Kim's Convenience (the play)
The play laid bare what the sitcom could have been
Kim’s Convenience is being staged again as a play in Toronto (the sitcom was based on the play) so of course I had to see it.1 I really enjoyed it. If you’ve seen the sitcom you’ll recognize some of the jokes, but they’re so good that they’re funny anyway. There are also poignant emotional moments exploring the tension between worrying for one’s kids and wanting the best for them while also letting them explore their own paths.
Some key differences between the play and the sitcom:
In the play, I found Mr Kim/Appa (played by Ins Choi) to be a bit darker/moodier than the sitcom’s Appa (played by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, who also played Appa in the original play). He’s still funny but maybe with a bit more of an edge. Some of this is the writing, but I wonder how much the actors’ choices and physicality might have played a role.
Mrs Kim/Umma gets much less time in the play than in the sitcom.2
Jung in the play is also more morose than his sitcom counterpart. In the sitcom, you always had the sense that Jung would find his way back even when things got tough. Play-Jung feels a little more worn down by life.
You don’t see much of Jung’s life, besides what comes out in conversation with his family. E.g. his best friend Kimchi and Handy Car Rental are all sitcom inventions
The Appa-Jung relationship has something of a resolution by the end of the play, which never happened in the sitcom.
Of the things that were “missing” from the play, I was most disappointed about Umma. But I don’t mean that as a criticism of the play. Rather, I think it shows that the sitcom did a really good job of filling out the character’s lives and personalities when they were given the space to do so.
On the other hand, the Appa-Jung resolution, which the play has but the sitcom doesn’t, wasn’t as satisfying to me as I’d have liked. A large part of that is that it felt unearned. Everything to do with Appa and Jung basically happens in the final scene, so you don’t get to see the two characters figure out how to mend their relationship over time. Maybe there was a better way to do it, but I can imagine that the time constraints of live theater make this a tricky thing to pull off. This, to me, is what the sitcom version was perfectly set up to do.
The best sitcoms of our time were so good because they let their characters evolve and grow over the years (think The Office, Parks and Rec). Ron Swanson learned to let love and friendship into his life. Angela Martin learned to be less judgy and concerned about appearances. For a show that ran for five seasons, Kim’s Convenience had enough time to flesh out a satisfying arc for Appa and Jung to find their way back to each other while growing as people. Sadly, that didn’t happen. The show got rather corny and trite towards the end, and relationships seem to have soured in real life as well.
A theme in Kim’ s Convenience is Jung’s “lost” potential – the handsome, charismatic boy who goes astray and ends up working in a car rental – and his parents learning to accept him for who he is instead of who they wanted him to become. Likewise, I’ll never get the resolution to Kim’s Convenience I always wanted, but I’ll always cherish the two3 great seasons we do have. And now I get to have the memory of the play as well.
I get the sense that this version of the play is relatively similar to the original: https://torontolife.com/culture/kims-convenience-creator-ins-choi-on-the-shows-new-theatrical-production/
So does Jung, but that’s partially made up by the amount of time he gets at the end.
Or three? I haven’t revisited it in a while and don’t remember when it jumped the shark.