Well, So Much For That: AZN To Go Off The Air

Yep, you read it correctly: AZN will be going off the air April 9. No more endless loops of Coffee Prince. No more seven days a week of the half-hour, completely batshit serial Here Comes Ajumma! (which I never even got a chance to write about, it was so hard to keep up). No more thirty second spots telling me not to let "them" tell me how to define myself as an Asian American (duly noted! Oh, wait.) If I want my fix of low-budget commercials for Kinoki Footpads, Mighty Putty and the AARP, I'll have to get it from NY1 - though I don't think I've ever seen those Tanya Roberts timeshare ads on any other channel. Does anyone care but me?

To be honest, it's kind of a relief. Don't get me wrong - I like TV. I like TV a lot. But seven days a week of K-Dramas is just too rich for my blood. I had to watch 4 episodes in a row of Bride From Vietnam last night because my I spent the past week's TV time trying to catch up on the increasingly boring Love Truly. 4 episodes in a row - that's 4 hours. I can't live like this, people! Maybe the TV Gods just took pity on me.

Anyway... highlights from the latest quartet of BFV:

Jun-wu has Sung-il's number. He keeps denying he's Jin-ju's father at first, but eventually breaks down and admits it. However, he refuses to reveal his identity to Jin-ju or meet with her soon-to-be-blind mother, for the sake of his family, career, social standing, etc. Jun-wu is not having it. He goes off and basically calls him a selfish coward. He tells Jin-ju that her father contacted him but doesn't want to meet her, and that she should forget about him and move on with her life. She freaks out and they fight, but then she calms down and tries to make peace with the situation. When Mrs. Huh gets wind of this she is furious and confronts her nephew, but he still won't budge. Sung-il's character becomes less and less sympathetic with each episode, especially regarding...

Young-su and Se-mi, who have been sticking it out working in a noodle shop and freezing their asses off in their rooftop apartment, waiting for the parents to say yes. Young-su has matured (I think it only took one episode) and is now a hardworking young man, willing to go to the mat for Se-mi - literally. He's taken a job as a hired sparring partner at a gym, essentially getting beat up for money. I didn't know there was such a job. The way he was so secretive about it - everything led up to a big reveal when Sung-il gets photos from his investigator friends of what his son has been up to - made me think he had become a male prostitute, or at least a stripper. I guess my mind's in the gutter. Anyway, the investigators find the kids and lead Sung-il right to Se-mi. Once again, he tries to get her to leave Young-su, but she's more determined than ever. Sung-il has heard that Se-mi's family is willing to take the couple in and allow them to marry without his permission, so he's desperate to stop them. Se-mi and Young-su go back on the run. Han-suk, who was all set to bring Se-mi home on good terms, is furious at Sung-il for making them disappear again. Once Se-mi talks to Won-mi and hears the news that her parents will take them in, she's ecstatic and starts packing her bags. But now Young-su is upset because he doesn't want to be disowned by his family. They argue, Se-mi leaves, Young-su runs after her, she runs into the street and into the path of an oncoming truck, Young-su pushes her out of the way and is hit. He doesn't die, but it's not good. At the hospital, the surgery is successful, but he might be crippled, we don't know yet. Sung-il blames Se-mi, Han-suk blames Sung-il. Se-mi finally goes home and is reunited with her family. She goes to the hospital to visit Young-su, but when Sung-il shows up he makes her leave. He's a total asshole. He's also increasingly unfathomable to his wife, who now feels like no one listens to her (at the beginning of the series, she pretty much controlled everything and everyone). She keeps asking what the hell is the matter with him, but he doesn't even bother trying to explain, or lie. It's not a good tactic.

