It seems that there’s been a trend lately to show the “dark side of social media,” mostly through docuseries that show either how hard it is on people’s psyches or how fake it can be. But a new K-drama takes that concept a little further: What if the dark side of social media actually involved murder?
Opening Shot: Shots of a humble restaurant. Then a woman wearing expensive clothes walks in, gets the tofu and takes a picture. The Instagram post goes viral and makes the humble restaurant into a go-to destination.
The Gist: The woman who took the picture is Seo A-ri (Park Gyu-young), who has become a celebrity via being a popular influencer, with over a million Instagram followers. In her narration, she asks the viewers if they wonder who these people are and how they become so popular? She sits down in front of a livestreaming phone and starts to tell her story, saying she learned a “cheat code” in order to gain that fame.
It wasn’t that long ago that A-ri was broke, and she didn’t even have social media apps on her phone. She was raised in wealth, but by the time she was 18, her dad had died, the company he founded was in shambles, and her mother Lee Hyeon-ok (Nam Ge-ok) started making a living repairing couture clothing for women who actually had money. A-ri sells cosmetics to the women who work on the staff of wealthy families, and she does well. Still, she’s broke.
It’s not like she doesn’t wonder about what that life is like, as she spies the closet of Yoon Shi-hyeon (Lee Chung-ah), whose house she’s in to sell cosmetics to her staff. But the world of influencers? She has no use for it, even as her friend Yoon Jeong-sun (Park Ye-ni) gives her the blow-by-blow between two influencers who used to be friends: Biniimom (Jin So-yeon) and Oh Min-hye (Jun Hyo-seong).
While shopping at Bulgari, Min-hye sees A-ri, whose there to buy something for her boss. She remembers A-ri her from high school, where A-ri was rich, popular and headed to an Ivy League school. Jeong-sun, who is with her, doesn’t discourage the Ivy League angle, and interrupts A-ri when she starts to talk about what she really dies. Min-hye invites her to a party that will be rife with influencers.
She at first doesn’t want to go, but changes her mind, just to get a look at how the wealthy and popular operate. She reluctantly dons a Saint Laurent dress her mom is repairing, and goes inside. Shi-heyon arrives and sees the dress, which she had out for repair, and covers for A-ri when she’s asked where she got it. But when Biniimom storms in and slaps Min-hye, saying she’d be nothing without her, A-ri feels she’s cracked the code: Latch onto an influencer and use them to build your own following. But as she says this on her livestream, everyone in her life is shocked to see her there at all.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Think Emily In Paris, but much, much darker, like it was crossed with I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Our Take: Celebrity, written by Kim Yi-young and directed by Kim Cheol-kyu, starts out slick and poppy, presenting the audience with a whirlwind of characters who happen to be social media influencers. But, in essence, the story comes down to how A-ri goes from broke and off social media to an incredibly wealthy social media celebrity in a short period of time, and what happened to her when she reached that level. That story is the one we’re more interested in seeing.
The entire first episode more or less sets up A-ri’s story and shows the players that are going to be a part of it. But sifting through all of these influencers, and realizing that Shi-heyon, is part of their “Gabin Society” but eschews social media, takes some concentration. Even then, it’s confusing to sort it all out.
But when A-ri runs into Min-hye, the story comes into focus. A-ri is going to ride Min-hye’s popularity to become a massively-famous influencer. But who she steps on along the way, and who might have wanted to harm her, will be the focus of the rest of the season. What we hope is that the show stays that focused, even if we go back and forth to A-ri becoming an influencer to the info she spills after everyone thinks she’s gone. The hows and whys of that part will also be interesting to find out.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: During her livestream, A-ri sees the ID of the person who she thinks did her harm, and addresses them directly.
Sleeper Star: Kang Min-hyuk plays Han Jun-kyun, whom A-ri encounters outside the party and wants to report him for harassment after he tapped her on the shoulder. It feels like there’s going to be a romantic thing there, or at least he’ll be involved with A-ri in a way that changes the direction of his life.
Most Pilot-y Line: When A-ri’s mom tells her that the both of them were born as high-class people, A-ri responds, “In reality, life is a trashy ditch.” That’s quite a colorful description.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The “dark side of social media” aspect of Celebrity isn’t as intriguing as the actual mystery of what happened to A-ri, and we hope that’s what the show concentrates on as we see how she became an influencer to begin with.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.