The first episode of The School Nurse Files threw us for a loop, with chaos erupting throughout the school as a horde of students try and throw themselves off a rooftop in a jelly-caused craze. There's something fishy in the school and our two leads are trying to get to the bottom of it. It also seems that apart from being their school nurse, our heroine has a far deeper connection to Monglyeon High School than we think. Let's dive in.
RECAP (SPOILER ALERT)
The episode opens right where the previous one ended, with Eun-young running to stop Seung-kwon from climbing over the fence. Using A-ra's back as a stepping stone, she taps Seung-kwon's head with her charged-up sword and we hear the squelching sound made after a jelly has been killed, causing him to lose consciousness and fall back to safety, where Ji-hyung catches him. She continues to run around the rooftop, tapping crazed students on their heads and letting them fall back to safety. As this happens, In-pyo struggles to make his way up the stairs, as more crazed students brush past him and teachers frantically make calls for help. We see that one of the teachers is the lady in red-and-blue from the previous episode, so I guess that confirms her identity. The whole time, we hear the principal reciting the morning routine over the intercom in a desperate attempt to control the situation.
Cut back to Eun-young, who's still trying to stop the horde with her sword. As she taps Hoop Squid, she realises it's not working on him even after multiple tries and we also see that the students she had tapped previously like Gyeong-hwa and Seung-kwon are still in their insane states. Eun-young's sword has run out of power and the solution is proven to only be temporary. The underground tremors get stronger, and we get a brief shot of Wan-soo and Min-woo videoing the whole situation (this happened last episode as well but it's more relevant here). The ground crumbles away even more and there's a momentary pause in rooftop activity, which doesn't last long before the normal students run back downstairs in panic while the insane ones continue to bash into the fence in a bid to yeet themselves into the hole. They again brush past In-pyo, who is still struggling to go upstairs and he laments about his difficulty (I feel this will become a running, no pun intended, trend soon).
Just then, a giant toad-like monster with rows upon rows of uneven but strangely human-like teeth bursts out of the ground and the crazed students are driven into more of a frenzy as we see what sent them into insanity in the first place. Eun-young pelts the monster with BBs, which only seems to annoy it, while all a confused A-ra sees is Eun-young shooting BBs into an empty gaping hole (naturally, the monster is only visible to Eun-young and presumably the crazed students). The monster pulls itself further out of the hole and starts to inhale, creating a strong vacuum that starts to suck in everyone and everything on top of the roof, even those who can't see the monster. Eun-young instructs A-ra to unlock the talisman cabinet in her office and grab more BBs, as she's running low on ammo. Just as she thinks all hope is lost, she shoots one of her last BBs straight into the monster's throat, which momentarily stops it from inhaling. The vacuum stops and the crazed students fall off the fence and onto the rooftop.
A completely winded In-pyo finally reaches the rooftop, and curses out Seung-kwon as he limps over to a stunned Eun-young and A-ra. The calm doesn't last for long as the horde are awakening again and the monster recovers, inhaling with an even greater force than before. The remaining people on the rooftop get flung onto the fence, and it starts to buckle under the added weight and force. Eun-young gets flung onto the fence and In-pyo lands next to her, with his hand on her wrist. While he's in obvious distress, she instead grabs his hand and we see that his mystical aura is not only recharging her powers but making them stronger, as her BB gun gets supercharged. The whole time the fence gets closer to breaking and it's quite amusing to see the juxtaposition between In-pyo's confused screaming and Eun-young's silly smile. As Seung-kwon is about to be sucked in by the monster, Eun-young fires off her powered-up BB, which simultaneously launches her backwards as it flies towards the monster's gaping maw. We see that it's covered in the same bubble-like aura that enshrouds In-pyo and the BB flies right down the monster's throat.