Ji-young saw Sung-il and Jun-wu arguing in the parking lot, so she knows something is going on between them. She also knows, thanks to her mother (who left town, again, for good this time - there was a truly awesome montage featuring the best and worst of Scary Mom) that there's something going on between Sung-il and Jun-wu's father's business - remember, he secretly tried to help them for Jin-ju's sake. And, she overheard Jin-ju telling Mrs. Huh that Jun-wu had been in contact with her father, and that she was depressed about it. She's starting to put it together. Meanwhile, for reasons I really don't understand, Young-min has not only agreed to delay the divorce, he's let Ji-young move back into the house. He was going to move out (really a long overdue move, it seems to me) and let her live with him, but Mother wouldn't have it. He's said something to the effect that he only agreed to delay the divorce so he can get revenge - torture her, basically - but is this really the reason? It seems kind of absurd that he'd put himself through that, although he does seem to be enjoying it. He makes Ji-young sleep in a closet-sized guest room, and when she complains he gets her with a real zinger: "A good husband treats his wife the way she deserves." OHH, snap! Also, he keeps warning her "not to upset Mother." He's actually kind of a creepy character.



Jin-ju and Ji-young face off in their first rice cake test. Ji-young makes her company's product development team come up with a recipe for her, but she still loses to Jin-ju. Why? Jin-ju makes persimmon rice cakes, which are "easier to digest" and are good for children and the elderly. Ji-young makes some coconut rice cakes, but Mrs. Huh points out that while they taste good, brown rice flour and coconut are hard to digest, and would not be good for her target market. She should think about someone else for once. It's really very interesting how on three different shows - BFV, Love Truly, and Here Comes Ajumma! - a female character masters cooking and faces off against a rival who has the skills but not the heart. Coincidence that these are shows I keep coming back to, and not the historical dramas? That's not really the interesting part, though - it's that on all these shows, when learning the art of cooking/rice cake making in Korea, what's emphasized more than anything else is knowing how the ingredients you use will affect the person meant to eat them. Are they easily digestible? What diseases and conditions are they good for? Thinking of food as medicinal as well as pleasurable seems to be the prevailing school of thought when it comes to Korean TV cooking. It's probably the last thing most Americans would think of - although Americans certainly eat foods because they are supposed to be healthy, I doubt that the primary concern of people cooking in fine restaurants here is whether the beef carpaccio is good for anemia.

Another thing I learned from BFV this weekend: I always wondered why men in K-Dramas enjoy insulting the women in their lives so much. As a means of expressing affection, they will often tell their beloved that they have an ugly face or fat legs. This kind of shit would get your balls kicked in in America. Well, Gun-ja explains it all: apparently, when a man insults your appearance, it means he's at least paying attention. Got that, ladies?

As I mentioned, Love Truly has kind of gone off the rails. It's not unwatchable, but it's really dragging. Everyone has started being nice to each other. Boring! Dementia wife has started making a miraculous recovery - yawn. Bong-soon's mom is not a winner - yes, got it. The subplots involving the kitchen staff are so tedious that I just fast forward through them. The Gordon Ramsay-like second in command chef and his bitchy bitch bitch assistant, who live to torture Bong-soon, need to get fired. I still have a few epsiodes from last week to catch up on, so maybe things picked up, who knows. It's all over come Wednesday.

Crazy Vintages and Get A Divorce Already, Ji-young!

