Old School Intern (2020)

Just a little bit brilliant

Note: The first section of my review is spoiler-free, but the second half won't be.

It feels like comedy is a very precious resource this year. To me, at least, with everything going on in the world, Kkondae Intern was a brief but wild respite from the very long, unending quarantine and the stressors of working in essential services through the pandemic. I wanted to laugh away the day, and Kkondae Intern gave me that.

On the surface, the story is not very compelling, especially with the description we're given. KYC is a man who landed his first job after graduation, only to find himself working beneath a rigid superior whose poor treatment bogged him down until he one day quit and joined a rival company, where he climbed the ladder to a high position in the marketing department. It isn't until watching for ourselves that we know what exactly transpired then, and further in the story we get to see the seeds sowed in the past that led to that very important moment in KYC and LMS's lives.

Many people know what it's like to work under a boss who doesn't treat them well or who they simply don't get along with. A big part of the drama's appeal is the role reversal between KYC and LMS. After pulling himself up at another company, KYC is given the opportunity for revenge when LMS, his former boss, is hired on as a senior intern in his department. He takes full advantage of the opportunity which is both fun and hilarious to watch, but if that were the whole drama then there wouldn't be much fun to it after the first few episodes. Instead, Kkondae Intern uses their past as a starting point for one of the most unique and enjoyable friendships I've seen all year.

What I really appreciated, though, was how 3-dimensional the characters were. Nobody, between our two main characters or anyone on their team, or even most of the antagonists that worked against them throughout the story, are simply good or bad people. Everyone makes mistakes and sometimes they throw their colleagues under the bus. Sometimes they're selfish or overbearing. They say things out of jealousy or spite. But they're not bad people, not really. They have redeeming features, as well. This is shown best in KYC, who is at first framed as a better person than LMS but is actually petty and egotistical, and in LMS who plays our villain in the first episode of the series, but is generally not that bad of a guy. Further down the road, it's LMS who's sticking his neck out to protect his coworkers, and even KYC.

I do have some complaints, mostly minor, that I'll address. Below contains spoilers, fair warning!

There are some things with the storytelling that are a bit poorly done or badly written. An example off the top of my head is the backstory surrounding the oxbone soup recipe. I could have overlooked something, but from what I remember the restaurant owner's soup started tasting terrible, suddenly, and there wasn't really a reason given. Again, I may have missed something. I tended to watch episodes late at night before bed and there were instances where I was a bit distracted, but from what I remember it just suddenly stated that the soup tasted horrible, and even when LMS followed the recipe it still tasted bad. At some point, there was also a dog that just randomly went into cardiac arrest and needed CPR, which was silly and out of place. They just needed to gain someone's favour, so they shoved that in to quickly solve their problem and it showed.

As much as there were odd holes like that here and there, it didn't affect my enjoyment of the series. The pros outweigh the cons. There was a romance that ended with a proper rejection and there was no malice left afterwards, which was fantastic. It's a rare thing in dramas where a relationship doesn't work out, and rarer still that the parties involved are still on good terms afterwards. We need more of that. Each character had their time to shine, with the exception of a few members of the company, and there was great character growth.

But at the end of the day, Kkondae Intern is just a silly, ridiculous business comedy with a trot soundtrack that sounded refreshing compared to all of the pop in most dramas, and it did what it set out to do. I laughed, I smiled, I enjoyed every minute of it. Maybe you will, too.

Lees verder