Emergency Couple: Episode 3

by suneedelight

[In the coming weeks, you’ll be seeing some new names popping up on Dramabeans, and we hope you’ll join us in welcoming them and their recaps. This process may involve a bit of shuffling around and tweaking as we get settled, but first off I’d like to introduce you to suneedelight, who will be teaming up with another new writer to pick up recaps for Emergency Couple. I know a lot of you are watching this show, so we hope you enjoy having it back on the recap schedule! –javabeans]

Hello everyone! suneedelight here taking a chance in recapping for Dramabeans. I want to thank javabeans and girlfriday for giving me this chance to take a go at recapping and I hope you all enjoy!

Character developments advance and our main duo start feeling a little more than hatred and annoyance for each other – perhaps maybe something resembling compassion. The tone of the drama is still a bit hard to pinpoint, but the story lines are unfolding with humor, and the ER drama is taking on a side role.

 
EPISODE 3 RECAP

We pick up from the last episode where a distraught, unstable patient is holding the emergency room (mainly Chang-min) hostage with a gun, demanding his girlfriend be brought to him. Jin-hee, who has brilliantly thought of shocking the patient with a defibrillator, probably didn’t think of the consequences this may have on Chang-min. She shocks the man, thus shocking Chang-min as well.

A stray bullet hits a bystander as well, causing mayhem in the E.R. With the hysterical patient down, the rest of the doctors rush to help Chang-min. Jin-hee is reasonably shaken up from the experience and tries to help with shaky hands and is pushed away by Chun-soo.

Chun-soo snaps at the interns to start CPR, which Jin-hee jumps into like a mad woman until Chun-soo demands they switch before she faints. Jin-hee realizes this will not do and starts mouth-to-mouth CPR on Chang-min who finally reacts.

Chun-soo rushes over to the gunshot patient and shockingly, doctors cannot find the bullet lodged where he was shot. As doctors revel in this odd fact, Chun-soo breaks down the facts and points out that the bullet could have traveled through his bloodstream.

When asking to check by ultrasound, the surgeon on duty rejects such a crazy thought, saying the odds of that happening are slim. Ji-hye steps in to vouch that this is a possibility and they check to find that indeed the bullet is on its way to the heart.

Jin-hee is beating herself up over her crazy yet life-saving act and Chun-soo finds her hitting herself in the head. He wonders out loud to her why one is trying so hard to save the other’s life, while one tried to kick the other out of the ward.

Chang-min wakes up and asks if he’s dead or has been shot, and is even more shocked to hear that it was Jin-hee who saved his life. The other interns compliment Jin-hee’s quick thinking while Chang-min grumbles and calls her an ignorant witch. Jin-hee comes to check on Chang-min who angrily gets up and demands her to follow him.

Instead of thanking her, he yells at her for trying to kill him and keeps calling her ignorant names, saying what kind of patient would trust her as a doctor when she didn’t even realize that a defibrillator could kill a person. They’re back to bickering, with Chang-min shamelessly saying he’d rather be shot. He’s stopped when the intern couple comes in and he turns his anger to the disgustingtons who won’t stop with the aegyo to each other. (Thank goodness! – I could barely stand it either!)

Yong-kyu (Chang-min’s intern friend) comes to talk to Chang-min about how Jin-hee was so adamant on saving his life, which causes him to wonder if Jin-hee has a crush on Chang-min. Chang-min looks surprised at hearing that she worked so hard to save him and takes a deep sigh.

Jin-hee’s mother is in the middle of stopping authorities from taking a massage machine out of her store that requires a doctor’s license to have. She spots Jin-hee and demands her to take out her doctor ID and luckily she gets to keep the machine and let the whole neighborhood know her daughter is a doctor.

Jin-hee’s mom and her friend work on giving Jin-hee a stone massage (which truthfully looks more painful than relaxing) and they get to talking about a hopeful future with Jin-hee and opening a big dermatologist’s office in Gangnam.

Jin-hee’s day has her wondering if she should just quit the hospital and help out her mom at the store with her doctor’s license. Her mom rightfully yells that she spent the last 6 years making her daughter a doctor, and then demands payment for the massage.