This completely stops the monster, which starts to swell up and eventually bursts into countless heart-shaped jellies. A relieved Eun-young sits up on the rooftop as the jellies land around her, dissolving into nothing. The crazed students awaken from their daze and everyone starts heading down to safety. We see Gyeong-hwa and Ji-hyung exchanging smiles at each other and she completely ignores Hoop Squid, who she was so hung up over. Before she can interact with Ji-hyung, another female student starts talking to him first and Gyeong-hwa can only awkwardly stand behind him (poor Gyeong-hwa, can never get the man she wants). In-pyo awakens to see Eun-young staring and smiling really creepily at him as she crawls towards him. Having used up all her power in the chaos, she grasps his hand to recharge herself and he desperately tries to extricate himself, making a grab for her BB gun and begging her to spare his life (I have no idea how the actors didn't break character in this freaking hilarious scene). In this process, they stare at each other for an unnecessarily long amount of time and by usual K-drama standards, this is the point love starts to blossom.
Seung-kwon awakens to see A-ra tending to his injuries and they share a laugh, their romance taking flight at that moment. All his worries about losing his love to Hoop Squid gone, Seung-kwon's jellies dissolve without a trace. Cut to Eun-young back home, preparing the balsam solution she'll dye her fingernails with. A news report on the earthquake that happened at Monglyeon High but of course, no one but Eun-young knows that it was caused by a jelly monster and she complains about it. The news report shows reporters interviewing some of the students at the hospital, including A-ra and Jang Radi (a K-Pop idol who was one of the crazed students) but they brush off the interview. We also see that she has the same dinosaur toy from her childhood (didn't include this in the previous post but I guess since it reappeared here it's worth mentioning) and someone slips a pamphlet under her door which reads "are you curious about the truth?" Strangely enough, the same aura that recharges Eun-young is shown emanating from the pamphlet (not sure how important this will be but I'll leave it here first).
Cut to Eun-young trying to decipher the meaning of the Apji Stone back in the final basement room. Giving up, she leaves the basement and In-pyo uses a brand new lock on the door. He explains the stone's inscription to her and many things add up, such as the monster's toad-like appearance and how the school used to be a pond where young lovers committed suicide. We see that Seung-kwon and A-ra are now in a relationship, as they play a rock-paper-scissors game on some stairs. Hoop Squid is shown to be on the same set of stairs, visibly annoyed at losing A-ra. Eun-young questions In-pyo on the meaning of "jeong-in", a word inscribed on the Apji Stone, and he explains that it means "a close friend that you have a connection to", which nicely fits the very much in love Seung-kwon and A-ra. Eun-young is relieved that the chaos from earlier has been settled and remarks that she hasn't seen Seung-kwon around (referring to the jelly Seung-kwons), which greatly confuses In-pyo, who thinks she's referring to the real deal himself (who's right there at the stairs). We see workers working on fixing the damage done to the school and Eun-young wonders why Monglyeon High had to be built on an area with so much evil energy, as In-pyo walks away with a worried look on his face (maybe he knows more than he's letting on).
Cut to the school at night, where we see the creepy founder's statue and the dark interior of the school when suddenly there seems to be light moving along a corridor. Two people enter the teachers' office and one of them (a male) asks the other (a female) if she'll really steal everything. We then get a close-up of the face of the founder's statue and a good look at that creepy smile. The female pulls open a drawer and finds a folder of volunteer certificates, which she starts to snap pictures of. We find out that the two intruders are Wan-soo and Min-woo, who are attempting to forge the volunteer certificates as a way to skip school, and they plan to sell some of the forged documents. Wan-soo instructs Min-woo, a member of the Art Club, to create a false school stamp out of an eraser to properly forge the documents, while she takes a smoke. Min-woo laments that he's always caught when he smokes while Wan-soo has never been caught, which causes her to think twice about smoking in his presence, stowing the cigarette away.
Cut to the next day, where we see Eun-young and In-pyo at a temple while she questions him about Wan-soo and Min-woo. A short flashback shows us Seung-kwon talking to Eun-young in the nurse's office as she looks out the window at the two troublemakers playing football. What's new is a strange umbilical cord-like jelly connecting the backs of their heads to each other. Seung-kwon explains the pair's extremely fitting nicknames, with Wan-soo's being Lucky (as luck always finds her, so she's never been caught smoking) and Min-woo's being Ruckus (as he always complicates things by getting in trouble, which is why he always gets caught smoking). Seung-kwon goes on to state that Min-woo once liked A-ra and we find out that she's chilling on a sickbed. They then go on to have a mini lovers' spat/flirting session, annoying Eun-young, who asks them to get out.
