Letter #89: Nineteen to Twenty

Good morning, Erin. 

In my last letter, I talked about how, sometimes, it feels like I’m in rhythm with the motion of the universe—and when I saw that my favorite girl from Weki Meki was one of the hosts of a new Korean dating show…well, I don’t know what more of a sign I needed to know this was one of those times. 

…until I then saw that NO ONE HAS SUBTITLED THE SHOW and was reminded that I can’t have nice things. 

I ask for so little. 

…for so relatively little. 

Point is, I only found out about the above-mentioned dating show because the algorithms of the internet recommended it to me—because it’s similar to what I was watching at the time, which is the subject of this letter: Nineteen to Twenty. 

Now, to reiterate, I only started this series because a YouTube channel I recently got into is doing commentary on it, and I obviously want to understand and enjoy those commentary videos to the fullest amount I can. So, of course I had to watch the show. It would be silly if I didn’t. And that’s why I watched it. 

The…the only reason I watched it. 

… 

High school seniors being put on a reality dating show wooooooooooo! 

Of course, I have no idea if you’ve seen this, plan to see it eventually, or have no interest in ever seeing it. So it’s kind of a crap-shoot as to whether you’ll want to read, skim, or skip this one. BUT…after telling you my ideal type in the After Signal letter, and after discussing what I’d be like on one of these shows in the Heart Signal 4 letter, I’ve obviously had to include an equally romance-adjacent piece of introspection in this letter, as well. So, if you’re looking to add more information to the open dossier you have on me, maybe stick around (see #23). 

Having said that…shall we start? 

1. I recognized TWO of the hosts, believe it or not: 

● the member of Super Junior who is a host on Single’s Inferno 

● the singer who played the convenience store girl in Mad for Each Other 

1A. I know there’s a whole thing about this with Lee Su-hyun, and I don’t mean to wade into any of it in any direction, but…she’s cute. She can show up in more of the things I watch, thank you. 

1B. Actually, I think the hosts were generally pretty good, here. I mean, yes, they’re all good looking, but I’m talking about their hosting abilities. There’s some room for improvement, but they did a good job, and I’d be happy to see them back in similar roles elsewhere. (The younger male host was especially perceptive, I thought, though I think he was often hesitant to jump in with his opinion—or, at least, he didn’t jump in as often as he may have wanted. But, that said, I think pretty much everything he said was on point, so maybe there was more method to his silences than I’m giving him credit for. Either way, I liked him.) 

2. In the grand tradition of my time with these dating shows, I made sure to write down everyone’s names and my initial impressions of them…but also the first handful of these kids all had names that looked too much alike, so I ended up just giving everyone nicknames. And the cleverness of those nicknames depended entirely on how far into Episode 1 it took me to settle on one for each. I don’t think I managed to outclass my overall roster from Pink Lie, but I’m proud of a couple of them: 

● Ping Pong - because he plays table tennis 

● Preppy Girl - because she was dressed kinda preppy in her first interview 

● Day Job - (as in “don’t quit your day job”) because he wants to be an actor 

● Hype Girl - because she referred to herself as the “beauty queen” of her high school in her initial interview, which seemed like she was um, hyping herself up a bit

● Loud Girl - because she was the obvious extrovert from the moment she arrived

● Spongebob Squarehead - because his head was all square 

● Boy Band - because he struck me as looking like a member of a boy band 

● Sweet Aeroline - because she wants to be a stewardess (...and it rhymes with “Sweet Caroline”) 

● Cuddlefish - because she was one of the “catfish” and so cute that you just wanted to cuddle her

● Cinco de Classe - because he was the fifth boy in the classroom 

3. All five of the girls on this show are great. You can’t make a bad pick among them. Are they all equally great? No. But are they all great? Absolutely. Every one of them was adorable and charming. You just had to pick which brand of adorable and charming was your favorite. 

3A. My pick? I fell into Preppy Girl’s big brown eyes and never came out. 

3B. …which is undoubtedly why no one wanted to love her. I’m all but a death sentence to the girls on these shows, I swear. The moment I make a pick, you can bet the boys are looking elsewhere. (The exception, of course, being So-e, but you think Se-jun was a production plant, so…I’m sure you’ve got an asterisk next to that one.) 