The next day, Jin-hee catches up to Ji-hye with test results Chief had asked her to deliver. Ji-hye coldly tells Jin-hee due to her stunt last night, she had to stay late at the hospital. She tests Jin-hee on the patient’s file, and as she seems to correctly diagnose the patient, Ji-hye just says, “I’ll be looking out for you,” and walks away.

Chang-min spots Jin-hee working by the vending machines and after some thought, gets a drink for her as well. When he comes by, she jumps up and snaps at him to go away, making him hide the can which Yong-kyu takes thinking it was for him.

Ah-reum and Jin-hee are working on cleaning up a patient who starts hitting on Ah-reum, and she lies that she is married. When Jin-hee asks if she is in fact married, Ah-reum pokes fun at her asking if she has never been hit on before, since faking being married is an easy way of letting down a guy.

A nurse comes by to ask one of them to suture a patient and Jin-hee goes over. The patient is oddly confused and gets up abruptly to say that he must go home. He demands to be let go, pushing Jin-hee over.

Chang-min and rushes over and notices the patient has some odd behavior such as his walk and his slurred words. He checks the patient’s vitals and thinks he may be suffering from a more serious head injury.

Chun-soo takes a look over the patient and chews out the resident for not making a correct diagnosis when an intern did. The other interns crowd around and talk about how cool Chang-min was in diagnosing the patient and making the resident look bad, saying that it’s both a curse and a blessing to be so talented.

It’s lunch time and Chang-min is out on a blind date with a minister’s daughter his mother has set up for him, a hilarious cameo by Jung Joo-ri.

They hold their date at an art gallery where Joo-ri tries to sound classy but fails miserably by calling Da Vinci, “Leonardo DiCaprio,” (although she does fix her mistake) and pointing out distasteful bits of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, such as the horrible hairstyle (mid-part much like Samcheonpo from Answer Me 1994).

She says that the most important part of a man’s body is that thing in the middle (to which Chang-min looks at her incredulously) – the belly button.

Jin-hee is eating lunch by herself in the cafeteria when Ah-reum joins her. Ah-reum continues making jabs at Jin-hee and tries to act as though her intent is more innocent. She rubs Jin-hee the wrong way, especially when calling Chang-min, “Chang-min-sshi,” and Jin-hee scolds her for saying she should be calling him Doctor Oh in the workplace.

The two continue their awkward lunch with Ah-reum asking if Jin-hee is making herself look like a mess on purpose to seem like she’s either very busy or if she just really doesn’t know how to take care of herself. She finishes by letting Jin-hee know that Chang-min had told her to stay away from Jin-hee and now thinks his warning was fair.

Chang-min continues his date with Joo-ri at a restaurant only to have Joo-ri suddenly get up and throw water at another man. She yells haughtily at the man saying that when they had a blind date, she paid for the expensive meal because he left without paying. The wet man angrily retorts that she should be thankful to be on a date at all with a face like that. Chang-min stops the man and demands for him to apologize to Joo-ri, which of course has her swooning over him.

The interns are paged to the ER as soon as they finish lunch and when Chun-soo asks where Chang-min is, Jin-hee covers by saying he is in the bathroom. The interns are called in for a clinical emergency drill and are told to pair up. Jin-hee ends up alone and is thus automatically paired with Chang-min. Because of the 30-minute time limit, Jin-hee has no choice but to start by herself.

Joo-ri confesses to Chang-min that she is actually not the minister’s daughter and is standing in for her friend. Chang-min is rightfully flabbergasted, especially when she says she likes him very much.

After struggling a bit with the test patient, Jin-hee calls to yell at Chang-min and tells him to hurry since Chun-soo has called an emergency drill. Chun-soo walks by and overhears everything. Jin-hee gets back to treating the patient by herself with Chun-soo overseeing, and ends up killing her dummy patient.

Chang-min gets back to see that everything has been cleared and Jin-hee is left staring at her dead dummy patient. After some thought, she gets up to treat the dummy with determination and drags the healed dummy to Chun-soo. She reaches his door just as he opens it, and falls into his arms. Chang-min watches the scene unfold with wide eyes. He’s spotted by Chun-soo, who chews him out for leaving the hospital during lunch hour and for seemingly trying to take credit for someone else’s work.

Ah-reum asks her friend over the phone how the blind date went and it turns out that Ah-reum is the minister’s daughter. Joo-ri swoons over Chang-min saying he was just her type and that he works at the same hospital as Ah-reum. Ah-reum hears his name and gasps.

