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[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Emergency Couple" Episode 3

...And so we get right into the sexual tension. Honestly this storyline development is a fairly annoying one. Remember that until the last episode, none of these characters had ever met each other in a working environment before. And for the most part no one did much work in that second episode either. We're still very much in the early phase of the drama where people are still feeling each other out.

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And the immediate conclusion we get about why Jin-hee works so hard to save Chang-min's life is that she likes him. Not that Jin-hee wants to be a doctor because she's really determined to save peoples' lives, not because it was technically her fault that Chang-min's life was in danger in the first place. No, it must be because of a romantic interest. Yes, yes, we, in the audience, know this is a probable factor in her attitude. But there's almost no reason for the other characters to jump to that assumption when for all they know Jin-hee and Chang-min are strangers.

It's unclear to me what the drama's trying to do right now. Is this supposed to be a romance? If so the set-up's rather sudden. We still haven't gotten anything from either Jin-hee or Chang-min that could reasonably be described as a positive personality trait. I'm having difficult finding much humor in the proceedings for the same reason. I can't laugh with the leads, because I don't like them. But I can't laugh at them either because they're not sociopathic.

There are some basic questions I'd really like resolved here. Like why Jin-hee and Chang-min, independently of each other, both decided to become doctors in the intervening six years. That's a difficult profession to get into. I could ask that question of any character really. Aside from being background noise, the fact that these characters are doctors working in a hospital really seems kind of irrelevant outside from the odd random trope. The cliffhanger was pretty predictable the minute they made the decision to go to another wing of the hospital.

But perhaps I'm being a bit too cynical and mean here. The drama isn't that cliched, nor is that unpleasant to watch. The problem for me right now is that I just don't see any point to it. The humor's not working for me and it's not at all clear to me what message the drama is trying to send out. It looks nice enough, I suppose, there's just not much of a hook here.

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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