Review Hello, My Twenties Season 1 / 청춘시대

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m watching.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

So I quit and decided to focus on this blog. I also randomly fell into a period of unemployment because of unexpected circumstances, and I took a long and hard look at my finances and realized I had enough to take time off. I did end up doing that, traveled for a bit, applied to jobs, and found myself working on the blog now more than ever.

I’ve been running a little series for a while now where I revisit old television shows and movies I’ve watched throughout the years. Even in the past, before I started this blog and began taking it more seriously, I was always jotting down what I wrote about XYZ show or movie.

Some of these television shows I’ve been coming back to I used to love, so it’s been a fascinating time trying to go back and revisit these shows as an adult. I was a teenager and young adult during the 2010s, so when I come back to these in 2025, I’m in the midst of a quarter-life crisis and underemployed because of the current worldwide economic crisis.

I’m typing this in April 2025, so hopefully something has changed by the time this blog post comes out (which will be later, as I have such an incredible amount of backlog to get through), but for now I found solace in revisiting these shows. I liked Hello, My Twenties the first time I watched it, so I was hoping it would hold up.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

Five girls living together confront what it means to adult and function in their twenties.

This is a series that largely takes place in the sphere of five girls: Yoo Eun-jae, who is moving from the countryside to the city, Jung Ye-eun, who majors in culinary arts, Yoon Jin-myung, who’s a bit older than the rest of the girls, Song Ji-won, who is a journalism major, and Kang Yi-na, who gets money from older money and is a sugar baby.

The series starts with introducing the place they live in, which is known as Belle Epogue. We see how each of the girls is largely struggling in their personal and professional lives. Our twenties are a time typically of struggling, trying to figure out how to make a professional career, while also learning to function as an adult in a tough world.

Considering each of these leads is a girl in Korea, that adds a layered challenge that we get hints of throughout the course of the show. If you’re familiar with how much harder it is to make it was a woman in Korea, you’re going to notice the subtle signs. I think that’s why originally I liked this show a lot, as it was female-focused.

We learn a lot about each girl, and there are various subplots beyond the main plot of trying to survive in an urban setting as a young professional woman. They each have to make money and survive, and it’s not like they have full familial support and can do whatever they want.

Some of the subplots focus on their romantic lives, which were fine with me. It’s realistic to show the dating lives of girls at this age, and this is a Korean drama after all. I liked how it was overbearing to the point where the romance wasn’t entirely the focus of the series.

I think a lot of dramas could benefit from putting the romance on the backseat, but because this is probably what most people want, they don’t. What was also interesting about this show is they had an abusive ex subplot, which is something we rarely see in dramas overtly.

This show does an excellent job in showing the bond between the girls. At first they’re all kind of strangers just getting to know each other as roommates, but despite their ups and downs, as well as other external conflicts bleeding into their internal life together, they become a bit of a found family in some ways.

Overall Thoughts

I really enjoyed this show on a second watch, and I think it’s quite the unique show even today. We get a lot of youth problems focused dramas nowadays, but this show stands out to me because of how female centric it is. I haven’t looked into the writers, but it feels like it comes from the heart in some ways.

Regardless, it does have its quirks, and I don’t see everyone liking this one at the end of the day. I find it endearing, and it’s a shame that the lead actress had to back out for the second season. I still haven’t watched the second season out of fear that it won’t be the same, but maybe I’ll finally get around to it while it’s in my mind.

So go watch this one if you find it interesting. If you do, I think you’ll find it worth it in the end!

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