Jin-hee and Chang-min walk out together, and he takes the dummy from her as she snaps at him for going on a blind date during lunch hours. Chang-min pokes back that she was too aggressive with Chun-soo, saying if they were that close, her flat chest must have landed on him. She calls him a scumbag and storms off.

Chang-min’s mother sets up an apartment for him near the hospital. She asks about his blind date and he haughtily tells her how the minister’s daughter sent her weird friend in place of her. She storms off to meet her siblings to rant about this girl who blew off her son. She calls the blind date names for not even coming out, but the second she hears that the minister’s daughter is a doctor, her attitude changes once again.

A nurse calls out for Doctor Oh and both Jin-hee and Chang-min answer. They both go to Chun-soo since they’re not sure who was being called. Chun-soo is looking over a patient who is in critical condition, and he orders both of them to admit the patient to another ward.

As they are transferring the patient, the elevator goes on the fritz with them and a nurse inside. The patient starts throwing up blood and they start freaking out. The nurse urges them to start emergency protocol on the patient in the elevator, with Chang-min attempting intubation.

Jin-hee calls Chun-soo, who demands she start a video call so he can look over exactly what they’re doing, but she drops the phone from nervousness. Because a blood vessel has popped and suction is not readily available in an elevator, intubation is impossible and they must perform an emergency tracheotomy.

Between the two, Chang-min is more knowledgeable in the procedure (having watched it just once), so he attempts to start but is too shaky to cut into the man. Jin-hee grabs his hand and they stare at each other with determination and fear.

 
COMMENTS

We finally see sides of the main characters that make them who they are outside of their broken marriage. Jin-hee is someone who needs to prove her worth in any way and Chang-min is very smart and confident, but his downfall may stem from his mother. The character developments are getting interesting and the conflicts they face are interesting, but something just feels missing as I am watching this drama.

I think the main issue I have with this drama is that I can’t seem to pinpoint what the main overarching theme is supposed to be. Is it medical? Romantic comedy? Workplace drama? A mix of them all? I’ve learned that medicine and romance do not mix well – especially romantic comedies and medicine. An example of what I am talking about would be Good Doctor – a great story with interesting medical mysteries but… the romance was unfortunately smothered under all the medical talk.

Usually, the medical part of medical dramas takes over with patients’ stories, doctors’ background stories, and a different medical mystery in each episode – and these segments tend to draw attention away from the romance of the main characters. Then, when the romance does come into play, it is usually too rushed or too awkward. What stuck out as odd to me was that for a medical drama, they seemed to not focus on the patients at all. Understandably, it is an ER drama where patients are in and out or transferred rather quickly, but it somehow feels hasty – for example, what happened to the gunman? Was he arrested? Were there any consequences?

I’m starting to see Chang-min’s charm more now after his date with Joo-ri which is a huge relief after his very… asshole-y attitude in the first two episodes. Although he is cocky, I can see it’s mostly because of the way his mother may have raised him. He can be very much a gentleman which may be what Jin-hee had seen in him in the beginning of their relationship. Speaking of, I hope the drama shows us their beginning days and what led up to the marriage. It’d be great to see what kind of chemistry the two had before the divorce and their constant bickering.

I’m still confused about Choi Yeo-jin’s role, and hope they develop Chun-soo and Ji-hye’s story line more as we’ve only seen them as senior doctors in the hospital. Especially Chun-soo, who seems to have an air of mystery around him. I’m sort of hoping that a love triangle occurs because I like the way Chun-soo has interacted with Jin-hee so far… like she’s some sort of puzzle he just can’t seem to figure out.

To have Chang-min and Jin-hee’s romance grow and sizzle may take a lot of effort in my opinion, and personally just to see the characters grow may be the only reason I continue with the drama (and I very much like Choi Jin-hyuk and Song Ji-hyo together). There are funny scenes throughout the episode but so far when they do occur, they seem out of place and I’m left wondering whether I actually should be laughing or not. The drama is showing more potential than the first two episodes did (which is understandable since they needed to introduce the premise and characters of the show), but it really needs to have a more organized theme going on. It’ll be an interesting 20 episodes if the writers pick a tone and stick with it.

 
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