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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Emergency Couple" Episode 12

So I...guess this is just a romantic comedy now? That's about the only way I can interpret the events of this episode. Chang-min appears to have just about completely forgotten the events that led up to his divorce. Jin-hee seems to have some vague memory of what happened, and is certainly putting up more resistance to the idea. But no matter how I try to cut it, "Emergency Couple" is definitely trying to make a case that these two works together as a couple.

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It's effective, kind of, if I ignore everything else that's happened up until this point. Which is easy enough to do, given how much I disliked those early episodes. In broad strokes "Emergency Couple" is now reasonably cute and funny. There's a colorful cast of characters, relatively little conflict, and everyone's generally learning about the wonders of modern medicine. So as a whole the production is light and fluffy.

On the flip side it's also not terribly memorable. I'm struggling trying to remember whether any actual important plot stuff happened. There's build-up, sure, but it's not terribly exciting. I still like Yong-gyoo, and his scenes are cute, but there's not that much of them. The drama's attitude toward it's supporting cast is very cavalier and casual here. Their small mild adventures lack any kind of real presence in the service of the bigger romantic storyline.

Still, some of the more obnoxious shackles of the storyline have finally come undone. Chang-min comes clean about having been divorced in the past, and about his attraction to Jin-hee. It's nice to have all the characters on the same page of the storyline here. But it's Still Strange that there's general sense of non-interference, like everyone's going to just step aside and let whatever's going to happen happen.

It makes for light, passable entertainment, but I'm not sure it would work that well if the previous episodes hadn't done such a good job making me wish that this drama would never attempt to do outrageous bombastic conflict ever again. And obviously, we're not going to float around in this lovey-dovey haze forever. Certain people in Chang-min's life are not going to be happy with his newfound romantic inclinations. Perhaps that's the point? That Chang-min is so completely in love that he's compeltely detached from reality, and the fact that his actions will have consequences? Maybe. But I need to see more evidence of this narrative theme before I'm persuaded "Emergency Couple" actually has a point.

Review by William Schwartz

"Emergency Couple" is directed by Kim Cheol-gyoo, written by Choi Yoon-jung and features Song Ji-hyo, Choi Jin-hyuk, Lee Pil-mo, Choi Yeo-jin and Clara.

 

 

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