Ashley Spurgeon is a lifelong TV fan — nay, expert — and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about.
Television shows fall into easy categories: game shows, daytime talk, nighttime talk, drama, sitcom, reality, news. Those are the categories invented for marketing purposes, to sell products to you, the happy television consumer. (One time I paused 30 Rock and ran around the corner to buy a McFlurry, which they'd mentioned in the show — pathetic!) Then there are the categories of how we watch them: This is the background crap I have on when I’m cooking dinner, this is the intense prestige hour-long dramady we watch on Sunday nights to remind us that the weekend is over, and so on. Of these personal categories, one of my favorites is the “Winding down before bed” show.
There are a few rules involved in picking a good “wind down” program. Ideally, it’s something you’ve seen before. The last thing you want to do is give your brain new information to worry about (“Is Dr. House gonna save that little boy?!”), or tempt yourself to binge Just One More Episode. It shouldn’t be too loud, or flashy, or trigger depressive episodes and existential breakdowns. It’s a delicate balance.
You can see how defaulting to old favorites — Frasier, King of the Hill — works like a charm here. And when it comes to 21st-century fare, only one new-ish show has achieved the lofty status of Wind-Down TV: Canadian sitcom Kim’s Convenience. Clocking Canadian TV comedy is a lot like defining pornography: It’s hard to explain in the abstract, but you know it when you see it. (Comedian Joe Pera, for example, is from Buffalo, New York, which must be within the larger Canadian Cultural Sphere, because even though Pera is technically an American, his comedy is Canadian as hell. No, I will not be explaining further.)
Kim’s Convenience is a sitcom about a Korean Canadian family who owns a handy-dandy neighborhood corner store in present-day Toronto. There’s “Appa” (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and “Umma” (Jean Yoon), “Dad” and “Mom,” Korean-born immigrants and storerunners whose kids Jung (Simu Liu) and Janet (Andrea Bang) have lived their whole lives in Canada. Kim’s Convenience started as a stage play written by creator Ins Choi, where he originated the role of Jung.
Prodigal son Jung starts the series estranged from his family, thanks to bad influences and a not-unserious juvenile crime record. He works at a car rental company with his friend Arnold (Andrew Phung), who goes by “Kimchee,” and his boss Shannon (Nicole Power), who is in love with him. Shannon’s pure cringe at wanting Jung to like her is the most Canadian aspect of the show — again, I will not explain more. As deeply as I love Kimchee — and believe me, he’s one of the best parts of the show — the car-rental place isn’t my favorite place to be. Clearly there’s something of the creator in Jung since he played the role first, but honestly? Kim’s Convenience could have Chuck Cunningham’d that kid and not missed a beat.
I simply say this: #JusticeForJanet. A good kid with dreams of being a professional photographer, she attends a local college and lives back at home with Appa and Umma and the larger community around the store. These scenes and stories are good, sometimes exceptional: Those moments in Kim’s Convenience make it the rare family sitcom that’s contemporary without feeling dated, is legitimately very funny, and full of genuine heart.
From frequent customers to other neighborhood business owners to drop-ins from Pastor Nina (not since The Simpsons has a TV family been so devout ... Umma does not want to disappoint Jesus but sometimes gets involved in “church drama”), the life around the store is when Kim’s Convenience hits that comfort-TV, oh-so-gentle, just-before-bedtime sweet spot.
There are four seasons available on Netflix right now, and the series has already wrapped, with the fifth and final season currently airing in Canada. I’m glad it’s over, because it was a good enough show for everyone to start making American money. Lee has cashed in his Mandalorian chit to nab some of those sweet Star Wars residuals (aka Disney bux), whereas Liu has leveled up to Marvel status (also Disney bux!) and will star in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a new action film based on a comic-book character I know nothing about and have never heard of before ... but learned in my brief research that he’s probably gonna do some ass-whoopin'. Andrew Phung is getting his own CBC series — even fucking Shannon gets a spin-off. (The show’s subreddit is also deeply Canadian: They don’t like the character and don’t like the idea of this spin-off, but have no problems whatsoever with the actress and wish her the best!) And now, to ponder other ways they could have written out their son but adopted his best friend as I drift off to sleep.
