Kim's Convenience (TV series) : Really funny for a certain audience
I think this show would be particularly enjoyed by anyone who has lived overseas in an unfamiliar culture (that's me) or someone who has lived in an urban area that has groups of immigrants who try to assimilate to the local culture but experience difficulties in doing so.
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The Kim family lives in Toronto, they are a second-generation Korean family where the kids fully understand the Canadian language and culture but the parents, who have also lived in Canada for a long time, still struggle to understand every nuance of the place. All members of the family mean well, but a majority of the humor comes from the parents still hanging on to their cultural roots. This creates hilarity when the Mother (called omma) and Father (called appa) sometimes accidentally say kind of insulting things when they completely didn't intend it to be that way. By the way "Omma" and "Appa" merely mean "mother" and "father" in Korean.
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Most of the show takes place inside the Kim's Convenience store and the show is based around the day-to-day interaction that "Appa" has with his customers. The story also follows the kids in their daily lives and this provides a contrast of how little of the Korean heritage they still contain, as it seems to fade dramatically from parents to kids. This is a very real thing that happens (at least in North America) and I have seen it with my own eyes. I now speak more Thai than all of the 2nd generation Thai people my age that I knew in the USA before I left. This same thing is exhibited in the show where the two kids who are features struggle to speak any more than just a couple of words of Korean.
The trailer really doesn't do the show justice, but I think most people don't watch those anyway. I don't know if most people would like this show unless they have some sort of way of relating to it. This show speaks to me on a personal level because I have now lived more of my adult life in Asia than USA and yet I still struggle with cultural differences on a regular basis. Like the Kim's in the show, I don't try to fight it and just "go with the flow" as best I can. However, although I don't know what I sound like to a Thai person, I would imagine I sound about as silly as Mr. Kim does in this show.
I can't say this show is amazing, because it isn't. However, it is steadily funny and the episodes are only 22 minutes long and this is just perfect for me.
on a scale of "urgh" to "wowsers!" I give Kim's Convenience a score of....
The fact that it deals with cultural differences, and especially the generational and cultural gap between immigrants, seems like a very interesting concept, and if it is explored with humor it is much better
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I just finished bingeing 3 straight seasons. A true sitcom, you can jump in and out anywhere in between. This show is pure hilarity! I agree that it may not be for everybody, but everyone in my house liked it...
Kim's Convenience, we can compare it to Fresh Off the Boat and the experience is fascinating. Both are about an Asian family, two points of view, but also two ways to tell a story. Without surprises, the American version in its form is extremely classic: it is first and foremost a family comedy (which the public apparently wants to see) and when the ethnic background of the characters is taken into account, Clichés are more easily used (the mother is very strict with her children, for example, about their studies, who obviously prefer to behave like their lazy American peers).
That is kind of sad that the kids don't have much of their heritage left. I know there have been several shows similar to this that have played on broadcast tv over the years. The one called All-American Girl from 1994 is the main one that comes to mind for me. Thanks for the in depth review!