3C. THAT SAID…Loud Girl was by far #bestgirl. I defy anyone to argue otherwise. She was just flat-out awesome, which I admit was surprising, but…wow, did she impress. Yes, she wound up being the natural leader and “mom” of the group, but she showed a maturity and sense of self that I don’t think you find in most adults, forget about kids. She’s incredible. And I want to be her when I grow up. 

4. The boys, on the other hand, were generally pretty lackluster. Cince de Classe ends up being probably the best of the bunch, as much by luck as by virtue of his general inclination not to speak. The other boys aren’t all a total disaster (though I wanted to flick two of them in the eye), but I wouldn’t say any of them is a prize. Like, no matter which way you slice it, the girls get the comparative bad end of this deal. 

5. One of my favorite things about these kids being, well, kids is that they have no skill at hiding their reactions to anything. They think they do, because only because they get away with their obvious reactions because the other kids are having the same can’t-look-at-cute-person move and, therefore, are not looking at anyone else’s blatant reactions. It’s amusing, and it makes figuring out who likes whom much, much easier. 

6. That Day Job, having come from an all-boys school and having absolutely no experience talking to girls in a social setting, lands Sweet Aeroline—the arguably hottest girl of the bunch—as his seatmate amused me. 

6A. …but not as much as her offering him hand cream and him not having any idea how to respond. A pretty girl offers to share something with you, YOU SAY YES. I mean, you can say no, but you better have a flirtatious followup comment to make. Even I know that.

7. Here’s a cute detail: when they get “homework” assignments in class, Loud Girl makes sure to write the details down in her planner. Everyone else just sits there and nods.

8. Towards the end of the show, a couple goes on a trip together and ends up at the top of a lookout point to take pictures and stuff. The area hasn’t been reserved exclusively for the show, so there are other people around them because it’s a tourist-y spot. But the show has this sweeping shot of the couple that is obviously filmed via drone…and there is this little girl behind them with her family who has spotted the drone and is very, very confused about why it’s there. She spends about a minute standing there trying to get her family to look at it. They do not, to my great amusement. 

9. Cuddlefish crying is about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. 

10. Having finally had guard dodgeball explained to me by this show (after seeing it a dozen times in K-dramas), it sounds awesome. I’d have loved playing this in school. I mean, in theory. In execution, I’d be the guy ending up with the weird girl no one wants to be with because I was the good kid who the teacher knew wouldn’t kick up a fuss, even though I would be irritated as all get-out. So…maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t play guard dodgeball back in school. 

11. I mentioned before that Preppy Girl was both my favorite and also not sought after by the boys, but there were large stretches where she seemed not to be friends with the girls either. Maybe that’s just part of the edit, since she seemed much quieter (and perhaps more aware of the cameras) than the other girls, but she seemed to spend a lot of time not in the little coffee klatch the others would gather in. 

11A. …which I mention because, when Cuddlefish arrives, she is asked in an interview who came to talk to her first. She says that it was Loud Girl—which is a hilarious response, to me, because I was hyper-aware of the fact that the first one to try to talk to her was actually Preppy Girl, but Loud Girl literally elbows her out of the way to talk to Cuddlefish.

12. Speaking of Preppy Girl: I will never not be angry about the Ferris Wheel.

13. Ping Pong is apparently universally considered the handsome guy in class. Which confounded me every time it came up, because my very first note about him is that he looks bland. 

14. Cuddlefish often acts like a kuudere, and I find that hilarious.

15. I always had my doubts about Day Job wanting to be an actor (as in he didn’t seem like someone who would be particularly good at it—not that you can ever really tell), but he ABSOLUTELY NAILED his annoyedly-waiting-for-everyone-to-stop-laughing shtick after Sweet Aeroline screwed up putting makeup on him. That’s a skill. Well done, Day Job. 

