Staff

Director	Yoon Ra Young (Café Minamdang)
Actors	Ahn Hee Yeon (Hani from EXID), Bae Woo Hee (Dal Shabet), Park Sun Ho, Choi Kwang Rok…

Characters

Too much to handle

The characters freely talk about sex, masturbation, libido, consent and so on… So you’d think that as adults being casual about these topics that may seem taboo or too intimate to some, they would also be mature and adult-like in other areas of their life. Sadly, I found the protagonists quite frustrating to follow due to their their lack of communication skills. There was a clear gap between what they talked about, and how they behaved in their personal life.

This is a pet peeve of mine in real life too: people who love to show off about their sex life and how grown-up they are, when in reality they may be the most childish ones of the bunch.

All this talk about the importance of being upfront about their sexual needs, yet when it came to personal matters, suddenly our 2 characters fall silent and acted like children throwing tantrums. It was really bizarre and made them look like teenagers who wanted to appear older by being well-versed in the “adult” stuff, but acting completely clueless in the “how to express my thoughts clearly” department.

Frustrated with your one-night stand? Dump him and head straight to your sex toy collection to find some relief! Can’t clear the air with your boyfriend? Head out to your favorite bar, and drink your soul out! While the “get drunk in a bar” is a typical kdrama trope, I expected a bit much from Hit the Spot which tries so hard to come across as more mature.

An educational kdrama…?

As a young woman, I didn’t learn much from this show (aside from the fact that hemorrhoids are apparently really painful to treat—but I doubt that it was meant to be one of the key takeaways, lol). And I think that it was the case for most viewers. I don’t know how it was received in Korea, but I doubt uninformed girls or women would watch it in the first place to educate themselves on the topic. It’s too daring for a younger audience to watch, yet at the same time too informative to be taken as a purely entertaining show by older viewers.

There was not a lot going on outside of all the sex and relationship subplots. Mi-na and Hee-Jae’s lives really seemed to only resolve around pleasure, and it made me uncomfortable to not see other facets of their characters. While the short format didn’t leave much room for deeper development, they could have cut out some of the smutty scenes.

Even as a person who’s not too uncomfortable with sex, I felt unsettled because it’s like everyone is obsessed with it in this show! As a result, and unexpectedly, this might be a great way to figure out what an asexual feels like in our world… The cringiest scenes are probably in the sex shop, where the sellers are wearing lab coats.

Sex is the tip of the iceberg

Our sex’s life is a reflection of something deeper in us, and I think that Hit the Spot missed on this nuance and failed to deliver a strong message when sex is taken as an isolated entity.

Hee-Jae got stuck in a relationship of 5 years where she didn’t feel comfortable enough saying to her boyfriend that she never had any orgasm with him. For 5 years, she lied to both herself and him. Mi-na had one night stands one after the other and a notable collection of self-pleasure toys when in reality she longued for the warmth of a loving, exclusive relationship. Sex isn’t the taboo thing in reality, it’s the freedom of women to understand themselves and to stay true to themselves. I felt bad for all the years that Hee-Jae wasted on someone that clearly didn’t love her, and for all the energy that Mi-na wasted too. Even more because I know that women in real life also fall into these traps without even acknowledging it.

Hit the Spot shows us immature women that put on a pedestal sexual freedom when it’s their own freedom of thoughts and speech that is the true precious thing!