Stream It Or Skip It?

Dynamite Kiss, a new Korean rom-com on Netflix, deals in a lot of coincidences and misunderstandings. There are so many of them in the first episode, that by the end of it, your head is spinning, and you haven’t even gotten to the most essential part of the premise yet. Read on to find out more.

Opening Shot: A woman walks into a building; we see her high heels first. She’s the CEO, and a handsome man comes into her office and proposes marriage, even though it’s his first day of work.

The Gist: Go Da-rim (Ahn Eun-jin) is dreaming on the train on her way to a lecture at a trade school. She’s been studying to get a civil-service job, but it’s been taking her a long time; she’s over 30 and has been doing it for five years, to the point where the teacher calls her a “zombie” student.

In the meantime, Gong Ji-hyeok (Jang Ki-yong) is a young consultant who develops startups into companies that become valuable properties. A bidding war develops for one company he’s working with; it sells for ten times the asking price, but on one condition: He secures the services of a top AI programmer.

Because of various lies Da-rim’s younger sister has been telling her future in-laws about Da-rim’s employment status, her sister thinks it’s best if Da-rim skips her wedding; she gets Da-rim a trip to Juju Island, where she’s never been. She gladly takes the offer, hoping it’ll help her forget about things for a few days, especially the sting of her last breakup, who just happens to be the programmer Ji-hyeok is looking for.

The paths of Da-rim and Ji-hyeok when a drunk Da-rim tackles Ji-hyeok, thinking he’s going to jump off a cliff. They both go to the hospital, and he sticks her with the bill. When she finds out they’re at the same hotel, she confronts him, but he has a proposal for her when he realizes she has a connection to the programmer he wants to offer a job to.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Dynamite Kiss is along the same lines as a number of Korean romantic comedies, like It’s Okay To Not Be Okay.

Our Take: There are a lot of coincidences in the first episode of Dynamite Kiss, so many that it’s just going to take too long to list them all. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen two characters get put together using so many plot machinations, and what blows our mind is that the first episode doesn’t really give viewers an idea of what the story really is.

Gong Ji-hyeok really doesn’t believe in love — until he kisses Go Da-rim at the end of the first episode. There are literally fireworks, and when their arrangement is done, she disappears. But at some point in the future, she ends up working for him at a baby products company. Only now, she’s pretending to be married to her neighbor and friend, Kim Sun-woo (Kim Mu-jun) and also pretends she’s the mother of Sun-woo’s son, Joon (Chae Ja-woon).

As we said, that’s a lot of coincidences, hidden identities and misunderstandings to navigate through. Korean rom-coms have a lot of these, but Dynamite Kiss has more than its share of it, and it makes for an eye-rolling watch. It seems that every few minutes, romantic music plays as one of the leads looks at the other in a different way than they have in the past. It’s a distraction, and it really doesn’t give viewers a chance to explore either of the leads.

Performance Worth Watching: Of the two leads, we find out the most about Ahn Eun-jin ‘s character Go Da-rim, and she seems to embrace the goofy parts of her character more than anyone else in the cast does.

Sex And Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Like we said, when Go Da-rim and Gong Ji-hyeok kiss, fireworks literally go off.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Chae Ja-woon as Joon, because he’s adorable.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the programmer breaks up with Da-rim, he calls her “a limp piece of over-blanched spinach.” Wow, it’s harsh… and oddly specific.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Dynamite Kiss takes forever to develop its story, and there are so many coincidences and misunderstandings, it makes an old episode of Three’s Company look subtle by comparison.

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.