Stream It Or Skip It?

The new Netflix reality series My Korean Boyfriend sets up an interesting scenario, where five women from Brazil travel to South Korea to pursue relationships with Korean men they have been dating online. In addition, one of the women was born in South Korea and is trying to piece together her heritage while trying to find love.

Opening Shot: Seoul cityscapes are shown, then we see five women on a bridge making a wish, and hear them in voice over talking about finding love.

The Gist:  In My Korean Boyfriend, five women from Brazil spend a month in Seoul living together and trying to sort out relationships with Korean men that are in various stages. Camila Kim, Katy Dias, Luanny Vital, Mariana Tollendal and Morena Monaco all arrive in Seoul looking for different things from their relationships.

Camila, for instance, left Seoul with her family when she was 3, and she’s returned to piece together her heritage and family history, and perhaps find love along the way. The rest have come here looking to pursue already established relationships that either started online or have continued online after meeting in person. All five women are fans of romantic K-dramas, which fuels their attraction to these men, but various cultural differences — especially when it comes to dating and relationships — are hard to ignore.

Luanny arrives not even sure that her boyfriend, Si Won, is even going to show up; there have been false starts and times he’s asked for money since they started dating. When they finally meet up, she asks him serious questions about his investments and the fact that his family might frown upon her already having a daughter.

Katy had a chance encounter with Jack on a train to Busan some months prior, and she comes to Seoul with their relationship undefined; their first meeting, where he takes her to look at some cherry blossoms, is awkward. Morena and Su-woong are the furthest along, but she’s worried that she’s not making a good impression on his family. And Mariana is meeting Danny face-to-face for the first time after dating online for a few months.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? My Korean Boyfriend feels like 90 Day Fiancé: The Other Way with a K-drama soundtrack.

Our Take: Two things about My Korean Boyfriend fascinate us. Firstly, the women traveling to South Korea may have some baggage, but they all seem to have their stuff together and don’t carry this K-drama fantasy of theirs to obsessive degrees. It’s hard to tell, though, because we don’t get much in the way of backstories for any of them except Camile.

The second thing that fascinates us is how massive the dating gap is between the two countries is. Brazil is a very open society when it comes to dating and sex, and Korea is much less so. But it seems that the four women who already have people to meet in Seoul are trying to bridge that gap, rather than hoping that their more conservative boyfriends loosen up.

All of the relationships are treated with a reasonable amount of respect by the producers, not leaning on sensationalistic moments. Sometimes it’s even sweet, like when Si Won gives Luanny a box that looks like it might have a ring in it, but instead has earbuds in them, so they can speak in their native languages and have their phones translate.

One thing we should mention is that the show has two bonus episodes that has Brazilian celebrities reacting in real time to the regular episodes.

Performance Worth Watching: We liked Katy for a couple of reasons. She seems realistic about her budding relationship with Jack, and her English is the best out of the five women, allowing her to be really expressive with him.

Sex And Skin: It’s all pretty chaste in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Marianna stands in front of a long stairwell in a dramatic shot, waiting to see if Danny comes down those stairs to meet her for the first time.

Sleeper Star: We’re fascinated with Camila’s story, and the fact that she’s going to try to figure out her origins and date in Seoul at the same time.

Most Pilot-y Line: Yes, the show delves into a lot of romantic K-drama cliches, from the walk through a park full of cherry blossoms to the K-pop soundtrack. But what does worry us slightly is if the women are fetishizing having Korean boyfriends, or if their Korean boyfriends are fetishizing having Latin American girlfriends.

Our Call: STREAM IT. My Korean Boyfriend is respectful enough of both the women coming to Seoul for love and the targets of that love that it should be fun to see if these relationships will grow or falter. We also hope to hear more backstory about all the participants as the show goes along.

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.