We’re already on to episode 20 of Love Truly (aka I Really Really Like You) – how time flies when a show is on 5 days a week. What is it about this beyond ridiculous show that I can’t get enough of? Is it the catchy, repetitive music cues? The nonsensical plot? The endless mopey montages? The endless happy montages? The duck? At first it probably was the duck, but she hasn’t appeared in a while and for some reason I’m still watching. Could it be the lead actress, Korean pop sensation Eugene? I actually like her, even though I have a feeling her cornball accent would be unlistenable if I could discern it. She’s cute and healthy-looking – by healthy I mean not scrawny and anorexic-looking like some of these Korean actresses you see. Lee Min-ki, who plays the cocky Bong-gi, occasionally channels Danny Kaye at his most spastic, but mostly reminds me of a Bollywood comic actor, especially when he gets all huffy denying his feelings for Bong-soon (“Neva neva neva!”) Actually, I know what my favorite thing about this show is: it’s whatever slang expressions Bong-gi is using and their English translations. He keeps on calling Bong-soon a “vintage hillbilly” and can’t understand how he got all mixed up with all these “crazy vintages”. Vintages? He sometimes uses the phrase “for realz”. Also, this is the only show I’ve ever seen where the word “shit” will be in the subtitles but the middle “hi” will be censored. All right, so what’s going on? At this point, Bong-gi and Bong-soon both know that Joon-won is the President’s son. Bong-soon is (still) in love with Joon-won but is trying to repress her feelings because he’s married – to a woman who has suffered from “dementia” for the past three years. The family wants them to get a divorce so she can go live with her parents in America, but he insists on taking care of her. However, Mr. Wonderful is starting to feel a little resentful now that he’s gotten a taste of what life could be like with Bong-soon. A few episodes ago he broke her heart saying that she was like a little sister to him (ouch!) and that he never once thought of her as a woman (double ouch!!), but it looks like he’s starting to reconsider. Wait, aren’t they actually brother and sister? Nope, turns out that Mr . President found the infant Bong-soon, abandoned by her birth mother, when he was on the run from the police in the mountains, and took her in. He left her with her “grandma”, the woman they stayed with in the mountains, after he went back to Seoul (and for some odd reason, never stayed in touch with the little girl he helped raise). So he’s not her biological father - or a cheat, which I’m sure everyone is relieved about. Her mother, on the other hand, is right under her nose – Bong-soon comes face to face with her in the last episode’s cliffhanger. She’s a former “erotic” movie actress who now works as an extra, and seems to have lots of trouble with creditors and the law. She also has two daughters, one of whom is the same bad apple who stole all of Bong-soon’s money! Bong-soon, in the meantime, has gotten a job working at the Blue House cafeteria, and is buddies with the Presidential chef. Her boss, Jin-kyung, has a thing for Bong-gi, while the square Blue House photographer (whose name I forget) has a thing for Jin-kyung. Bong-gi has dated Jin-kyung a few times, but clearly has a thing for Bong-soon (he even bought her a cell phone while on a date with Jin-kyung, a sure sign that the relationship won’t last). I thought Jin-kyung was cute at first – she’s the only character on the show with an inner monologue, and is fond of the phrase “ooh la la!” – but now she seems kind of shallow and petty. She’s mean to Bong-soon and her co-workers, and is only starting to think about Mr. Photographer seriously because he seems to have more money than Bong-gi. Bong-gi continues to struggle with his feelings for Bong-soon, but can only express them through insults. There’s also kind of a sad (I guess it’s supposed to be hilarious) subplot where Bong-soon’s overweight co-worker becomes obsessed with a hunky Presidential guard, who is horrified. I’m rather curious to see how that one gets resolved.



