The Good Doctor goes unexpectedly viral with ‘I am a surgeon’ meme
If you’ve been on social media over the past few days, you’ve probably seen an incandescent doctor (played by Freddie Highmore) yelling that he is a surgeon while an impassive Dr. Jackson Han (played by Daniel Dae Hyun Kim) watches from his desk. It’s a fascinating few seconds of television, especially when it’s been divorced of all context, then remixed, amplified, and snipped into smaller memes. Where did this even come from?
The Good Doctor is a show originally adapted from the South Korean drama Good Doctor, and it aired in the United States on ABC for six seasons, recently confirmed for a seventh season and potentially set to get a spinoff. The show is also available to stream on Hulu. The main protagonist is Shaun Murphy, portrayed by Freddie Highmore, an autistic doctor.
To be more specific, he’s a surgeon.
pic.twitter.com/L6RcYJd9LZ
The clip of this scene, which has now circulated across numerous social media platforms, seems to have first been interpreted ironically on TikTok. Users initially posted it in full in late April; then it proliferated in a series of increasingly absurd edits, before making its way onto Twitter.
People aren’t sharing this clip because they’re amazed by Highmore’s intense performance or the quality of the script. The contrast between Dr. Murphy’s intensity and Dr. Han’s stoicism reads as patently absurd, especially taken out of context. The emotional explosion paired with the repetition and a completely unconvinced witness has become fodder for memes — ranging from people extending the logic to Young Sheldon or TikTokers layering the audio clip over video of maneuvers that require manual dexterity.
Surgeons Posting Their Ls pic.twitter.com/kXT5OejPVM
can't shake the mental image of
Read more on polygon.com
