[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Emergency Couple" Episode 15

I'm pretty sure that real hospitals have policies against ex-patients making repeat visits for social purposes. Especially if those ex-patients are bearing gifts, or trying to make administrative requests. Obviously, "Emergency Couple" is not dealing with a real hospital, but this disconnect between life and drama shows really badly in episodes like this. It establishes all too clearly that the drama is creating conflict artificially, and the ensuing outbursts are just painful to watch. Also it makes the poor baby cry. And just when I'd been admiring how good an actor that baby is, too.

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It's not all bad, I guess. Jin-hee and Chang-min's past relationship is now finally and without a doubt exposed in such a way that the characters can't possibly tiptoe around it anymore. I still question the need for the big dramatic blow-up, since this episode establishes pretty clearly that most of the named characters have already pieced together the essential information. The big dumb fight really was not necessary.

In other plot news, the married interns runs into an unexpected problem and, in stark contrast to every other personal matter in the drama, manage to blab about it almost immediately. The contrast would be funny, except I'm not even sure what these characters' names are. They've had almost no characterization or development up until this point. It's nice that the drama's given them something to do, at least. This might potentially go somewhere interesting.

But then again "Emergency Couple" has not been the best drama in terms of setting up future storylines. Chang-min's dad (another character whose name I'm not sure has ever actually been mentioned) ends up becoming the focal point of the episode's climax. He seems like a nice guy, and I'm curious why he's on such good terms with Jin-hee. I wonder whether she sees him as a kind of surrogate father figure, since her own dad is nowhere to be seen.

Mind, this is all just guesswork. "Emergency Couple" is not actually doing very much with these ideas, so the emotional resonance is pretty badly skewed. Indeed, I think most viewers will probably be more shocked and intrigued at the preview than anything that happens in the episode we acually just saw. I'm really hoping this drama isn't about Jin-hee and Chang-min falling in love again because they keep saving the lives of each others' family members, but that's about the only consistent narrative thrust I can find so far.

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.