SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU STILL PLAN ON WATCHING THIS SERIES OR HAVEN’T FINISHED IT YET!!

20th Century Boy and Girl
(20세기 소년소녀 / 20 Segi Sonyeon Sonyeo)
MyDramaList: 6.0/10

It’s been a while! My apologies for the long break, a lot has happened in the meantime which disabled me to watch on a regular basis: one of it being the introduction of Netflix to our home, and it’s weird how difficult it is to go back to Korean dramas after bingewatching some American sitcoms. Suddenly everything just seems so cheesy. Besides that, I’m currently going through a very short notice move-out, so instead of my usual spot behind the screen I’ve been spending a lot of my free time cleaning out my room.
That, and this drama was another 32 episodes drama so it took me a while to finish.

First of all, I can’t exactly remember why this drama was on my list but it was in-between the 2017 batch I still wanted to see and I guess I just read the summary and thought it would be nice. But when I started watching it, it turned out completely different from what I’d expected… even though I’m not sure what it was that I expected.
It reminded me of one of those Japanese dramas depicting a trio of women in their 40s who still aren’t married and hold drink meetings and gossip about love interests and stuff (Around 40, Otona Joshi, Last Cinderella etc.). It was the first time I saw a Korean version, though.

20th Century Boy and Girl is about a group of 3 girls and 1 boy who have been friends since childhood. The three girls have been friends since they were little and the boy came along during high school. They called themselves The Bongo Four, because the four of them were always driven to school in a bongo van.
About 20 years later, all three girls are now 35 years old and still single. Sa Jin Jin (played by Han Ye Seul) is a very famous actress and model, Han Ah Reum (played by Ryu Hyun Kyung) is a flight attendant who is very keen on getting married, and Jang Young Shim (played by Lee Sang Hee) is a lawyer in the making who still lives with her parents. They are suddenly reunited with their fellow Bongo-member Gong Ji Won (played by Kim Ji Suk) and tension arises because all three girls used to have a crush on him.
However, the major tension lies between Jin Jin and Ji Won, since they used to date in high school without anyone knowing. Ji Won disappeared all of a sudden, moving away with his mom, and this is the first time they are reunited. He is now a succesful businessman.

This is the main set-up for the story. The only other notable characters include Ji Won’s step-brother Lee Chul Min, stage-named Anthony (played by Lee Sang Woo), who used to be a member of a famous boyband back in the day. Jin Jin also stanned him like crazy then. To boast Jin Jin’s reputation after some bad promotion, she is put on ‘We Got Married’ (an actual Korean TV show in which 2 celebrities have to pretend to be married – because Korean TV shows) together with Anthony and this creates some sparkles. However, still a fan, it is Jin Jin’s main concern to make sure he is comfortable more than that she has actual romantic feelings for him. As is probably a thing with idols and their fans, it’s not that she wants him for herself; she doesn’t even count herself as someone who is within his league. Also, her relationship with Ji Won grows rapidly enough to make sure he doesn’t get the wrong idea either.
Han Ah Reum on her part is also reunited with a crush from high school, Jung Woo Sung (played by Ahn Se Ha)- only in this case he turned out to be much less attractive as an adult than he used to be. Nevertheless, he is a doctor and they still get along great.
Young Shim gets into a small law firm where it’s just her and her superior, Kang Kyung Seok (played by Oh Sang Jin), and even though he seems like a bit of an oddball, they become closer.

I think the main theme of the series was to show a lot of different relationships: friendships, marriages, brother-sister relationships etc. It didn’t really have a storyline besides the romance between Jin Jin and Ji Won and the depiction of turbulence in the lives of celebrities.
Jin Jin’s family is another story in itself. She still lives in the same building as her parents (her mother performed by the impeccable, I will keep saying it, Kim Mi Kyung) and has a younger brother and an older sister who for some reason they don’t talk about. Her older sister remains a mystery for a long time, we only find out she left home and disappeared for some reason. Still, she gives her parents anonymous calls. The father (played by another good actor named Kim Chang Wan) is visibly still hung up on his older daughter’s disappearance, but it seems like he knows where she lives and visits from time to time just to bring her some food (he owns a restaurant), but without ever meeting her in person.
I have to say that after finishing the series and they made up with the older sister and got her to come home again, I completely missed the reason she left in the first place. In the beginning, some hints were dropped about her, but I don’t think it was ever specified what happened that she had to leave home. Only that it had something to do with a romance that went wrong or something. Maybe it just completely went past me, but I would’ve liked more clarity on that.
One random thing about the younger brother, Sa Min Ho (played by Shin Won Ho). I knew the actor from Legend of the Blue Sea where he almost didn’t talk so first of all it was funny to see him in a more active role. However, I couldn’t help but wonder why they gave him this really dull pink hair (it wasn’t even bright pink or anything, not a great color). There was one time where he dyed his hair brown for a job interview and that looked so good on him I was like YES THIS PLEASE. And then the next episode he was back to the pinkish thing again. May seem irrelevant, but those are things I need to get off my chest in these reviews xD

My average opinion of this drama was that it didn’t really peak my attention. The fact that there was no clear storyline isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as the storylines present are interesting enough. However, I feel like it fell short in terms of character development and suspense.
I didn’t end up empathizing as much with the characters as I’m used to.

