Ellen Wong in Combat Hospital

Last week, I watched the new episode of Combat Hospital (s1e07) and cheered as Major Suzy Chao (played by Ellen Wong) dragged Captain Bobby Trang (played by Terry Chen) snuck away from the base and made out in the back of an army convoy truck… until he got paged.

In most of the episodes to date, Major Chao has been hidden behind a mask as she assisted in the surgery ward. Then when Bobby was doing some “extra credit” research, she was roped in and their nerdy personalities got to shine in addition to some awkward and nerdy banter. Unless he was a wooden post, he had to notice her–and thankfully he did.

IMDB.com doesn’t update immediately so while it currently lists Ellen has having only the first 4 Combat Hospital episodes, I think she has been in every one (seven so far). Thirteen episodes were purchased by ABC so there is at least that much more to watch but I’m still waiting to hear about renewal. I hope so!

We last saw Ellen Wong as Knives Chau in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, the movie adaptation of Canadian graphic artist Bryan Lee O’Malley. Scott Pilgrim, being a comic book series and (just a little) out of my age range, was not on my radar but “Knives Chau” and reviewers claiming it was a refreshing take on movies with very post-modern touches convinced me to give it a try. I don’t really remember much of it and only that Knives was a little adorably deranged and “didn’t get the boy” in the end.

So I went digging for some information on Ellen Wong for you (and me) and all I could really find was the information on her Wikipedia page. She was born in 1985, by most accounts, in Scarborough, Ontario to parents of Cambodian (and Chinese?) descent. She attended Ryerson University in Toronto studying radio and television arts and worked in production to understand behind the scenes while aspiring to be an actress. She got her breaks with This is Wonderland and Runaway and she made her big break and film debut in Scott Pilgrim.

I’ve noticed some Google searches landing on my page looking for the “Asian chick” on Combat Hospital–Google is so “natural language” to accept that language, huh?–and thought I might address it. I also love to be able to spotlight a recurring role that features an Asian-Canadian!