“Hello, My Twenties!” (청춘시대): Season 1

By Jae-Ha Kim
jaehakim.com
August 16, 2022

☆☆☆☆
Jin-myung (played by Han Ye-ri)
Ji-won (played by Park Eun-bin)
Ye-eun (played by Han Seung-yeon)
Eun-jae (played by Park Hye-su)
Yi-na (played by Ryu Hwa-young)
↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name.

“Hello, My Twenties!” has been on my to-watch list for several years already. Why has it taken me so long? A combination of a lot of things: a trailer that did nothing for me, the title (which misled me into believing the stories might not interest me) and a slew of other K-dramas that caught my attention first. Not for nothing, but it also took me forever to watch “Kill Me, Heal Me” and “It’s Okay, That’s Love” and those two shows ended up being among my all-time favorites.

I wouldn’t say that this series (also known as “Age of Youth”) is on par with those two. But it’s good. It’s entertaining and fun, but it also at times is surprisingly dark as it deals with issues including poverty, domestic abuse, sexual harassment, manipulation and murder.

The K-drama follows the lives of five college roommates ranging in age from 18 to 28. Eun-jae is a meek freshman who’s too shy to ask an upperclassman to return her pen and much too afraid to tell her roommates not to eat all of the homemade preserves her mother sent her off with. Ye-eun is a culinary arts student who’s more interested in her inattentive boyfriend than anything else. Ji-won is an eccentric journalism major (haha!) who says she can see a ghost in their apartment. Yi-na has a series of older, rich boyfriends and doesn’t seem to be studying much of anything other than her shoe collection. And at 28, Jin-myung’s life revolves around working three part-time jobs to pay for her tuition and pay off her family’s bills.

Throughout the course of the series, we will watch as misunderstandings are eventually addressed and discussed. While they aren’t necessarily best friends, there is an understanding that they will watch out for each other and, even more importantly, stand up for one another when it really counts.

One of the things that I really disliked about this series was Yi-na’s friendship with a much older man. His age wasn’t the issue. But at one point, he viciously strangles her. Near the end of the series, she buys him a gift and has lunch with him.

Look, you can forgive someone and move on. But sharing a meal with someone who clearly wanted you dead is not OK.

I’ll include more in my Spoiler Alert below.

Airdates: Twelve 70-minute episodes aired on JTBC from July 22 to August 27, 2016.

Notable cast: The cast members include Park Eun-bin (whose penultimate episode of “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” airs tomorrow) and “Minari” star Han Ye-ri. It also includes two actors who had flashback roles in “Healer.” Ji Il-joo plays Ye-eun’s boyfriend. And Son Seung-won portrays a college newspaper editor who Ji-won develops a crush on. Son was arrested for driving under the influence, which resulted in a serious automobile accident. He was also driving without a valid drivers license. He served 1½ years in prison and was released in May 2020. He hasn’t acted since 2018 and there has been speculation that his acting career is over.

Also, when Yoon Yong-joon made his appearance in the K-drama as a long-haired senior student that Eun-jae had a crush on, I thought it was Super Junior’s Heechul at first. (He also looks a bit like Park Hae-jin.)

And did Shin Hyun-soo (Eun-jae’s boyfriend) remind anyone else of Park Seo-joon?

Speaking of comparisons, didn’t Ryu Hwa-young (who played Yi-na) give off Park Shin-hye vibes? Anyone else think so?

Spoiler Alert: Yi-na wasn’t a college student. She has been working as a high-priced escort and when the truth comes out, the majority of her roommates want to kick her out. They even scrub the toilet seat after she has used it, because they consider her to be dirty. Yi-na’s YOLO attitude appears to stem from an earlier near-death experience where she almost drowned. And where she witnessed another young passenger drown. (The series doesn’t mention it, but I couldn’t stop thinking that the girls may have been passengers on the Sewol ferry that sunk.) The older man I had mentioned above is the father of the girl who died.

Jin-myung has to question her own moral issues when a manager at the restaurant where she works gives her preferential treatment if she lets him put his hand on her thighs, share meals with him etc. As she later says, she knew exactly what he was doing and passively went along with it because she needed the money. She didn’t sleep with him, but she knew that his expectations were escalating. Meanwhile, she repeatedly turns down a sous chef who wants to date her, because she doesn’t believe she deserves to be happy. (He’s played by Yoon Park, who was so good as a kinda sorta but not really a serial killer in “You are My Spring.”)

Ye-eun has been in a toxic two-year relationship with a boyfriend who gives her freebie samples as an anniversary gift, calls her when he wants sex and ignores her more often than not. Still, she is in love with the idea of being in love. Physically, Doo-young looks perfect. Handsome and with an easy smile, he appears to be a nice boy. But he is livid when he believes she’s looking down on him (because she attends a more prestigious school than he does). At one point, he kidnaps her, ties her up and beats her.

There is a weird subplot where Eun-jae recalls childhood memories of having poisoned her father, in order to prevent him from killing her mother. She remembers switching their thermoses. But did she really? Or was it simply a traumatic recollection of something that never actually happened?

More poignant was the plot where Jin-myung’s mother takes her son off life support. After watching him in a state of near death (but showing no signs of life) for the past six years, she essentially euthanizes him and is arrested and sent to prison. Mother and daughter grieve for the loss of their son and brother, respectively. But you can also sense their relief that not only is he no longer suffering, but neither are they.

As of this writing, I’ve finished the first episode of the second season and am wondering what the heck the writers were thinking. Sure, some of the acting was over-the-top in the first season, but the start of this followup season is not true to the characters as we know them. I’ll still watch the rest and hope it gets better. But so far, it’s just meh.

© 2022 JAE-HA KIM | All Rights Reserved