Stream It Or Skip It: ‘My First First Love’ On Netflix, A Korean Dramedy About Young Housemates Coming Of Age

Korean rom-coms have certain elements that make them attractive to American audiences. One of them happen to be K-Pop stars. Three of them are in Netflix’s new series My First First Love. Read on to find out more about this coming of age story.

MY FIRST FIRST LOVE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A family at a fancy restaurant, celebrating a birthday. Yoon Tae-o (Ji Soo) is turning 20 and he laments that he wants to find a girl.

The Gist: Tae-o’s dad is ready to set him up in a small apartment, but Tae-o says he’d rather take care of his grandfather’s house, because it sits empty. His dad makes him promise not to bring any women over, saying he’ll drop by randomly once per week. As we flash through a couple of years, Tae-o mentions that not one woman has stayed there, just his freeloading buddies Choe Hun (Kang Tae-o) and Seo Do-hyeun (Jung Jin-young).

He’s been best friends with Han Song-i (Jung Chae-yeon) since they were both kids, and at various times he’s wanted to be more than friends, but in high school, he overhears her telling her friends that he’s not her type. But they’ve stayed friends, and he gives her a ride to her college classes every day. She’s having some issues, though; the house she grew up in is being foreclosed and the items inside are getting repossessed, and she can’t get in touch with her mom. She comes home from work one day to see everything being loaded onto a truck by the new owner. One of the people loading it: Seo Do-hyeun, who has no idea she’s buddies with Tae-o.

Choe Hun’s father kicks him out of the house once and for all after seeing his son singing at the wedding of his boss’ son; he’s not happy his son is pursuing a musical career, and he beats his adult son on the butt with a golf club. He leaves, wearing his mother’s dress and heels, because his father told him to leave everything he bought with family money. Finally, another friend of Tae-o’s, O Ga-rin (Choi Ri), the daughter of a rich woman who breaks away from her handlers and decides to go on a “vacation” as a regular person. While Tae-o is out on a blind date that he hopes brings him the woman of his dreams, his four friends gather at his gate, three of them hoping that Tae-o gives them a place to crash.

Our Take: My First First Love has everything you want in a Korean YA dramedy. Three of the five stars are in K-Pop groups (Jung Chae-yeon is in I.O.I., Jung Jin-young is in B1A4 and Kang Tae-oh is in 5urprise). They’re all young and pretty, and all have varying degrees of Gen Z angst. And they’re all looking for the same thing: to find love and grow the heck up. So, even though the first episode of this eight-episode series takes a long time to set up what’s going to go forward, there’s nothing about it that wouldn’t scratch the itch of anyone who loves this kind of stuff.

The idea behind this show is that all of Tae-o’s friends are going to move in with him in his grandfather’s huge house and they’ll all likely fall in love with each other. As it is, we know that Tae-o has a lifetime crush on Song-i, who caught the eye of Do-hyeun when he was clearing out her house. And it seems that Ga-rin and Hun might have a connection. So it’ll be fun to see all of these people try to figure things out while living in close quarters like a Korean version of Friends.

Can the show be silly? Can the tonal shifts between stories be jarring? And did Ga-rin get a bit of short shrift when it comes to her story and how she knows Tae-o? Sure. But the storytelling potential of the show is seen not only in the flashback where Tae-o tries to console Song-i after her father dies, but with the idea of the “first love” and the “last love”. When Song-i hears about it from her college buddies, we see handsome but approachable Tae-o as the “first love” and blunt but dependable Do-hyeun as the “last love.” Will Song-i see it the same way? That’s the most intriguing thing we want to see.

Sex and Skin: Nothing; as much as Tae-o wanted to live the “promiscuous life,” there’s nothing of the sort in the first episode.

Parting Shot: While his friends sort out things at his house, Tae-o goes on his blind date. He sees a beautiful woman walk by, gulps, and thinks to himself that he hopes his blind date looks like that.

Sleeper Star: We like Kang Tae-o’s energy as Chone Hun, because it feels like his character will have some actual personality and cause a ruckus in the house. He seems to do a good job rocking his mom’s heels, too.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Hun’s parents see him singing at the wedding, the lip syncing he’s doing isn’t very good.

Our Call: STREAM IT, especially if you’re a K-Pop fan. If you’re not, then stream it if you just want to watch pretty people doing pretty people things.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream My First First Love on Netflix