[HanCinema's Drama Review] "Oh! Young-shim" Episode 1

Young-shim (played by Song Ha-yoon) is a television producer who can never seem to live down the fact that her father Dae-gwang (played by Song Young-jae) made her the protagonist of his most popular creation, a comic book about middle school students where she's a little silly and spunky. Somewhat confusingly, thugh, Young-shim is first made aware of this plagiarism of her life through the animated TV show version. So I'm not sure which came first, the comic or the TV show.

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These details aren't especially relevant to "Oh! Young-shim" but then I could say that for a lot of the backstory of this drama. "Oh! Young-shim" is a pretty straightforward romantic comedy, although it is somewhat counterintuitively one without much in the way of male characters. Young-shim's workplace junior employee Chae-dong (played by Lee Min-jae-II) is mentioned but not really seen and yikes, he's fourteen years younger than her?

For what it's worth, Song Ha-yoon is older than she looks and Lee Min-jae-II is younger than he looks so in context this sexual harassment lawsuit, sorry, workplace romance subplot isn't as weird as it sounds. Especially since Chae-dong is only the second lead. The first lead role goes Mark Wang (played by Donghae) who is also very obviously Kyeong-tae, Young-shim's first love from childhood and I think another character from the cartoon but given how Kyeong-tae's leaving for the United States is presented as this traumatic event for Young-shim, it seems like his being in the cartoon everyone namedrops in her presence would be a bigger deal.

"Oh! Young-shim" isn't exactly bad so much as it is embodying nearly every K-Drama cliche imaginable to no apparent purpose, especially since a lot of these cliches were more common ten to twenty years ago than they are today. I was under the impression that the current trend in K-Dramas is to at least feign some plausibility in television production storylines. "Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha" did that, or tried to, in its variety show subplot.

"Shooting Star" is a more aggressively front and center example. Yet Young-shim is not only bad at her job, she seems to take command of a dating show against the will of her boss. Young-shim is silly and spunky all right, but has no apparent redeeming qualities beyond that, to the extent you could even call those redeeming qualities. So I'm not surprised that the opening ratings for "Oh! Young-shim" have been lackluster, to the tune of .647% in the first and .386% in the second.

Written by William Schwartz

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"Oh! Young-shim" is directed by Kim Kyung-eun, Oh Hwan-min, written by Jeon Seon-yeong, and features Song Ha-yoon, Donghae, Lee Min-jae-II, Jung Woo-yeon, Cho Yu-ha, Um Chae-young. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2023/05/15~Now airing, Mon, Tue 22:00 on ENA, Genie TV, TVING.