to an extent about his protegés and even refers to them as his children or siblings.
- Evil Is Hammy: Ki Chul is magnificently over the top. Also Jo Il Shin whenever he feels offended or tries to justify himself, which happens ... too often.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Eun Soo tells Prince Ki Chul to "F**k you. Go to hell." in English. He later gets sick and this creates a rumor that she has the power to literally curse people. It comes in handy when she gets three armed men to back off while she treats a patient by making a cross with her fingers and saying "Red Cross! Red Cross!" in English.
- Fortune Teller: In the present, Eun Soo went to one to see where and when she could find a rich man that would fund her clinic. The fortune teller tells her that her true love will come from the past, confusing Eun Soo.
- Fun Personified: Eun Soo is viewed as this by most everyone around her due to her outbursts, antics and quirks that are seen as refreshing and amusing.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Played straight with both Choi Young, when he comes to the future, and Eun Soo, who is brought to the past - of course Hilarity Ensues during their experiences.
- Historical Domain Character: The series takes place in what would be the last years of the Goryeo period so many characters that appear were relevant to it.
- Historical Fantasy: Besides the obvious time travel, several characters have Elemental Powers.
- I Gave My Word: Choi Young swears on his honor that he'll return Eun Soo to her time after she finishes saving the Queen. Sadly, it doesn't happen.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the second episode, after being prevented from going through the portal, Eun Soo takes Choi Young's sword and goes to stab him, furious that he broke his promise to her. Thing is, she never expected him to actually stand there and take the blow or even help her plunge the sword deeper. Yikes.
- Leave The Two Love Birds Alone:
- The entire palace does this when the King and Queen finally get to sleep with each other.
- Inverted several times with Choi Young, Eun Soo, and the Woodalchi. Choi Young generally has to chase his widely grinning sidekicks away whenever he wants some alone time with Eun Soo.
- Loophole Abuse: Eun Soo needs to be somewhere where she can be protected, but politics mean that the King can't do so directly. So she enlists in the Woodalchi.
- Mercy Kill: Choi Young is forced to kill the teenage former king after he is in turn forced to take poison.
- Not Good with Rejection: Dear Lord, Ki Chul has some serious issues with this. At first, he'll play "nice" to gain the heart (loyalty) of those he's interested in but the moment he perceives even a hint of rejection, he'll put them through hell on Earth.
- One-Man Army: Choi Young, full stop. He singlehandedly raides Ki Chul's palace to save Eun Soo, fights off an army of mooks with minimal injury to his person and does it immediately after waking up from a coma.
- Perfectly Arranged Marriage: They had a rocky start but with time King Gongmin and Queen No Gook manage to have a rather stable and happy relationship.
- Poison Is Evil: Prince Deok Heung is very fond of poison. Jang Bin outright states that no one who uses a poison can be trusted.
- The Promise: Choi Young makes one to Eun Soo, assuring her that he will take her back to her time. Life (and enemies) got in the way.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something:
- The Royal Couple stumbles along the way at the beginning until Character Development set in and then they begin acting outside the wishes of the Yuan Empire.
- Ki Chul may be a villain but he's also a Prince and while he mostly acts in self-interest, he's never idle.
- Screw Destiny: Choi Young reacts to meeting the boy that will one day become the next king and execute him by shrugging and explaining that he'll take life as it comes.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Played with. Eun Soo, at the beginning, wants to find a rich man, granted one that would be nice enough to fund her, would let her break the engagement (if they had one) and pay him back later on.
- Standard Female Grab Area: Many, many times. The more combat capable women can shrug it off, but Eun Soo is a doctor sworn to do no harm.
- Stepford Smiler: Eun Soo always keeps on smiling and joking around in public, not wanting to let others see how much the events are affecting her.
- Stable Time Loop: Eun Soo saves several key historical figures that would go on to give foundation to the Korea we know.
- Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: Eun Soo threatens suicide at one point to stop Ki Chul from killing Choi Young. She points out that, being a surgeon, she's going to be able to kill herself very quickly.
- Tell Him I'm Not Speaking to Him: In the seventh episode, Queen Nogook and King Gongmin are fighting, snarking at one another at every turn and it gets to the point where they are sitting for dinner with Doctor Jang Bin standing in the middle, still snarking at each other indirectly and not really letting the good doc relay the messages.
- The Evil Prince: Prince Ki Chul and Prince Deok Heung.
- The Medic: Eun Soo fills this role, even being named the High Doctor of the palace and shares the role with Jang Bin.
- Trauma Conga Line: A lot of the characters, but special mention goes to Eun Soo and Choi Young who go through hell of a lot and have little to no time to be happy.
- Ungrateful Bastard:
- Although Choi Young risks his safety and life to save and protect them, the scholars aren't exactly helpful or caring whenever someone tries to sabotage him.
- Jo Il Shin, one of the king's vassal, sees Gongmin as this because he listens to and protects Choi Young, giving the younger man more status and respect.
- Villainous Crush: Prince Ki Chul, big time and, to a lesser degree, Prince Deok Heung for Eun Soo. Hwa Soo In also shows in several occasions interest in Choi Young.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Subverted. The mouse becomes more of a Chekhov's Gun when Choi Young uses it to fake a suicide attempt.
