The good doctor’s I’m a surgeon meme, explained

If you’ve been on social media for the past few days, chances are you’ve seen an incandescent doctor (played by Freddie Highmore) yelling that he’s 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 TV, especially when stripped of all context, then reshuffled, amplified, and chopped into smaller memes. Where did that come from anyway?

The good doctor is a show originally adapted from the South Korean drama good doctorand it aired on ABC in the US for six seasons, recently confirmed for a seventh season and potentially poised to get a spinoff. The show can also be streamed on Hulu. It stars Shaun Murphy, portrayed by Freddie Highmore, an autistic doctor.

More precisely, he is a surgeon.

The clip of this scene, which is now circulating on numerous social media platforms, initially appears to have been interpreted ironically on TikTok. user initially posted in full In late April; then it multiplied in a series of increasingly absurd editsbefore it finds its way to Twitter.

People don’t share this clip because they’re blown away 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 when taken out of context. The emotional blast coupled with the repetition and a completely unconvinced witness has become fodder for memes — of people stretching the logic Young Sheldon or TikTokers overlaying the audio clip over the video of maneuvers that require manual dexterity.

On a long enough timeline, each show will spawn a few intense clips that become meme canon for the show. Consider the case of A hill of treeswhere a dramatic plot related to organ donation was suddenly derailed when a guy tripped, the cooler was opened and A dog came up to him and ate the human heart that had fallen out. Alarming! In the case of The good doctorPeople take the scene and run around with it to create new memes that aren’t based in the show’s canon at all.

In perhaps the most absurd of settings, fans have even turned Highmore’s lines into memes about being a sturgeon.

The supervisor in the surgical scene, Dr. Han, has become a series antagonist and a meme himself, with fans declaring themselves “Hanpilled” and sharing their “Live Dr. Han Reactions. He ends up losing on the show. Spoiler alert for The good doctor, I think, but he tries to fire Shaun and ends up getting fired himself. Still, people love him.

Additional context from other clips on the show helps Dr. Hans Fall no further. He is transphobic, aggressive, cruel, and prone to explosive behavior. dr Han is the subject of memes fans like – despite being an idiot – and Dr. Murphy is the cringe surgeon.

In this day and age, anything is satisfied — even a 2017 ABC show. The meme may just spread fast, much like other jokes of this nature, but it’s a reminder that something doesn’t have to be new to create a viral sensation become. It just has to kick in at the right time and hit the right nerve.

The good doctor can be streamed on Hulu, but it remains to be seen if this running gag will have the kind of enduring appeal that others – like this installment – lack A hill of trees — kept it long after its series finale.