“Healing dramas” are a popular genre in Korean entertainment. From Hometown Cha Cha Cha to My Liberation Notes to My Mister, the stories in healing K-dramas focus on emotional recovery and resilience. Their ultimate goal is to soothe both the main characters and the viewers at home, often by allowing characters to address unresolved traumas from their past. Sold Out on You, a romantic comedy starring KPop Demon Hunters’ Ahn Hyo-seop and Doubt’s Chae Won-bin, is Netflix’s latest healing K-drama. The series just wrapped its 12-episode run. Here’s how it brought comfort to its characters and, potentially, to its viewers.
What is Sold Out on You about?
In Sold Out on You, Ahn stars as Matthew Lee or Mechoori, the co-CEO and lead researcher of a natural raw materials company, Gojeuneok Bio. Following a traumatic incident that took place five years before the start of the series, Lee moved to out-of-the-way Deokpung Village. There, he started a large-scale mushroom farm and became the sole producer of a white-flowered Korean mushroom called noori that works miracles on sensitive skin.
Chae stars as Dam Ye-jin, a home shopping host who takes her job very seriously. When Matthew decides not to renew Gojeuneok Bio’s partnership with French beauty corporation L’Étoile right before the company is poised to launch a new skincare product on Ye-jin’s program, she travels to Deokpung Village herself to change the mysterious mushroom farmer’s mind.
While Matthew and Ye-jin initially clash, they are also drawn towards one another. Matthew admires Ye-jin’s determination and focus. He worries about her dependence on sleeping pills to get any rest. Meanwhile, Ye-jin is drawn in by the caring nature beneath Matthew’s gruff surface. The two fall in love, and begin to develop a new skincare cream together called Noori, using Matthew’s mushrooms and Ye-jin’s gift as a saleswoman. But for Noori to be a success, they will need to properly face their pasts, once and for all.
The Good Morning Cream incident
Though Matthew and Ye-jin don’t know it when they meet, they are already tied together by the incident that prompted Matthew to move. When Matthew graduated top of his class, he joined a small natural cosmetics company called The Usu. Recruited by the kind and passionate CEO Woo-su, Matthew worked alongside a tight-knit team that also included Mu-won (Yoon Byung-hee) and Chang-ho.
However, it all fell apart when The Usu launched a product called Good Morning Cream. Marketed as safe for those with sensitive skin, including children, the cream caused extreme inflammation in some. Woo-su takes the fall for it, dying by suicide. Matthew is the person who finds him. Overwhelmed by guilt, he takes the first bus out of town and ends up in Deokpung Village. The community there will save his life by welcoming him as one of their own.
The Good Morning Cream incident was also a major moment in Ye-jin’s life. The product was the centerpiece of the first home shopping program Ye-jin ever hosted. When the Good Morning Cream proves unsafe for use, Ye-jin is one of the people blamed. Though she keeps her job at HIT Home Shopping, she develops extreme workaholic habits, desperate to avoid selling another product that hurts her buyers.
The incident was a personal tragedy for Ye-jin too. Ye-jin is the secret daughter of famous actress Song Myeong-hwa (Woo Hee-jin), who decides that raising Ye-jin is too much of a risk for her career. Ye-jin’s father, Dam Seok-gyeong (Kim Young-jae), raises their daughter on his own. When Ye-jin is old enough to ask questions about the identity of her mother, Myeong-hwa comes back into her life, but at a distance. The two speak on the phone once a week.
Once Ye-jin is an adult, the mother and daughter operate in similar circles. Because of this, Myeong-hwa is a guest on Ye-jin’s Good Morning Cream broadcast. When the scandal breaks, Myeong-hwa loses her acting career. For years, she convinces herself that Ye-jin set up the situation as revenge for Myeonghwa’s choice to abandon Ye-jin as a child.
Noori’s launch and the return of Chang-ho
Though many people take accountability for the Good Morning Cream incident, the person who actually caused it manages to wiggle his way out of facing consequences. Chang-ho, Matthew’s senior co-worker and friend at The Usu, was the person behind the Good Morning Cream scandal.
Angry that Matthew had been made team leader instead of him, he switched out some of the natural ingredients in the Good Morning Cream for ingredients that would cause severe reactions. Then, Chang-ho bribed Ye-jin’s chief competition at HIT Home Shopping, Yun-ji (Park Ah-in), to get the Good Morning Cream on the broadcast product list. Yun-ji, who was the single mother of a young child, agreed to do it.
Years later, Chang-ho hasn’t changed. While Matthew and Mu-won started Gojeuneok Bio together, Chang-ho has launched a cosmetics company that makes its money by tricking smaller companies into giving away the secrets behind their products. He uses extortion, bribery, deceit, and even violence to grow his business, and to keep his business practices quiet.
When Chang-ho first pops back into Matthew and Mu-won’s lives, they think it is the return of an old friend. However, he actually has his sights set on taking down Matthew once and for all. Blackmailing Yun-ji, Chang-ho gets his hands on the list of influencers who will be testing out Noori before its official launch. He bribes some of them to claim the product has caused a severe reaction.
It is Myeong-hwa—who is beginning to understand that Ye-jin didn’t cause the Good Morning Cream scandal on purpose—who saves the day. When she sees Yun-ji meeting up with Chang-ho, she puts the pieces together. She convinces Yun-ji to tell the truth by telling her own truth about hiding her identity as a young mom. Yun-ji’s public confession reveals Chang-ho’s duplicity and allows Noori a chance to shine on its own. In its HIT debut, broadcast live from Deokpung Village’s mushroom farm, the cream quickly sells out.
Sold Out on You’s healing ending
Many healing dramas have a rural community as a setting, and Sold Out on You is no different. Depicting the countryside as an idyllic place of slow living, community connection, and emotional and physical healing, Sold Out On You ends with most of its characters happy in Deokpung Village.
Though it’s unclear how characters like Ye-jin and Matthew manage to both hold down demanding jobs in Seoul and return to slow-paced community in Deokpung on a near-daily basis, that’s not what a healing drama is for. It’s an escapist story meant to soothe its viewers by suggesting that both are possible.
In the end, Matthew and Ye-jin are happy together. Ye-jin no longer needs sleeping pills to rest, and Matthew is willing to accept help from others again. The final shot is of the two of them asleep in bed together, peacefully at rest.