16. The “anonymous chat” segments at the school were fun and a great idea…but damned if I could follow AT ALL which screen names were asking what questions or how many questions or even how many screen names were in play at any given moment even though there could only be as many as there were boys or girls asking questions. Everything just whizzed by as I struggled to keep up with the subtitles and the names listed higher on the screen. “Okay, there’s bear and dog and penguin and snake and monkey. That’s five, so that’s all the gir—wait, who’s deer? How is there a deer?! WHICH OF YOU HAS TWO NAMES DAMMIT!”

17. I still can’t believe the first cliffhanger of the series was which club Hype Girl was going to choose. 

18. I will never tire of the blind choosing pair-ups these shows do. It’s always fun seeing everyone try to puzzle out who’s thing is whose, trying not to fight over the picking order, and I love the suspense leading up to the reveals. Heart Signal 4 does this three separate times (all awesome), Transit Love 2 did it once, and [REDACTED] has done it once so far. I hope the new season of Single’s Inferno does something with this mechanic. Even just as part of an on-island activity. 

19. One of the most totally definitely organic moments of the show was the boys all happening to get to class before any of the girls and having a chat about which girls they like, most of them saying the same girl, and then that exact girl walking in. 

20. Another of the most totally definitely organic moments of the show was the girls all happening to suddenly want to play table tennis on their own and spontaneously chatting about which boys they like. 

21. One of my favorite things is how the kids aren’t allowed to be romantic while attending the “school” half of the show…but then the production staff will constantly ask them about their romantic feelings…and then shout at them about how they need to stop flirting because it’s against the rules.

22. Relatedly, I kind of love that the show realizes no one cares enough about the last few days of the “school” half of the show that they just montage past them to get to the “New Year’s Eve go live in a house together for a week!” half. 

23. Okay, so, it’s not going to surprise you that I’ve done a lot of silly things to “impress” girls I’ve been interested in, over the years. No, I’ve never done anything overtly embarrassing or loud or cringey, I haven’t gotten up on stage at an open mic night and read a poem named after her or anything like that. (Cowardice has its benefits.) But I’ve more than once put a good deal of effort into manufacturing common ground when it has been offered. That is, if a girl says she’s into something (like a band or movie), I make sure she ends up recommending I check it out so that I can, y’know, check it out and have something to talk about with her. After all, it always helps to have something to talk about. 

23A. (For the record, this move has never worked. But that’s never stopped me.)

23B. Anyway, there was this one time that a girl recommended a book to me, I read it, we had a nice chat about it that she was excited to have—all the regular stuff. But this later led to her handing me a book and telling me to read it because she loved it and…had either just read it for the first time or had recently re-read it, I can’t remember…but she really wanted me to read the book, so of course I spent every free moment I could reading it so that I could talk to her about it the next time I saw her. (Which, fortunately for me as a slow reader, was about a week away.)

23C. Now, I mention all this because I opened the book, and I found this slip of paper with a hand-written note on it: You make me melt.

23D. I stopped breathing. This was absolutely that girl’s handwriting. The note was in the book she had very excitedly handed me to read. I mean…look, I’ve missed signals before, but what else could this be? It was an adorable romance drama confession! Victory was at hand!

23E. Except obviously no it wasn’t. Even putting aside that I’ve already said that this move of mine has never worked, you know I wouldn’t be telling this story because it ends with me getting the girl.

23F. HOWEVER…here’s what happened next: when we got together next, we talked about the book, and I very slickly asked about the note. And she said, “Oh, this guy I’ve been seeing said he could imitate my handwriting, and this is what he wrote. So I was using it as a bookmark.”

23G. So…yeah. Tell me what happened there, Erin.

24. The edit hid one (or, if I put my conspiracy theory hat on, two) very big one-way crushes from us for the sake of narrative simplicity. We eventually get a little medley showing us that it existed, but it also totally changes the context for things that stem from this crush, which seemed more like a sort of passing interest in the main part of the show. Not cool. 

25. Oh! When one couple goes on a movie date, I recognized the movie from the opening frame! They were watching 20th Century Girl. 

25A. Extra-bonus thing about this: the girl on the date is Preppy Girl, who I immediately thought looked like the daughter from Crash Course in Romance—who plays the second female lead in the movie! 

