EMERGENCY COUPLE EPISODE 13

There seems to be an unwritten law that every good drama has to have a love triangle to make things harder for the male lead. Emergency Couple is no exception. This is more like a polygon, though: one of the ER nurses (her name escapes me) has a crush on Chang Min; Yong Gyu has a crush on Ah Reum; Ah Reum likes Chang Min and finds him intriguing; Chang Min likes Jin Hee; Jin Hee likes Dr. Guk.  Got all that? Good, because I don't ;)

The Moneyed Meddler, Sung Sook, finally finds out about Chang Min and Jin Hee. As anyone might guess, she is incensed and shocked. It gets even worse when she confronts Chang Min and tells him he can't be trusted to make his own choices. What I can't quite get is why she's so controlling. At least we know where Chang Min's domineering nature comes from.  But he is an adult pushing 30. He's an intern with a woman who also has designs on being a doctor as a career choice. Sung Sook's hatred of Jin Hee is highly irrational, considering it was the family that cut Chang Min off and made it so he had to drop out of med school. Jin Hee didn't ruin his life; she was an innocent bystander to the ruin Sung Sook rained down on her son. Even her estranged husband tells Sung Sook to live her life, that her son can't be her life. Will she listen?  

In the hospital they treat a patient with CJD and are afraid because contracting the disease is fatal and no one knows how it's transmitted.  Chang Min, Dr. Guk, and Jin Hee are the only ones who dare treat the patient. I call foul because I know how it's transmitted and I'm nowhere near a doctor. It's contracted primarily through harvested brain tissue and hormone products, eating animals infected with it, through blood transfusions, and through genetic inheritance. I'm not sure that merely being splattered by blood or cerebro-spinal fluid can do anything unless you eat it and even then that's highly unlikely. Though the drama does explain that South Korea doesn't have much experience with CJD, it doesn't explain the superstition and paranoia. Most of the people act like cowards instead of doctors.

We finally get an explanation as to why Chang Min and Jin Hee are hiding their relationship from their co-workers. Apparently there's a certain stigma attached to divorce and Jin Hee sees it as a failure. Kwang Soo advises that divorce is not a failure, it's a mistake. He relates it to music. In music, if you practice a lot, you make no mistakes. Marriage is a live show, there is no practice. A very simple explanation for a complex topic. Did I mention how much I like Kwang Soo? Chang Min admits to Ah Reum he's divorced. She treats it as just one more thing she knows about about him, like what foods or sports he enjoys. And Ji Hye? She just advises not to tell Dr. Guk and let Jin Hee tell him in her own time when she's comfortable doing so. Most people I know who are divorced don't seem to have this problem.  It's not a terribly sensitive topic. Sometimes it doesn't work between two people and most of those I know have found someone it does work with. It's never fun in the beginning, but 6 years gone is hardly as big as it once was.

And we finally find out why Chang Min's father, Tae Seok, was acting strangely. As I predicted, he is afflicted with something.  When Chang Min shows up at the hospital where the kidney patient is being transferred, he is asked to sign in. He notices his father's name on the patient list. Apparently, Tae Seok collapsed from diabetes and high blood pressure while lecturing. He may well see himself near the end of his life and wants to make more of a positive mark on those around him.

Jin Hee is caught between two men: the desperate Chang Min and the stand-offish Dr. Guk. Guk has made his intentions clear to Chang Min, he's not that easy to intimidate. What's funny is that Chang Min is more attentive to Jin Hee than Guk is. It's obvious how Changmin feels. Guk needs to step in and be more of a boyfriend to Jin Hee if he wants to compete. His stoic nonchalance may be more of a hindrance than a help here. Instead of saying that to Chang Min, maybe he should have told that to Jin Hee. Something along the lines of "I intend to date you and wild Chang Mins can't drag me away." Jin Hee rebuffs Chang Min's advances, but it doesn't stop him from continually trying.

Chang Min? Well, it's obvious where he stands. But the last thing he sees this episode is Jin Hee and Dr. Guk together. Will it discourage him? Or will he try harder to woo her?  She seems to motivate him to be a better person. Will this be enough? Or is it too little, too late?

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