“St. Denis Medical” just fanned the flames of its resident slow burn.
During the penultimate Season 2 episode on Monday, will-they-won’t-they colleagues Matt (Mekki Leeper) and Serena (Kahyun Kim) shared their long-awaited first kiss in the St. Denis parking lot… just before credits rolled on the episode, leaving their respective reactions a mystery until next week’s finale (NBC, 8/7c).
In the meantime, the vitals here look good. In Monday’s outing, St. Denis’ birthing center opened at last, prompting Serena and Matt to pose as an expectant couple after the parents-to-be that Joyce had invited to the event welcomed their baby ahead of schedule. That gave Matt and Serena ample opportunity to be affectionate with each other all day — and after they initially refused to kiss each other for the event’s photographer (“We’re not your puppets!” Matt snapped), Matt planted a more authentic (and thoroughly reciprocated) kiss on Serena before they headed home.
“It was really cute how [the crew] dressed the set. It felt like a rom-com,” Leeper tells TVLine of filming the big moment. “They wet the parking lot, and there was a huge, soft light above us that’s, like, the size of a building. It’s very romantic. It was nice how they did it.”
Kim, meanwhile, knew this would be a major moment — for both the characters and viewers — after reading the episode’s initial script.
“It was so K-drama,” Kim laughs. “The way the lines worked, it was so romantic when I read it. It gave me butterflies.”
The kiss will bring ‘miscommunication’ in the Season 2 finale
Don’t expect the smoothest start to this potential relationship, though: For reasons he can’t detail just yet, Mekki Leeper says the kiss will lead to “a miscommunication all day” when Matt and Serena try to talk about it in next week’s finale.
“That’s typical, I think, for Matt’s experience,” Leeper adds with a chuckle.
Serena will also be reeling a bit after confirming that Matt is indeed a good kisser — “Expectations were high for Serena, and he met them!” Kahyun Kim says — which was previously hinted at in Episode 6, to Leeper’s slight horror.
“[The kiss] maps on to the ‘Matt magic’ that was talked about,” he laughs. “You would assume it’d be worse if you’re on a show like ‘Veep,’ and all the jokes are about your appearance or whatever. But it’s so much more uncomfortable when the writers are like, ‘Yeah, and he’s handsome!’ What are you talking about?! How do I act that?”
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