EMERGENCY COUPLE EPISODE 2

Emergency Couple is a drama about a divorced couple forced together by bizarre coincidence.

***WARNING: SPOILERS***

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RECAP:

The episode begins with "to him/her love is..." vignettes we saw in the trailer. Jin Hee remembers scenes from the last episode while in the shower, and Chang Min also cannot believe that his hated ex-wife is working with him. As she berates herself for getting drunk overnight and showing up to her workplace the way she did (nearly DoA in an ambulance), she is informed the Chief wants to see her.

She gets reamed by the boss, Dr. Guk, who extracts a recommendation from her as to what do about a patient, then fires her. She begs for her job back, and he vows that if she gets on his nerves again, she will be fired.

Jin Hee's co-interns engage in back-fence talk about her tumultuous arrival at the hospital. When she arrives where the other interns are, her ex drags her into a stairwell and they argue about who will stay and who will leave. Then they are summoned to duty. She watches the blur of activity around her for a moment, then she is pulled into action.

As the doctor barks orders, he is sent out to analyze the patient's blood. He sees both his ex and his mother approaching in a hallway and hides his ex in a supply closet. Apparently he is afraid he'll be cut off again if his family sees him working at the hospital with her. She yells at him and throws a container of urine (grabbed from a cart) in his face. As he cleans up, his mother rings him on the phone, reminding him about the blind date he has. After he washes up, he reports back, only to be yelled at by Dr. Guk and sent out for fresh results.

He gossips with his coworkers at lunch, who decide that she either needs to get her act together, or go. He vows to make her quit. A confrontation happens in the cafeteria line between Reum, the pretty intern Chang Min is flirting with, and his ex-wife. Reum is concerned Jin Hee will bring the class grade down.

Chang Min goes to Dr. Guk, and tries to get his ex transferred to a different department. Not only is his request denied, but the Chief tells him to take her under his wing and teach her.

On the subway ride home, Jin Hee reflects on the demoralizing words she's heard from her husband. When she arrives home, she is greeted by her family, who throw her a congratulatory party. As she still has doubts about her ability, this makes her uncomfortable.

In the sauna, Chang Min's mother calls the family together to show them who's boss, and that she intends to marry off Chang Min and erase the other marriage from history.

The next scene takes us back to the hospital, where the interns are learning the ropes.� Chang Min attends to a woman complaining of a stomach ache. Jin Hee assists Dr. Guk as he inserts a chest tube in one patient and performs CPR on another. Chang Min is slowly seen as incompetent, and Jin Hee is impressing Dr. Guk. Suddenly the blood pressure on the chest tube patient drops drastically, and the woman complaining of stomach pains bursts into the room and performs impromptu surgery. It turns out she is a doctor, too, and she and Guk know each other. She was on a mission from the hospital director to pretend to be a patient and check how the ER was working. Her official assignment is to help out in the ER to focus on external injuries. She starts the next day.

They bring in a man who tried to bash his head in against a wall, trying to kill himself over a breakup and a security guard assaulted by him. The suicidal man is uncooperative, and the guard has his gunbelt removed and placed underneath the bed. The suicidal man grabs the gun and fires it in the air before demanding that his girlfriend be brought to him. He takes Chang Min hostage, and Dr. Guk tries to distract him while Jin Hee sneaks up behind him with the defibrillator and shocks him with the paddles ("don't tase me bro!") and Chang Min is out cold as well, having the shock administered through contact with the gunman.

***End Spoilers***

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I liked this episode a lot more than the last. There was a kind of chemistry among even the minor characters which make you feel as if they're a team. Jin Hee and Chang Min are not so annoying here, and you get a sense of what it's like in a hospital setting.

This show appears to have moved solidly into dramedy territory, and I like where it's going. Eminently watchable, skillful transitions between scenes, and tension add to the experience.

The rundown from the first episode is done skillfully, with her remembering last episode in the shower and being frustrated about it. So, rather than watching scenes we've seen before, we have something new to watch interspersed with the old. It adds dimension to the rehash, and is something I've not seen done often before, if at all. Kudos to the director for using this as a plot device.

Having had a more pleasant experience with this episode than the last, I can definitely endorse this.

The show airs Fridays and Saturdays on KBS and DramaFever.

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