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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Emergency Couple" Episode 5

I really hope "Emergency Couple" just up and ditches the whole Jin-hee and Chang-min are pretending to be complete strangers angle. The misunderstandings it creates among their co-workers are much worse than whatever benefits they think they're reaping by not having to acknowledge each other publically. And the downsides of this should be really obvious by now, given how much time they have to spend negotiating with each other in private over random trivialities.

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What's most puzzling to me about this drama is how little time anyone spends actually doing their job. I don't think either Jin-hee or Chang-min have had anything yet that we could reasonably call a normal patient. It's always either a crisis situation or something personal, and this episode is no different. I get the impression that Jin-hee is trying to prove some sort of moral point here. But what that point is I have no idea- of all the times to assert herself against Chang-min's objections this has to be the most inexplicable.

The comedy as well remains ambiguous. The drama appears to be going for humor but the direction is of such poor quality that finding actually humor in these scenes is elusive, and it seems like we're supposed to be taking them seriously. Honestly I'm not sure- was Jin-hee's dream sequence supposed to be scary? That was the closest I could get to an emotional reaction there. And as for the detective music...

Maybe it's not just the direction. The music selection too continues to be odd, and this is fairly reflective of the drama's general lack of clear purpose. I have absolutely no idea what "Emergency Couple" is trying to do. Even in the interior of this one episode, we start out with a big hullabaloo about medical ethics, and I guess we're just supposed to ignore that by the end these characters are once again acting in a way that could easily result in serious censure.

About the only positive thing I can say here is that we've rehabilitated Cheon-soo's mother somewhat. Given the situation she finds herself in, I can actually understand pretty well why the woman suddenly freaks out. Less clear is why she doesn't just expose this drama's unnecessary secret and save us all a lot of trouble. In any event I'm grateful to have a character I can finally sympathize with, even if that could evaporate in a hurry. Just have to stay hopeful, I suppose.

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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