In many romantic comedies there will be a succession of moments when the leading man realizes that he's in love with the girl. Often they involve jealousy. He sees her with someone else or sees her differently through someone else's eyes. It can happen in a variety of situations. He may become jealous when he sees the girl talking to another man or it might take a proposal of marriage to introduce his true feelings. But the writer of "Emergency Couple" found a funny new way to have Dr. Oh Chang Min realize he is jealous. In Episodes 8 and 9, Choi Jin Hyuk's character realizes that he still cares for his wife, Oh Jin Hee, when she gets a little help with her CPR skills.
The department head, played by Lee Pil Mo, is showing Oh Jin Hee, played by Song Ji Hyo, the right way to do CPR. And we're not even talking about performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which she has already done on Choi Jin Hyuk.
In a classroom setting, Lee Pil Mo helps her apply the correct pressure as she's massaging a dummy's heart back into beating. Choi Jin Hyuk watches how closely they stand together, how they move together and how their mutual breathing takes on a rhythm. The expression on his face is priceless as is his fantasy about strangling his department head for daring to breathe in rhythm with Song Ji Hyo.
In fact the two make a pretty funny couple. She is really funny when her character is embarrassed, which is often. And as an actress she never seems too worried about looking ridiculous.
Choi Jin Hyuk has been in romantic comedies before, but his breakout moment happened when he played the mythological mountain spirit Wol Ryung in "Gu Family Book." He followed that performance with the role of Lee Min Ho's corporate-minded older brother in "The Heirs." So, for anyone who only knows him from these two roles, his performance in "Emergency Couple" is surprisingly and pleasantly funny.
Song Ji Hyo jokes around with Gary on the variety show "Running Man" but she's also had some serious roles. She was the Crown Prince's unhappy ex-girlfriend in the drama "Princess Hours," the tragic queen in the film "A Frozen Flower," an assassin in the film "Jackal is Coming," and a royal nurse in the historical drama "The Fugitive of Joseon."
Hopefully in the next few episodes, viewers will get to see more of what went wrong with this couple's relationship and how they can fix it. Because when it comes to comic skills the two actors are well matched.
This week, the eighth and ninth episodes of the drama earned ratings as high as 5 percent in the Seoul Metropolitan area.
