Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha’ On Netflix, A K-Drama About A Dentist And A Jack-Of-All-Trades In A Seaside Town

It’s always refreshing when a K-drama’s setting moves away from the concrete confines of Seoul. It gives viewers insight into how working-class Koreans live, and gives us a look at architecture, social categories, and all sorts of small-town stuff you just can’t get from a city-based story. Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is based in a tiny shore town, and the quirky people that populate the town are as much a part of the story as the central meet-cute couple is. Read on for more.

Opening Shot: A beached boat sits on a hilltop overlooking a seaside town. Then we see shots of the busy skyline of Seoul.

The Gist: Yoon Hye-jin (Shin Min-a) is a dentist in the city, though she doesn’t mention that when she meets the mother of her next door neighbor in an elevator after she goes for a jog. When she gets to her office, she finds that the lady she met on the elevator is her first patient.

Hye-jin takes good care of her, but she’s called into her boss’ office anyway; the lead doctor tells Hye-jin that she needed to offer more implants to the patient, as she was going to need them eventually anyway. Hye-jin refuses, and decides to speak freely about how her boss is overcharging patients in order to keep the business going. Before her boss can fire her, she throws down her lab coat and quits.

After buying the expensive shoes she wanted, despite not having a job, Hye-jin drives to Gongjin, the seaside village where she had some of the best memories with her father and now-deceased mother. She puts the shoes down in the sand and walks the beach, only to see them disappear. However, a surfer returns one shoe to her. We’ve seen this surfer before; Hong Du-sik (Kim Seon-ho) works as a fisherman and he seems to know and help everyone in town, especially its seniors. He is so helpful, he’s earned the nickname “Chief Hong”. He gives her the bathroom slippers he took from a local raw fish restaurant.

She goes to leave town but her battery is dead. On her way to get help, she hears two kids, one of whom is crying. The one not crying got a tooth knocked out, and after helping him she brings him back to his mom, Yeo Hwa-jung (Lee Bong-ryun) who owns the very same fish restaurant where the slippers came from. She tells Hye-jin that the town desperately needs a dentist.

In the intervening day, she finds herself short on cash at a cafe when all the telecommunication systems get knocked out. She runs into Du-sik, who says she needs to “earn” the money. As he informs all of the town’s “grandmas” of the phone outage, he takes her to the harbor, and says she can gut squid. She also sees him working at a sauna/boarding house that night, and as an auctioneer at the fish market the next day.

When Hye-jin’s car finally gets fixed (after Du-sik jumps it, but then shows her the nail in her tire), she’s driving back to the city when her old boss, who badmouthed her all over Seoul, tells her that she can have her job back if she begs for forgiveness. She then decides to turn around and set up shop in Gonjin.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha is more of a straightforward rom-com than some of the K-dramas that have been appearing on Netflix in recent months. Think of this more along the lines of You Are My Spring, with the mismatched couples and the meet-cutes and some mildly mysterious circumstances.

Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha
Photo: Netflix

Our Take: Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, a remake of a 2004 Korean series called Mr. Handy, Mr. Hong, is one of those shows that work if you’re familiar with the rhythms and pacing of typical K-dramas. Since each episode clocks in at 75 minutes, the show can take its time introducing its characters and the worlds they inhabit, then bring them together to start fanning the flames of romance. This show follows that formula to a T, and while we wish the writers took a bit more time developing their characters, there’s still enough there to make the 75 minutes go by reasonably well.

One of the things that the first episode does well with is set up the world around Hye-jin and Du-sik, which is important, considering the show’s small-town setting. Giving funny situations and lines to people like restaurant owner Hwa-jung and Oh Cheon-jae (Jo Han-chul), who owns the cafe Hye-jin found herself owing 4,000 won to helps round out the story so we’re not always concentrating on the main couple. We thought it was particularly funny that Cheon-jae still tries to capitalize on the hit son he had in 1993, even though many of his thirtysomething customers never heard of the song.

Where the story is going to be propelled going forward is exploring Du-sik’s backstory. We know he was taken care of by the town’s grandmas when his own grandfather died and left him alone, but we’re not sure how he has the ability to work so many jobs — he’s also a realtor and a barista at the cafe. Is he really that hard of a worker or is there some magic floating around him that attracts people to him?

Hye-jin is more of a blank slate; a helpful sort, with a moralistic streak a mile wide, but we don’t know much else about her yet. Perhaps over the sixteen episode first season we’ll find out more, but we sometimes wish that K-dramas would give their female protagonists more dimension right from the start. The ones that have done so have felt like more satisfying shows from the outset.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: When Hye-jin finds Du-sik living on that boat on the top of the hill, and he shows her his realtor badge, she says “What on earth is your deal?” “Me?” he replies. “I’m Chief Hong.” Then we flash back to the previous day to see that he’s been observing her.

Sleeper Star: We liked Kim Min-seo, who plays Cheon-jae’s daughter, Ju-ri; she warns her dad not to take Hye-jin’s bag as collateral for the 4,000 won because anyone wearing bathroom slippers must be carrying a fake bag. Good logic from that kid.

Most Pilot-y Line: The show starts off with a jazzy, adult-sophisticated musical score then devolves into the usual plink-plink “YOU MUST LAUGH HERE” cues that we hate. Sure, this is likely a popular style in South Korea, but it feels like some shows should move on from that format, if only to distinguish themselves.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s enough good things about Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha, including the seashore scenery and the chemistry between the show’s leads, to recommend it. But it moves so slowly at times, the momentum comes close to grinding to a halt.

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 Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha On Netflix

source: nypost.com