Cut back to the temple, where we see Eun-young recharging her power by coming into close contact with lit prayer candles, which rejuvenate her in the same way as In-pyo's aura. In-pyo starts to recount about once when Min-woo brought a hamster to school and lost it. We then cut to Wan-soo and Min-woo in a club room, where he's busy making the false stamp while she amuses herself by editing and reversing the videos she took of the horde of crazed students. The whole time, we get exposition of the lost hamster story (which I won't touch on because it's unimportant). Eun-young tells In-pyo about the umbilical cord jelly connecting the pair of rascals as she continues to recharge herself by touching stone Buddhas. Her hand gets smacked away by a monk who politely tells her that whatever energy she takes should be for a good cause (which is kind of iffy considering that she's using that energy to kill things) and In-pyo silently judges her. This irks Eun-young and they quarrel about her intentions of using her power as well as who has more friends. In-pyo ends up losing the argument because of Eun-young's one friend and he limps off while saying that he has no friends (this is tragically hilarious).
Cut to Eun-young resting in a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinic, while she gives exposition about her sole friend, who's giving acupuncture treatment. We find out that Eun-young was a nurse at a hospital where her friend was a patient and at some point after becoming friends, Eun-young was convinced by her to leave the hospital to become a school nurse. Eun-young laments to her friend, who's aware of Eun-young's powers and the school's jelly infestation, about the jelly connecting Wan-soo and Min-woo, explaining that they were born like that and thus she's powerless to solve it. Her friend reminds her that jellies like to imitate things and are attracted to hair, so the troublemakers' curly hair might be the cause of the problem. Eun-young entertains that possibility before her friend asks about the negative effects of friends being tethered to each other. Eun-young shares that she's seen people die because of their tether and even if they're kids, a tether is a terrible thing for anyone. Her friend then suggests to her to shave the students' heads to prevent the jelly from clinging and there's a brief comedic scene of Wan-soo and Min-woo with obvious bald caps on their heads before Eun-young banishes that idea.
Cut to Eun-young and In-pyo assembling a CPR mannequin in the nurse's office, and he suggests that the jelly tether might be clinging to hair on other parts of their body. A snort-inducing conversation of raunchy humour follows as they bounce around hair removal ideas, ranging from bikini waxing to electrolysis. There's a moment of awkwardness between the pair as they realise how silly their exchange sounds and Eun-young is frustrated at their lack of solutions. After some thought, In-pyo suggests tying knots on the ends of their hair so the jellies can't stick on them and it dawns on them that this is their best idea yet, especially since hair removal would only be a temporary solution. He sits down on a sickbed only to find out A-ra has been lying there and listening in all along. In exasperation, she offers to help with their hairy problem (hah see what I did there).
Cut to an 11th-grade classroom, where we see the students being taught life sciences by the teacher in red-and-blue (guess she's a life sciences teacher then). The first plan to remove the hair on the troublemakers' heads is in motion and A-ra uses Radi as a middleman to pass flirtatious notes to Min-woo, persuading him to shave his head in order to look cuter (huh she's surprisingly good at being manipulative). At first, this greatly confuses him as he assumed A-ra was attached and he also worries about Wan-soo's reaction. Ultimately he gives in and we see that he gets his hair buzzed short. Unfortunately, this plan is a bust as the tether between Wan-soo and Min-woo only becomes bigger, stronger and more "muscular". They resort to their backup plan, where they'll attempt to tie knots on the ends of their armpit hair as per In-pyo's idea. Cut to the nurse's office, where we see In-pyo teaching A-ra and Eun-young how to tie various knots using string. A-ra is a natural while Eun-young flounders the whole time, with a perplexed expression plastered across her brow (it's actually quite cute). With no time left to lose, In-pyo moves on to the next knot and again, has a mini argument with Eun-young over the number of knots they're learning, even plastering a fake smile on his face after she chides him for frowning at her.
