Stream It Or Skip It: ‘So Not Worth It’ On Netflix, A Korean Sitcom About College Students In An International Dorm

Most sitcoms we’ve seen coming from East Asia — mainly Korea — are generally single-camera, with no laugh track. If anything, a plinky soundtrack is the neon sign to viewers that “THIS IS FUNNY; PLEASE LAUGH.” But So Not Worth It has more of a feel of an American multicamera sitcom, with an international cast. Is it any good?

SO NOT WORTH IT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: People walking around the public area of an international dorm are watching videos on their phones, shown above their heads as they walk.

The Gist: Because the dorm is international, it houses students from all over the world (but their Korean is somehow impeccable!). The RA is Sae-wan (Park Se-wan), who seems to be strict in enforcing dorm rules, but when someone loses her key, we find out that rules can be broken — for a price. In fact, she has an entire price list printed out on a laminated, foldable card. The reason why becomes apparent when you see her working three different jobs on the weekends. She’s busting her tail to get through college, because her family isn’t nearly as wealthy as those of the other students are.

Some of the other students in the dorm are Sam (Choi Young-jae), an Australian who has been known to lie pretty much all the time; Minnie (Minnie), who’s from Thailand and is hooked on K-dramas and likes to party; Carson (Carson Allen), an American with a temper who seems to be a super-senior; Terris (Terris Brown), from Trinidad and Tobago, gets into relationships quickly; Hans (Joakim Sorensen) is a Swedish student obsessed with following the rules; and Hyun-min (Han Hyun-min) is a Korean student who desperately wants to live in the dorm because his commute is so long.

A new American student, Jamie (Shin Hyun-seung), arrives, and Sae-wan tricks him into thinking he cracked the screen on her phone. To help pay for it, she takes him to the various jobs she works, but he’s nothing but a klutz. He then doubles over sick, and finds out he’s so “sensitive” that he hasn’t pooped in the shared bathroom for a week. In the meantime, Carson rages when she sees that her prized umbrella is missing; Hans thinks he took it and then lost it, and Hyun-min sees this as a chance to take the blame for it, so Hans doesn’t report him to Sae-wan.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? So Not Worth It reminds us of Saved By The Bell: The College Years, except with everyone speaking Korean.

Our Take: In a lot of ways, So Not Worth It is formatted to look like a young-adult American sitcom. It’s not a family sitcom, due to language and themes, but it certainly seems like something that could fit among Netflix’s American multi-cams. It’s brightly-lit, the jokes go at a sitcom’s pace, and there’s even a laugh-track. The jokes themselves aren’t funny. But the characters are just appealing enough, and the vision of the show just ambitious enough, to give viewers at least some incentive to watch.

The situations are silly sitcom setups, usually involving misunderstandings and fear of consequences. Hans is so afraid of Carson’s wrath when it comes to her umbrella, for instance, that he does the math when Hyun-min says that she’ll break his bones in 20,000 pieces. But it does see like writers Seo Eun-jung and Baek Ji-hyun are eager to explore the students’ back stories, starting with Sae-wan.

Sae-wan is definitely the most completely-realized character in the first episode, as we find out why she’s so eager to earn money any way she can. And it seems like she bonds with Jamie in some fashion by the end of their weekend of labor. What we hope is that the other characters get some stories of their own so we can see something deeper from each, even if those plots are a bit on the silly side.

Sex and Skin: All talk, including Minnie sporting the “lost-my-pants look” because she actually lost her pants.

Parting Shot: As Sae-wan sleeps on the bus, Jamie talks in English with someone on the phone. “Yes, it’s working out fine so far; no one knows. I’ll make sure no one finds out.” Ominous music plays.

Sleeper Star: We’re impressed with the Korean skills of all the non-Korean actors. It’s not an easy language to speak truly fluently, but all of these actors have been in Korean shows and movies for years, so their language skills are all pretty on point.

Most Pilot-y Line: Every character is introduced with a series of hashtags that flash up so fast that they’re hard to read completely. But all the hashtags give a quick intro to what each character is all about.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While So Not Worth It isn’t the funniest show out there, it does try to make an effort to make its characters more than just goofy stereotypes. At least we hope that’s what’s going to happen as the season goes on.

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.

Stream So Not Worth It On Netflix