Let me just put this out there right away… I am a huge-huge fangirl of this show. I’ve watched it twice through now. Not to mention having watched several scenes that melted this poor Noona heart about a bazillion times just because I can. I happily put on my blinders throughout the entire show and loved it to bits and pieces. Though I’ll do my best to talk about what I did like and what I didn’t. In case you haven’t heard, the story centers around Oh Chang Min (chaebol heir to a doctor family) and Oh Jin Hee (poor working class older woman). They marry without their families’ consent or permission. They are blissfully in love for a short while and then they fall out of love because they stop communicating and the stress of being cast out on their own is too much… not to mention the fighting, they fight about everything. Six years later they meet up again as Doctors and interns at the same hospital. Hijinks ensue. This review will be talking about story plot points that helped or degraded the story as a whole, not walking through the series of events. The fight that ended it all and in a way started it all over again… Omo, that is one of the scenes that I have watched a ton of times. It was amazingly comical and yet blistering in its savagery. In that moment in time Chang Min and Jin Hee hated one another so desperately they were willing to cause physical damage to one another and their belongings. It worked for me because it had enough comedy that it wasn’t too dark. However, we weren’t given much evidence of why their marriage fell apart in the beginning. It would have been nice to have their history fleshed out a bit more right from the get go. But with the light rom-com way the show started out with, it worked well. Throughout the first third of the show it was light, uncomplicated, hilarious, and wonderfully juxtaposed against the medical traumas they were fighting to mend in the Emergency Room. For me that was one of the things that I really loved. It was upbeat and energetic and such a good time. Chang Min and Jin Hee’s bickering made my day every time. It was just enough to make a spark in their chemistry while not making it overly evident that they had ended things so horribly. With each episode the bickering was less harsh and more playful, and I loved it so much. I honestly could have watched an entire show of Jin Hee and Chang Min bickering and bonding, it was just that good for me. Now, let’s take a moment to bemoan the fact that for a third of the show we lost any trace of the rom-com that I fell in love with at the beginning. Some very serious things happened, which had me crying and broken on the floor. Honestly, this is the saddest show I have ever watched. Hands down, the most melodrama show I’ve ever seen. I avoid melodramas, I hate them with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. I’ve endured and lived through enough travesty and sad times that when I sit down to watch a show I want to giggle and laugh and be happy. So after one episode which made me shed a bucket of tears, I was prepared to forgive the show because I loved it so much. But… then episode after episode after episode of sadness weighed me down. If they had wanted to do a melodrama it should have been billed as a melodrama. I admit that I had a fit and was angry with my love and might have yelled at the screen a time or two. So when in the last third of the show we got out rom-com back there might have been a party here. I can understand why the writers did what they did, but why did they need to drag it out for so long? It was painful, the subject matter was so sad, but for me I wanted that story point to be resolved more quickly. But then again, because of that intense melodrama there was so much character growth. Character growth that absolutely needed to happen, and without it the show would have tanked. But man do I dislike melodramas! Speaking of characters, I want to spend a few moments on the cast. Oh Jin Hee starts off in the past as a cutesy and happy girl. The breakup of the marriage and the way Chang Min treated her there at the end destroyed her. In those six years she struggled and worked to the bone to become a doctor. When we meet her present day she’s stuck in her hate for Chang Min, stuck in the past, and afraid of herself because of the hardships that she’s endured. For the greater part of the series she remains in this mindset, though it becomes less intense. But it felt like she didn’t grow soon enough. Granted, she nearly became less than human because of the emotional torment she lived through and that would be really hard to overcome. But for the sake of the story I wanted to see movement in her views of her past, her abilities, and love sooner. Regardless of that I adored her as a lead. She had spunk when the moment called for it, she was smart, she was sweet, and she was just fun to watch. When we meet Chang Min he’s good natured and happy. Then he turns spiteful and somewhat hateful towards the end of the marriage. In present day he is the epitome of a chaebol. He’s snarky, arrogant, stuck up… you get the picture. As things progress and grow stagnant with Jin Hee at the hospital Chang Min does a lot of evolving as a man and character. It was really great. Then the melodrama hit and all we saw was Chang Min with a beleaguered and depressed expression for a great many episodes. Finally through he found himself again and found the right path for himself. Let me just say his smile… Omo… his smile is something that makes my day brighter. By the end of the show he was a well-rounded guy and I loved him so much. Dr. Gook… oh Dr. Gook! Adorable, awkward, devilishly handsome, and all wanted to do was snuggle him and pinch his cheeks. He’s gruff and scruffy and stuck in his ways. Those ways are less than open minded and a little harsh. As a second male lead he was amazing! Dr. Gook was the perfect balance to Chang Min. Throughout the story I really flip-flopped so many times between wanting Jin Hee ending up with Dr. Gook or Chang Min. He was that good. But, he was also unforgiving in a lot of things and did not grow as a character until the very end of the show. That was frustrating. There were plenty of places for him to discover himself and evolve and yet it all seemed to happen for him at the very end. There are few strong women in K-Dramas and even fewer who are strong outside of a tough girl role. Dr. Shim is probably in my top three favorite female K-Drama characters. I absolutely adore her. She was a single mother who proudly spoke of her daughter and her single motherhood despite the stigma that placed on her. She loved who she was, enjoyed her work, and was damn good at her job. Dr. Shim loved Dr. Gook, and at first I was in awe of that love. She openly welcomed his crush on Jin Hee and even encouraged them both to date. But, as time wore on it became a love of noble selflessness, the kind that drives me crazy. I wanted her to stop putting Dr. Gook first and put herself first. Beyond that, she was utterly amazing! There was more than one love triangle in the show. Oh Jin Hee and Chang Min with their on/off/on relationship. Jin Hee and Dr. Gook were attracted. Dr. Shim was in love with Dr. Gook and he still harbored feelings for her. Then bring in Ah Reum, she was beginning to fall in love with Chang Min. She wasn’t my least favorite of all second lead females, but she was right up there with characters that I truly do not like. It wasn’t that she was necessarily that Ah Reum was a bad person, but she was inconsistently written. At first she was going to fight for Chang Min, but when she sees Chang Min head over heels back in love… she gives up and supports the divorced couple. Not only that, seemingly out of nowhere begins to fall in love with Yong Kyu who she summarily dismissed early on as not her type, ever. I just could not invest in her character. Speaking of Yong Kyu, Omo he was just the most adorable cutie-pie ever!!! Seriously every time he was on the screen it was like watching puppies and kittens frolic on a rainbow. Ok, so I’m exaggerating and getting a little crazy, but I cannot even accurately describe how happy his character made me. Though his story felt off at the end, but I think he was just the most loveable drama characters of all time. I wish that we would have seen more of his story, I wanted him to be a little more fleshed out. Even with the flaws and some story aspects that I didn’t like, I loved-loved-loved this show. As if having Choi Jin Hyuk as the lead wasn’t enough, it was also a Noona Romance!!! I mean come on, this show was tailor made for me! If you are interested I recapped/reviewed each episode on my blog http://thedramanoona.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/emergency-couple/