Cut to Monglyeon High's Ping-Pong Club Room, where we see Wan-soo decked in black (beanie and all) ensuring the coast is clear before heading back into the room and closing the door behind her. Inside, we see some college bad boys guiding some similarly dressed Monglyeon High delinquents (Wan-soo and Min-woo included) in their elaborate plan to break into Giseong Girls' High School at night. Cut to Eun-young at home practicing tying knots using tweezers and sewing thread, all while using a magnifying glass. She suddenly hears chanting and stares out her window with a worried expression on her face. Cut back to Giseong Girls' High, where we see the delinquents entering 11th-grade classrooms and stealing chair cushions from empty seats. The plan is to get into college using the cushions (questionable tactics taught by the college bad boys) while Wan-soo wants to sell them for an exorbitant price. The delinquents are told that the Giseong Girls' students like the thrill of this thievery and some of them actually use this as a way to exchange numbers with guys. Under this assumption, Min-woo tries to steal a cushion but ends up triggering a chorus of screams in a classroom. Wan-soo enters the same classroom and grabs another cushion from an empty seat only to find resistance from the girl seated next to it. Wan-soo snatches it from her and drags a dumbfounded Min-woo out of the class. As the delinquents escape from the school, we hear echoes of the girl's last sentence, which was that the last cushion taken by Wan-soo belonged to a dead girl.
Cut to Monglyeon High, where we see a Giseong Girls' student entering the school alone. There's something fishy about her and the audience can assume that this student (whose nametag reads Choi Yoo-jin so I'll refer to her as such from here on out) is probably the dead girl who's come back to reclaim her stolen cushion. Cut back to the nurse's office, where Eun-young and In-pyo are still practicing knots, and man she's still struggling. She complains to In-pyo, who ends the day's practice and instead shows her diagrams to give her a better idea of the knots. Eun-young is clearly lost in the sauce and (sort of aegyo) whines to In-pyo, who offers to stop the lesson but she presses on. Big mistake on her part, as he dives into even deeper explanation of the knots, pulling out instructional books to aid his teaching, and you can just see the exasperation in her eyes. I love the interactions between these two, absolutely hilarious.
Cut to an 11th-grade classroom in Monglyeon, where the students are taking a college entrance mock test (with some of them seated on stolen chair cushions from Giseong). Cheating shenanigans ensue when Min-woo and Seung-kwon (who got a chair cushion probably in exchange for giving Min-woo his answers) swap answer sheets. Min-woo and Wan-soo, who evidently aren't the most studios, are using the movement of the clock hands to decide their answers, with Min-woo using pen clicks to communicate to Wan-soo, who's sitting on the dead Giseong girl's cushion. While the test continues, Yoo-jin peers into various classrooms, presumably on the hunt for her stolen cushion and lord knows what's going to happen when she finds it (as she moves, we hear a jingling bell sound and this gets relevant soon). Meanwhile, in the process of their in-test communication, the pen clicks get more rapid and a confused Wan-soo exchanges glances with Min-woo, who's just as confused as she is. Turns out, the rapid pen clicking was coming from Gyeong-hwa, absentmindedly pressing her pen on her face. Obviously tilted at messing up her answering strategy, Wan-soo calls Gyeong-hwa out in the middle of the test and coming back to her senses, she complains to the teacher that the pen clicking distracts students. The seemingly foolproof answering strategy has hit a significant roadblock and Wan-soo asks the teacher for a fresh answer sheet.
Cut to Eun-young walking along a school corridor, piggybacking the CPR mannequin like a real person (what a silly sight). Yoo-jin's silhouette ghosts in front of her and upon hearing the jingling bell, Eun-young stops dead in her tracks and looks up, but no one's in sight. We see that Eun-young is going from class to class to teach CPR and as she makes her way to the next classroom, she sees Yoo-jin peering from outside, still searching for her cushion. This class is taught by the life sciences teacher (who's not in red-and-blue anymore so I won't refer to her as such) and during the lesson, both Eun-young and the teacher look outside the door, with the latter presumably able to see Yoo-jin. There's definitely more to this life sciences teacher than we think, she has too much screentime to be a minor character.
