Bullet Point Review: What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?
Published in
4 min readApr 30, 2020
- It was the need of the hour to watch something cute and inoffensive and where better to start than this Park Seo Joon and Park Min Young starrer. Oops! I spoke too soon.
- Now, there are cliches and then there are only cliches. What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim suffers greatly from the latter. There is only so much of slow-motion falling into the arms of the other, eyes slowly meeting or sidelong glances you can take if there is no storytelling happening in these between moments. Secretary Kim is completely void of conflict. Both the protagonists have known each other for nine years, so we are robbed of the initial awkwardness or flirting or dislike, whatever interaction the writers wish to incorporate before they fall head over heels for each other. There isn’t any concrete parallel subplot involving the company’s employees or some office event, and if there is, it too passes by without any wrinkle. Only when Lee Tae Hwan’s Lee Sung Yeon enters, his character brings forth some conflict and for some brief moments, there is a spark in the show. I actually sat up waiting to know what is going to happen next, but as soon as Sung Yeon exits the screen, so does that conflict.
So then, what exactly are we watching — two good looking people falling in love? Why then is the show so…unexciting, that too with two great actors at the centre of it? It’s a scenario that we have seen play out a thousand times and would see a thousand more times too. Both the actors' other works like She was Pretty and Her Private Life too followed a very similar plotline with the familiar beats of the funny office environment with its share of quirky characters, a weekend away office workshop, a tragic past shared between the leads, and these shows kept me glued to the screen, but with Secretary Kim, I just couldn’t fight the urge to discontinue the drama within a few episodes.
- The question in the title is what Lee Young Joon (Park Seo Joon) asks himself when Secretary Kim (Park Min Young) informs him that she is going to resign her job. What’s wrong with her that she wants to resign (in Joon Young’s eyes) from working for a perfect company and the perfect boss. That question is asked and answered in the first episode itself. Secretary Kim or Kim Mi So — her name itself sounds like her title (it’s Kim BiSeo, meaning Secretary Kim in Korean), an inkling of how much of her identity she has lost to this job. She even introduces herself as such at many places like the bank, or when talking to her friends. So, her parting words to her successor is to just make some time for herself, in this busy job. This is a very short yet sweet insight to the overwork culture in South Korea, but Mi So isn’t really angry at Joon Young. This job helped pay her family’s debts and now that’s cleared, it’s time to move on to a life where she is in the spotlight. It’s about self-love, which Young Joon has developed an excess of, to the point of being narcissistic and Mi So has too far too less of. This then could be a story of a person discovering themselves, after being set free from the shackles of routine….oh, who am I kidding? This is a rom-com, that too with Park Seo Joon, she will never end up quitting this job. It’s all just my wishful thinking. Having said that, the love story between them felt very uncomfortable to sit through. Young Joon’s love for Mi So only comes out when she decides to resign. So, all those initial romantic gestures are more to convince her to stay and work for him, which comes off as distasteful. It’s Joon Young forcing his authority onto Mi So, and note that she isn’t just any employee in his office, but his secretary, the one who does everything for him from choosing what clothes he wears to driving him home when he is drunk, and even Park Seo Joon’s charm couldn’t camouflage the discomfort. I read online that a change in the writer line up is to be blamed for this because this was supposed to be the narcissistic Young Joon’s way of dealing with his most trustful employee quitting, but a twist later on completely undoes that narrative, hence making the romance quite questionable.
- What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim teaches us that formula is hopeless without a story and makes you appreciate some cliches like the secondary male lead, who actually do bring some contrast to spice up the proceedings.