First of all, Jin Jin. I knew Han Ye Seul from Madame Antoine and I really liked her in that drama because her character was really humane, she was a single mother getting into a romance with a younger guy while constantly feeling too old. However – and this happens a lot for me, just my opinion – even when it’s really good actors, whenever they get a role based on their outward appearance (for instance when their role is described as someone who is very beautiful) it just strips away a lot of sincerity for me. While Han Ye Seul is undoubtedly pretty, I really felt like her face was her main asset in this drama. Her personality didn’t shine through, she just had to look a certain way and talk and move a certain way for it to become clear that ‘this is someone who is very feminine and loveable’. She was a walking skincare beauty model in this series and that bothered me a little. She just became the lady who had been raised by an entertainment agency to look pretty and be protected and cared for by men.
In contrast, Ryu Hyun Kyung and Lee Sang Hee, whom I’d never seen or heard of before, became very plain in comparison, mostly in terms of looks. I really don’t like judging people from the outside, but the assembly of the three girls felt a bit weird to me, since Jin Jin was living in an entirely different world.
I had difficulties empathizing with Ah Reum’s character as well. I found her a bit shallow as it seems that she mainly cared about appearances and getting married, as if that was the ultimate way in which she could prove herself to be succesful in life. She kept changing her mind though, even when she and Woo Sung finally start dating. She eventually realizes that she may have been too focussed on the idea of getting married because a lot of younger people around her were getting married. But Woo Sung was such a bean and cared for her so much that I got a bit annoyed at Ah Reum when he was serenading her and she just seemed super uncomfortable.
By the way, I love Ahn Se Ha, he is such an example of a good actor who doesn’t get a lot of serious roles because maybe he’s not considered to be handsome enough.

Young Shim was the only character that I could empathize with, even though she was one of the people who possibly got the least romantic development (I was totally rooting for her and her superior to get together). But her situation at home seemed the most real to me. You could see her having dinner with her parents, eating in silence while her father was nagging her mother about every single thing. Her mother took every chance she got to get a moment alone with her daughter, away from her husband. Young Shim’s father was terrible, honestly. Not a shred of gratitude for the fact his wife still makes him food even though he only yells at her and just points out everything she does wrong. Young Shim isn’t the child of the house, she acts like an adult, she sits there and watches it happen, but still leaves it to her mom to handle the situation. The handful of scenes with Young Shim gave her character more depth than Jin Jin throughout the entire series.

I feel like there were some good storylines in this drama that could have been given more depth. Of course, I’m not saying every character needs a shocking background story to make their personality unique, in Jin Jin’s case she’s always been treated like a beautiful and popular girl so she never experienced hardships when it came to how she looked or how she was perceived by others.
Ah Reum has enough confidence to get herself through situations, and the only times she loses to her confidence is when she starts comparing herself to others who are younger than her and already further progressed in the social stratus of life (both career-wise and relationship-wise). So when that happens, she starts drinking and messing herself up to escape from it. When it eventually does come her way, she starts doubting everything.
Young Shim seems to be the only one who’s not focussed on finding romance; she even at some point says she doesn’t want to get married. She’s focussed on her career, pursuing her dream to become a lawyer and she’ll see what comes along on the way there.
Ji Won was never able to let go of Jin Jin, even though he was at a certain point close to getting married. I felt like his character existed purely to support Jin Jin and provide her with a love interest, which is a shame because after seeing him in Another Oh Hae Young, I’ve seen Kim Ji Suk’s acting skills and he can do so much more than just be a kindly smiling gentleman. It was my first time seeing him as a main lead, by the way, maybe it’s the only drama in which he plays the male lead, I don’t know. But I just know that this role didn’t showcase his acting talents that much.

Lee Chul Min aka Anthony (by the way, props for creating a fictional boyband with members all named after male characters from the old anime Candy Candy) was just as dull to me. No offense, again I’m just stating my opinion, but Lee Sang Woo’s face just didn’t do anything for me. He only had one single expression throughout the entire series and he came across as really stiff almost all the time. I found it really hard to read expression from his face. Same with Jin Jin, although in her case it was because she sometimes made really comical exaggerated expressions that I couldn’t really place. In the beginning I was really confused about how she felt about Ji Won returning. Whenever he wasn’t there she was all giddy, seemingly super psyched that her high school crush was back – but as soon as she had to face him she started acting really aloof. I didn’t really get where she was going with her emotions and I couldn’t read it from her expressions clearly either.

One more thing about the whole concept of the series: I’m wondering what exactly the writers tried to convey with the title ’20th Century Boy and Girl’. Maybe this was the thing that differed so much from what I had been expecting. I thought it would be a story about a group of people living in the 20th century and depicting typical 20th century situations. While this was still the case, I find the choice to make the female lead a celebrity an odd choice. I would have been more interested in a story about ordinary people’s lives finding their way in contemporary society, like for instance Fight For My Way did. It worked a bit in case of Ah Reum and Young Shim, because they were dealing with everyday-life worries, but to choose the entertainment industry as the main point of view… I understand that depicting the influence of the media on modern-day celebrities is something very contemporary, but I personally would’ve liked a bit more accessibility as a normal non-celebrity person. I can’t really explain it properly, I just think it would have for some reason been more interesting to me if they were all just ordinary people and the entertainment/media aspect was accessed through a celebrity side character, Anthony for instance.

I’m a bit sorry to say that this series didn’t really grasp me as much as I’d hoped. Then again, maybe it was partly because I started watching a bunch of Netflix sitcoms in-between and then it became harder to get back into the K-Drama style and I had trouble accessing the emotional ranges in K-Dramas when it comes to relationships. Mostly I was just rolling my eyes about how giddy Jin Jin and Ji Won were together.

Anyways, the next drama on my list is another one I’ve been really excited to watch, so I hope to give you more positive reviews in the near future!