Cut to Monglyeon High at night, where a blue whale jelly floats above and casts it's light over the school. The camera focuses on the creepy founder's portrait and pans across various old photos lining the school corridors, stopping at one of the earlier school compounds with the school motto "laughing will bring good fortune" in big letters above the front door. Cut to the school's central stairwell, where a Giseong Girls' student fiddles with something in the darkness, a small table lamp by her side. A sound like ball bearings dropping is heard as a nightgown-clad Eun-young is shown heading towards the stairwell, with a torchlight in her left hand and her charged-up sword in her right. The student is shown to be practicing knots in the exact same way as Eun-young was at home, with a magnifying glass, tweezers and sewing thread. As Eun-young approaches her, she questions the student's purpose for being in Monglyeon, which isn't her school. Inching closer, she refers to the girl as "Eun-young" and it is at this point in time that I got hella confused. Suddenly, the voice changes to that of a man and the student turns around, revealing herself to be a high school version of Eun-young. As the lit sword is raised, we see that it's no longer present day Eun-young wielding the sword but instead it's the school's founder, who attacks high school Eun-young. As she screams, maniacal laughter is heard in the background and the camera once again focuses on the founder's portrait. This mind-boggling situation is revealed to be a nightmare as Eun-young jolts herself awake screaming, finding herself in the comforts of her home, having fallen asleep while practicing knots. As she heaves a sigh of relief, we hear the same dropping ball bearings sound in her house. Cut to black.
REVIEW AND COMMENTS
I mentioned in my previous review that a short drama has both pros and cons, and a con I mentioned was being too rushed. Unfortunately at this point, I think that The School Nurse Files is heading towards the rushed end of the K-drama spectrum. Don't get me wrong, it's not the most disjointed drama I've ever seen (that award goes to another drama that I might talk about in future) but I am genuinely sooooooo confused by what's going on. I feel like we're skipping steps in the story. For starters, I feel like some of the other characters have undergone an almost 180 degrees change in the span of these two episodes. In the first episode and the earlier part of this episode, In-pyo thinks Eun-young is crazy because he can't see the wondrous jelly-filled world she sees. But suddenly, the rest of the episode has him fully understanding and accepting that jellies exist. Like he's actively working with Eun-young to solve Min-woo and Wan-soo's jelly tether issue, even coming up with ideas like tying knots on the ends of their hair. Also, they've somehow roped in A-ra (and by extension Seung-kwon) into their shenanigans. I mean, yes it is a drama but wouldn't you think that they would have less belief in this whole situation? Maybe the crazed student horde and the vacuum from the unseen monster changed their minds, I don't know but to me, this character development is way too fast. I don't know, I guess it was a problem that was bound to happen, especially when adapting a whole novel into just 6 less-than-an-hour-long episodes.
That being said, the rushed element here doesn't put me off from wanting to keep watching. For starters, there's so much more here that we need to uncover. The life sciences teacher has been sitting at the back of my mind and I'm dying to figure out how she fits into the story. Like I said earlier, too much focus is being put on her to be a minor character. I also hope to see a conclusive end to the stolen chair cushion plot line, with Yoo-jin frantically searching for her cushion (which is in Wan-soo's hands). The end of the episode is also baffling, as it seems that Eun-young might be more intertwined with Monglyeon High than we think. The disturbing nightmare can't possibly mean nothing because the school's founder being in it is way too specific so I'm interested to see what comes out of this. Eun-young's story seems to go really deep and so much needs to be explained about her. From her conversations with her TCM practitioner friend to her past with Monglyeon High, there's so much to her and I can't wait to find out more.
What I do think is a good thing (and in fact, the best thing) about this drama so far is the chemistry between Eun-young and In-pyo. It's absolutely hilarious to see their little interactions, from them bickering like children over the size of their friend circle, to their numerous raunchy ideas about how to deal with the troublemakers' hair. It was also really cute to see Eun-young unable to tie knots and In-pyo being completely unaware of how much she's struggling, to the point where she has to almost aegyo whine at him. It's adorable and adds a lot to their dynamic. I feel like they'll end up being in a romance but I'm perfectly fine if they just maintain their relationship like this, it's very entertaining. The other characters are also starting to have a bit more of an impact, especially the four students (Seung-kwon, A-ra, Wan-soo and Min-woo) and I hope that it continues, because a drama can't be carried on the backs of just the two leads.
I'm hoping the remainder of The School Nurse Files won't boggle my mind as much and finally give us some answers to some of the dangling plot lines. In the meantime, I'll keep an open mind and hope that the rest of the episodes don't rush as much with the plot.
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