Two years after the release ofTo all the boys 2, Self-proclaimed young matchmaker Kitty Song Kovey (Anna Cathcart) decides to take her love life into her own hands.
She convinces her father to send her to a Korean high school, KISS, where her deceased mother studied: heading to Seoul for a year of expatriation and identity research! Eager to surprise Dae (Choi Min-young), her long-distance boyfriend, Kitty soon discovers that the scoundrel has an official girlfriend, Yuri Han (Gia Kim). The teenager smells the scam: this perfect couple doesn’t seem real. Waiting to untangle the true from the false, Kitty tries to unravel the mysteries of her mother’s past and bonds with new companions.
A clever mix of teen drama and kdrama
XO, kitty is in keeping with contemporary American teen dramas such as my first times (2020-2023) or With love, Victor (2020-2022), finally centered on racial protagonists.
With the difference that the series created by Jenny Han explore Kitty’s dual culture, its Korean-American heroine, through expatriation. Thereby, the usual tropes of US teen drama are revisited through the prism of Korean culture. Kitty learns traditional Korean dance, discovers the Kpop craze or cooks for Chuseok, one of the country’s biggest traditional festivals, ironically described as a “Thanksgiving, Minus the Genocide”.
XO, kitty therefore it presents itself as a clever mix of influences from teen dramas (she has her own prom) and kdramas (Korean dramas). In the latter, it is a love triangle or a quartet, against the backdrop of class struggle and the weight of parental expectations. We find this dynamic with working-class Dae, who agrees to pretend to be Yuri’s boyfriend because it allows him to pay for his studies.
The character of Min Ho (Sang Heon Lee), more love interests for Kitty, he fills the role of bad girl american series. Obsessed with her skin (South Korea is not the queen of skin care not at all!), funny and narcissistic, has the best lines in the series. Western audiences discover through him Dae or Alex (a young teacher who has undertaken Kitty’s investigation of her mother, through which the series evokes the theme of the adoption of Korean children by Australian parents) different codes of masculinity. Min Ho takes care of himself and expresses his feelings about him, both to his girlfriend and his friends when he feels betrayed.
An LGBTQ+ friendly series celebrating crushes
The series plays with the narrative drive of love trianglesusually heterosexual and engaging female rivalries.
Given the initial situation, Kitty should resent her rival, Yuri. But after an evening in which the teenager rejects a young man who had criticized Yuri hoping to score points with her, her dynamic is reversed, and Kitty, on the other hand, begins to feel attracted to Yuri.. Through these characters (Kitty wonders about a possible bisexuality, a lesbian in the closet, Yuri can’t be herself with her family) but also that of Quincy (Anthony Keyvan), a gay teenager of Iranian and Filipino origin, the series accurately addresses the issues of LGBTQI+ youth in Asia.
Thin and deeper than expected, XO, kitty is a tender and funny ode to first teenage crushes, to be devoured in a weekend with its half-hour episodes. After these months spent in South Korea, Kitty learned more about her roots and opened the field of romantic possibilities. Fantasizing the idea of ”great love”, the teenager realizes that romantic relationships are more chaotic and unpredictable in real life.
Less watered down than the movies To all the boys I’ve loved, this spin-off series is another hit for best-selling writer Jenny Han, whose best-selling adaptations To all the boys AND The summer I got pretty are the heyday of platforms and such here she signs her first series as creator.
In bookstores or on screens, the stories woven by Jenny Han, with worldwide success, bring a fresh perspective to teen drama. A Korean-American herself, the writer casts the lead role for Asian female characters, generally confined to the roles of support worker in other American productions. With her sweet stories, with a tone close to a Heartbeat or a Dawson, Jenny Han tenderly recounts the experience of adolescence, always a little the same and always a little different, depending on place and time.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