26. The final choosing setup for this one is a bit cumbersome, given that everyone has to arrange to meet people separately and either start dating or get rejected—and, y’know, wait for cameras to get set up so that the scene can be filmed properly. (Imagine knowing you’re about to get rejected and the only thing stopping this is a dude trying to make sure you're in focus for everyone to see in case you cry.) But it’s not a terrible way of doing it. Or, well, it’s not terrible if you don’t have a giant chain of unrequited crushes to work through before people manage to pair up.

27. Unsurprisingly, the production arranges the “arrive at the house where you’ll live together for a week!” segment so that all the boys are there to watch as the girls show up one at a time. And I say unsurprisingly because…I mean, with the exception of the fancy lounge dinner thing everyone on Heart Signal 4 attended so they could meet the female game changer, I have NEVER seen the boys on a dating show put real effort into fancying up for anything. (I mean, sure, Se-jun wore a suit, but no tie.) But the girls always bring their A-games, when they have a chance. So, of course, I ranked the girls on their dolled-up-for-the-second-half reintroduction looks:

5) Loud Girl, who stepped too much outside of her character…and also what was that beret?

4) Hype Girl, who looked like herself—but better!

3) Cuddlefish, who went from incredibly cute to stop-dead-in-your-tracks cuuuuuute.

2) Preppy Girl, who dressed to emphasize both her prettiness and all-around aura.

1) Sweet Aeroline, who suddenly turned into the hottest 25-year-old version of herself.

27A. Sidebar: Preppy Girl wears a beret in one of her interview segments and LOOKS AMAZING.

28. Watching the girls taste champagne for the first time was hilarious. Preppy Girl seemed unfazed (presumably from her inherent fanciness), but the others practically spit it out and gag. Which is exactly what I’d expect. Champagne is…not what you’d think it would be. 

29. Hype Girl and Loud Girl both tut-tutting the idea that there would be overnight dates was awesome—particularly Hype Girl’s “I’m a good girl” explanation for how she’d never allow herself to be put in that situation, even if the show wanted it. Though I also liked Loud Girl’s absolute assertion that the show would never allow it. 

29A. …that said, there’s totally an overnight date for a couple to claim, later on, which made me laugh. 

30. My favorite moment of the season involves Preppy Girl and a closet. 

32. And my favorite line of the season comes from (you guessed it) Preppy Girl, right as emotions run really, really high with most of the cast and their decisions about special dates, when she walks in on a couple having a quiet talk: “Is this serious? No? Good. Because it is scary out there.”

32. Sweet Aeorline constantly makes some kind of pun(?) that the subtitles decide translates as “deliciousquirrel.” Which…I cannot fathom, but certainly sounds like something she’d say.

32A. She is such a goofball. Like, she even does the Weightlifting Fairy “swag!” move. Total dork. Which I’d never have thought, when she first showed up. But it was a pleasant surprise. She’s great. And, as I repeatedly wrote in my notes, too cool for any of the boys. 

32B. Actually, I’m looking through my notes, and the funny thing is it seems like a lot of my opinions of the cast are based mostly on how they treat Sweet Aeroline.

32C. …wait, do I have a crush on Sweet Aeroline? Am I having a K-drama trope moment?!

33. The “I don’t need gloves” scene, Erin. The “I don’t need gloves” scene.

34. I still can’t believe how short Preppy Girl is. Like, I knew she was short, but when she was standing next to Cuddlefish…and Cuddlefish had easily two inches on her? Hoo-boy.

35. After the show, I watched A BUNCH of YouTube interviews the kids did, and I think my favorite one involved the full cast watching highlights from the show and literally every single one of them giving the densest guy grief over how frustrating it is to watch him suck at dating. 

35A. …with the absolute best part being Hype Girl’s utterly incredulous “He…didn’t say anything?!” 

And that’s that. 

Not amazing, but a pretty good time. And, in the wake of Heart Signal 4, a very nice way to wean myself off of dating shows for a bit.

…which you’re going to think is a lie, of course, when you see some of the upcoming letters, but I swear it’s true! It's just that most of the regular K-dramas I’m watching are week-to-week, so they’re not going to be ready as quickly as something I can binge in a weekend. That’s all.

…

No, but seriously, this time.

—Daryl