Has there every been a series, whether it’s a comedy or drama, where someone is turned into a chicken nugget? Probably not. But leave it to the creative minds in South Korea to come up with such an idea.
Opening Shot: We’re hurtled through space, go through an asteroid belt, and come to a floating chicken nugget. That nugget gets put on a plate, and a woman’s voice talks about what it’s like to be turned into a chicken nugget.
The Gist: Go Baek-joong (Ahn Jae-hong) is a unique sort; he walks down the street singing and dancing to music he creates, and he wears colorful ensembles to work. He gets to the dreary warehouse, where he’s an intern for a company called All Machines, and brings in a huge box that was left outside.
He opens it and sees a purple locker-like metal box with a window in the door; he assumes it’s an expected delivery. When Baek-joong’s boss, company owner Choi Seon-man (Ryu Seung-ryong) comes in, Seon-man wonders why his intern dresses in the same colorful matching outfit every day. Then a third employee comes in, he and Seon-man insult each other and laugh. Then Baek-joong tries to throw out insults and he gets chided for being inappropriate.
When lunch rolls around, Baek-joong decides to stay in the office when he hears that his boss’ daughter, Min-ah (Kim Yoo-jung), is coming. Baek-joong has a huge crush on Min-ah, who has told him in the fast that a kind heart is attractive to her — along with a great face and body. She has brought sweet-and-sour chicken nuggets from a trendy Seoul restaurant with her.
Min-ah sees the purple box, and gets in when Baek-joong tells her it’s a rejuvenation machine. She walks in, presses a button, and things start lighting up. Baek-joong runs towards the box with a chicken nugget on a skewer. When everything is done, Min-ah has disappeared in side the box, with a chicken nugget taking her place.
Min-ah is a chicken nugget! This is tough for Seon-man to deal with; he raised Min-ah mostly on his own, and he’s devoted to her. He and Baek-joong become frantic trying to figure out if she can hear them and what they need to do to get her back to human form. Then they panic more when the third guy in the office puts the Min-ah nugget back in with the others and puts them in the fridge — for a hot minute, they thought she was eaten and gone forever.
Seon-man and Baek-joong start with trying to figure out where the box came from; it wasn’t the expected delivery, so they look on the security camera to see who delivered it. Baek-joong actually has an idea who it might be.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s hard to compare Chicken Nugget to anything; we’ve never seen a show where a woman is turned into a chicken nugget before.
Our Take: If you think that Chicken Nugget is going to be about Min-ah being a chicken nugget, and we hear her voice coming from the nugget, or her thinking about being a nugget, you’d be wrong. There might be some of that, but the show is really going to be about Seon-man and Baek-joong’s quest to get her transformed back to the woman they both love.
That means they’re going to meet a lot of interesting, maybe borderline wacky, people and get into all sorts of scrapes to get to the truth. What is that box? Who made it? Who delivered it to Seon-man’s business and why? It’ll be funny to watch these dispositionally-opposite men scramble around, getting into scrapes and taking risks to figure out what the hell happened to Min-ah.
Some of the gags in the first episode are slightly over-the-top, like when all the men in the office fake-laugh at their insulting banter. But the silly Baek-joong and the go-along-to-get-along Seon-man have enough layers to them that their interactions end up generating some genuine laughs.
Sex and Skin: There is none, except for the breaded skin on the chicken nugget.
Parting Shot: The men put the 20 chicken nuggets under a napkin, because Seon-man says that Min-ah gets cold a lot. We see a closeup of the nuggets, and the Min-ah nugget moves ever so slightly.
Sleeper Star: Whoever on the visual effects team designed the chicken nuggets deserve kudos. They look awfully tasty.
Most Pilot-y Line: Baek-joong sings his terrible jingle to Seon-man in full as a clue to how he knows who the person who left the box is. But that’s our cliffhanger. A tiny bit of how one has to do with the other would help.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Chicken Nugget is silly as hell, but it promises to be one of those shows where two people go on a crazy adventure. It just happens to involve a woman who becomes a chicken nugget.
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.