Peanut Butter & Jelly
Armed with her toy sword, episode 2 of The School Nurse Files begins with Eun-Young smacking the various students in the back. It instantly stops them from climbing as they drop to the ground. In-Pyo, still weakened from his trip down to the basement, struggles to catch up. Unfortunately Eun-Young’s sword starts to lose its power. A strange maniacal creature appears out the hole last episode and starts growling at everyone. After asking A-Ra to get her bullets, the monster suddenly screams to the heavens. All the students wind up pushed to the fences. With all hope seemingly lost, In-Pyo holds Eun-Young’s hand which seems to give her power. The gun materializes in her hand and she shoots this creature right in the mouth. This time though it can’t stomach the bullet and it bursts into a million heart-shaped jellies that fall to the ground harmlessly. In the wake of this, reporter Kim Yu-Jin takes to the TV and fills the rest of Korea in on what’s transpired. Eun-Young however bemoans that no one will know the truth about the jellies. Thinking back over the rock from that night, Eun-Young suddenly receives a strange leaflet under her door. The next day she speaks to In-Pyo about the school and wonders quite why it was created in that specific spot to begin with. As they continue talking, they discuss two students called Min-U and Wan-Su. Their inexplicable bond may be more than just friendship. It could be that they were born with jellies. Quite what this means or how significant it is in the grand scheme of things, remains to be seen. Given they’re tethered together, Eun-Young worries given she’s seen people die from that link in the past. One solution could be to cut all their hair off given the jellies are obsessed with that part of the body. A-Ra overhears the two teachers talking and offers up her services to help. Together, they manage to encourage Min-U to cut his hair off but it’s not enough. While Min-U and the rest of the students go “cushion hunting”, Eun-Young figures they need to go for the second part of their plan – cutting off the armpit hair. While this is going on, Eun-Young and In-Pyo start learning how to tie knots. They also start making a robot to teach the kids CPR. As Eun-Young falls asleep art her desk, she has a nightmare and awakens with a start after seeing the previous school president hitting her with the toy sword. What could this mean? What could any of this mean? For now, we’re kept in the dark.
The Episode Review
This show is absolutely bizarre. Unlike the first episode, everything settles down completely and it’s still not clear what’s going on. The exposition we’re given is cryptic and does little to push the narrative forward in a compelling way. It seems like jellies have invaded the school but why? How? I’m sure that will be explained later on but for now we descend into episodic format. Eun-Young and In-Pyo work to try and sever the tie between two students while not doing much to really explain the jelly situation. Hopefully this one can start providing some clarity as to what’s going on. Weirdness alone isn’t enough to elevate this one above mediocrity, but there’s still time for this one to turn it around.
