"So Not Worth It": Korean Sitcom with College Student Con Artists

 So Not Worth It is a Korean sitcom about college students in an international school in Seoul.  I watched Episode 1 to see if there were any gay characters.

Scene 1: The upscale plastic-and-glass lounge.  Some new students are introduced to Ms. Park Se-wan (played by Park Se-wan), the dorm resident advisor, who turns out to be scheming and manipulative.  When a girl is locked out of her dorm room, Se-wan offers to use the master key for 20 demerits, or break in for 10,000 won ($80).  

Scene 2: Se-wan meets Jamie ("American freshman, interdisciplinary), who wants a single room with a private toilet so he won't have to share with other guys.  They don't have any.  

Jamie is played by Shin Hyun-seung, who had his screen premiere in Be My Boyfriend (2021).  He's having a very busy year.

Scene 3: A feminine, red-haired boy named Sam ("Korean-Australian, design major") brings lunch for two girls: Carson ("American, architecture major, boyfriend in the army") and Minnie ("Thai, fashionista, man-eater").  

Carson is played by Carson, and Minnie by Minnie.  Sam is played by boy band singer Choi Young-jae, who may be gay in real life.  A google search revealed a tumblr post calling him a "Gay Legend."

Resident advisor/teen operator Se-wan arrives.  They criticize her old-fashioned phone with the cracked screen.  She grifts a lot of money, so why not buy a new one?  I guess it's more fun to con people: when newbie Jamie trips on her charger cord, she accuses him of breaking the phone, and he offers to buy her a new one.

Scene 4: Two guys in a dorm room, and a third, Hyun-min ("Korean, sophomore, agriculture major") in a sleeping bag on the floor. 

Hyun-min is played by Han Hyun-min, an African-Korean model and actor.

He's tired because he has a five-hour commute from Incheon every day.  Hans ("Swedish, grad student, anthropology") sympathizes, but says that he can't stay there every night just because he's friends with Terris ("from Trinidad, grad student"): it's against the rules.

Fortunately, Terris is moving in with the girlfriend he just met, and he needs someone to stay in the dorm and pretend to be him.  How about the other black guy at the school?  The Professor can't tell them apart (they just have one professor?  But they're in different fields).

No.  Hans points out that it's an international dorm.  No Korean citizens allowed. Rules are rules.

Terris is played by Terris Brown, who grew up in New York, studied Korean at the University of Hawaii, and eventually moved to Korea, where he has done mostly radio and tv work.  Hans is played by Joakim Sorensen, originally from Sweden, but living in Korea for the past nine years.

Scene 5:  Resident advisor Se-wan demands that Newbie Jamie hand over the money for her new cell phone.  He doesn't have it right now, so she threatens to beat him up.  I assume that they'll be a bickering Sam-and-Diane couple.

More after the break

"Ripley": Long, slow, artistic version of the gay-subtext con-man/murderer. With Tom's bum and Dickie's dick.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) stars Matt Damon as the charming con-artist Tom Ripley, who has a gay-subtext romance with Jude Law's Dickie before murdering him and adopting his identity.  The 2024 version is a tv series, and reputedly overtly queer, taking the gay subtext into text.  I reviewed the first episode.

Link to the bums and dicks

Scene 1: Rome, 1961, atmospheric black and white.  Having just killed someone, a man with his face obscured puts on his shoes and hat and starts dragging the body down a palatial staircase.  

Scene 2: Six months earlier, New York. Tom (Andrew Scott) gets up in his run-down room in a residential hotel, walks the mean streets, steals someone's mail, and writes out a fake "payment overdue" notice

Then he goes to a bar and starts one of those highly-closeted 1960s hookups with a guy named Al (Bokeem Woodbine) Whoops, no, Al is a private detective, hired to find him and hook him up with the wealthy Mr. Herbert Greenleaf.  Tom refuses, then leaves to ride the subway and walk the mean streets some more.  

Back home, someone left his business card: From the IRS!  

Scene 3: Tom continues his scam: he steals payment checks, then calls or writes the sender, claims that it was lost in the mail, and has them send a new check to his own post office box. Nice establishing shots of the art deco post office and bank.  

Uh-oh, the clerk thinks something is wrong, and goes to consult the manager. Tom has to run away, and close down the whole collection agency scam!  What to do next?  Maybe Herbert Greenleaf's job won't be so bad...

Scene 4: Greenleaf Shipbuilders.  Tom is escorted past the big ships to the office, where Herbert Greenleaf tells him about the job: his son Dickie,  Tom's old acquaintance, has been living in Italy for years, pretending to be a writer or a painter, but really just goofing off.  Greenleaf wants Tom to convince Dickie to come home.

Why Tom?  They didn't know each other well.  Because none of Dickie's other friends wanted the job. Why would someone on the bottom of Dickie's friends list, who he doesn't know well and doesn't care about, be able to talk him into leaving Italy?  Tom must have a really big dick.

Scene 5: While he's considering the job, Tom has dinner with the Greenleafs. Back story dump: He went to Princeton. When he was young, his parents drowned. Uh-oh, maybe he killed them. Then they look at some photos of Dickie when he was young, in college, and now, in Atrapi, with Marge -- "girlfriend, friend, who knows?"  So Dickie is gay.

Scene 6: Tom at the tailor's, inspecting the clothes the Greenleafs bought for him. He gets his passport, signs travelers' checks, throws out his scam checks, and we're on the Orient Express!  In the Swiss alps; I guess in those days you flew in through Paris?   

He writes to his Aunt Dottie, who is getting a dental procedure -- which we see, for some reason: "You're free of me now, and I of you." I like the slow, moody structure, with the beautiful, weird shots of fire escapes, catwalks, and sculptures, but it's a little too slow.  How much time do we need to devote to Tom brooding?.

Scene 7: Naples. Tom gets off the train, changes some travelers' checks, and asks for a bus to Atrapi.  He is pushed into a cab instead, and arrives at a darkened station in the middle of the night.  Nothing to do but wait until morning, then get on the real bus -- for a trecherous drive through the mountains!

Atrapi, finally!  He asks someone, in bad Italian, for Richard Greenleaf, and is directed up endless stairs, through arches and corridors, up more stairs. to a villa.  Where he is told that Richard is down on the beach!  Is this supposed to be a comedy?

Scene 8: Tom at a shop, trying on a very bulging swimsuit, while ladies giggle at him. He asks for something a little less revealing. 

The beach is deserted -- oh, there in the distance is Dickie, lying down, fully clothed, with Marge's head on his thigh.  Tom wakes them and introduces himself, pretending that this is a chance meeting. Dickie doesn't remember him, but invites him to go for a swim.  Uh-oh, Tom is afraid of the water, since his parents drowned.  He won't set foot into the water.

More Dickie after the break