Sometimes we think that the creators of Korean romcoms put a bunch of professions on slips of paper, put them in a hat, select two, and write the first episodes based on those professions. How else would you think the people who created the new Netflix series Sold Out On You came up with the idea of a home shopping host and a mushroom farmer falling for each other?
Opening Shot: A producer exasperatedly walks through the halls of HIT, a home shopping network.
The Gist: Dam Ye-jin (Chae Won-bin) is one of the top hosts at HIT, using unconventional methods to sell the items she puts on the air. For instance, she makes her producers sweat when she’s not in the studio for a cleaning mitt demo, until she demonstrates how well it cleans live from a window-washing perch on a skyscraper. She is constantly finding new products to sell on the air, but her obsession with her job comes at the cost of a personal life, as we see when her latest boyfriend dumps her.
Meanwhile, in Deokpung village, farmer Matthew Lee (Ahn Hyo-seop) is constantly doing favors for people in the village, even though he grumbles when he does so, and always says it’s the last time he does it. He also hates it when people call him Mechoori.
Dam Ye-jin may sell a lot of units, but she’s not the top seller in terms of sales in won; Ji Yun-ji (Park Ah-in) has that honor because she sells cosmetics, which is something Ye-jin refuses to do. At first we don’t know why she refuses to sell cosmetics, but we later find out that she sold a cosmetic line that gave people adverse skin reactions like rashes. It’s one of the many aspects of her life that haunt her to the point where she takes a cocktail of pills to help her sleep.
When Dam Ye-jin loses a primetime slot to Yun-ji, who has signed a cosmetics company run by the exec whose previous, rash-inducing line was who Ye-jin used to represent, Ye-jin is told that she needs to bring in a big French cosmetic company if she wants that slot back.
An executive for that company, Seo Eric (Kim Bum) arrives in South Korea, to renew a raw materials contract with one of their best-selling serums. The serum uses the white-flowered nuri mushroom, and Matthew runs the company that farms those mushrooms. Through the company’s CEO, he repeatedly refuses to renew his contract with the French company.
Eric, bored and frustrated with the stonewalling, gladly takes a meeting with Ye-jin; he agrees to sign with HIT, but she needs to get the raw materials contract renewed. This puts Ye-jin and Matthew on a collision course — almost literally.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sold Out On You is similar to any number of Korean romcom series, like Dynamite Kiss.
Our Take: Sold Out On You seems to adhere to a pretty standard K-romcom format: We get a deep glimpse into the lives of the two main characters, what works about their lives and what doesn’t, then we get the situation that puts them together, then we get the meet-cute. Really, the only differences tend to be when the meet-cute happens. In this show, it happens at the very end of a 64-minute first episode, which doesn’t give us much of an indication of what the hate-turns-to-love dynamic of Ye-jin and Matthew is going to be.
The first episode works fine as a setup episode, though, as we get to find out a lot about where Ye-jin’s confidence comes from, what gets in her way, and some of the past events that have made her into a pill-dependent insomniac. We know less about Matthew other than the fact that he’s a bit grumpy but has a heart of gold.
We also get a lot of information about how the home shopping business operates, at least in South Korea. That part of the first episode could have been cut down a bit, but we guess it’s being used as a source of comedy. Of course, that comedy generally consists of people yelling, but that’s been par for the course on K-romcoms.
Performance Worth Watching: Ahn Hyo-seop is stoic but warm as Matthew Lee. Everyone in the village sees through his grumpiness, and we see him briefly smile as he drops off townspeople he drives through town on his tractor.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Ye-jin and Matthew confront each other on a one-lane road: Matthew in his tractor and Ye-jin in her Porsche.
Sleeper Star: Shin Dong-mi plays Dong Hyeon-gi, Ye-jin’s producer and friend, who is frustrated by Ye-jin but also seems to believe in her more than anyone else.
Most Pilot-y Line: Hyeon-gi talks to Ye-jin about her “four-year friendship” with her, which is a way anyone describes a friendship while talking to that friend.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Sold Out On You takes its sweet time to get to the meet-cute, but the byproduct of that leisurely pace is that we get to know the main characters pretty well before they meet.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