Meanwhile, on Bride From Vietnam… Ji-young has gone crazy. Really, really crazy. She WILL NOT get a divorce, even though it’s the only logical thing for her to do. Her husband doesn’t want her lying ass anymore, her husband’s family desperately wants her out, they’re offering a ton of alimony – and she says no way. Even Scary Mom is giving sound advice and telling her to give it up. But for some reason, Ji-young still believes that she really loves Young-min and that she can turn this whole thing around if they wait six months. In a revealing scene with Scary Mom, Ji-young indicates that her biggest fear is becoming like her mother and that this is her real motivation for sticking it out – she doesn’t want to end up alone. Scary Mom tries to explain that she is setting herself up to do just that, but Ji-young won’t hear it. It seems that Ji-young’s motivation to become Mrs. Huh’s apprentice is twofold: revenge (you can tell when Mrs. Huh asks her why she’s so interested all of a sudden, the voice in her head is going “don’t say revenge, don’t say revenge…”) against Jun-wu, basically for existing, by replacing his wife as Mrs. Huh’s successor; and the hopes that by securing Mrs. Huh’s name for their company’s rice cake project, she will help Young-min succeed and win back his heart (what’s with all the women on this show thinking that the way to a man’s heart is to get him promoted? Besides which, his father owns the company – does he really need her help?) Mrs. Huh, in a rather mean ploy to test Jin-ju, agrees to take on Ji-young as an additional student, even though it’s apparent that she’s going through a messy separation involving Mrs. Huh’s family. Mrs. Huh tells her assistant Yeon-ki in private that you can tell a real gem by putting it next to a fake one, or something to that effect. Still, it’s pretty ridiculous that she would force her pregnant and faithful student (and blood relative) to compete with her husband’s nasty ex who does nothing but insult and threaten her. It’s funny – for a long time, even though Ji-young is clearly the antihero of the show, she wasn’t a bad guy you loved to hate. I actually felt sorry for her, having to live with her uptight husband and controlling, high-strung mother-in-law who didn’t want to let her hold a job or be on birth control (!). But now that Ji-young’s got nothing left to lose, she’s really turned the corner towards becoming a bona fide bee-yatch. Meanwhile, Young-su and Se-mi are living on their own and have gotten jobs waiting tables. Young-su, while cute, is really showing his immaturity – he whines about having to work and spends their rent money playing video games. I wonder if Se-mi will still want to marry this guy when they finally do go home, or if she’ll insist that he do some growing up first. This is why you live together first, people! Also, it’s totally out of the bag that Won-mi faked her pregnancy. Han-suk, of course, was furious, but she seems to be getting over it. And, wouldn’t you know it, people are starting to talk about how there must be “another reason” for Sung-il’s refusal to let Se-mi and Young-su marry. They should have just called this show “The Other Reason”. Now that everyone knows about Ji-young, there’s really just one more secret that has to come out… and it’s a biggie.

By the way, you can watch any episode of Bride From Vietnam (aka Golden Bride), Coffee Prince, and about a trillion other K-dramas via www.mysoju.com. You can also download them if you have the Veoh player, although I find the actual player annoying and prefer to watch them using VLC Player instead.

A Belated Update and A New Show

Sorry I haven’t updated in a while, but I’ve had a LOT of catching up to do TV-wise. The K-dramas have been filling up the DVR faster than I can possibly get to them. Who knew this addiction would be so time-consuming?

First off, Coffee Prince ended its run on AZN – and promptly started up again at the beginning! Great news for those who haven’t managed to catch this series yet. Overall, I really enjoyed the show. It was different from other K-dramas I’ve seen in so many ways… people having sex before marriage with impunity, for example. But the thing that seemed almost bizarre compared to other K-dramas I’ve seen is that, once Eun-Chan was outed as a woman and Han-Gyul got over his initial shock, not that much really… happened. For the entire last third of the series, it seemed like the biggest conflict was, “oh, I love you and you love me, but we can’t decide when we should get married”. Sure, Han-Gyul’s grandmother wasn’t a fan of the relationship, but compared to the threats of suicide and disinheritance commonplace in other dramas’ parent-disapproval scenarios, Grandma’s “eh, I don’t like her, she looks like a man” seemed ridiculously tame. And she even liked her enough to send her on a free ride to Italy (to “barista school” – is there such a thing, really?)! I suppose this story couldn’t have ended in any other way than a full-blown self-realization scenario for Eun-Chan – her character couldn’t have just gotten married and become a pampered housewife, naturally. I did think it was a little annoying that after all Eun-Chan’s self-righteousness about money, and insisting on paying back her wealthy boyfriend everything he lent her with interest, that she didn’t blink an eye about accepting Grandma’s free ride, but whatever. It was kinda cool that half of the last episode actually took place two years into future, when Eun-Chan was slated to return from Italy as a certified barista. Like Audrey Hepburn, she comes back from Europe with a snazzy new hairdo and feminine clothes – clearly a sign that she’s “matured” (at least in TV/movie land). Also, she apparently won something called the “World Barista Competition”. Good for her. Oh, and as for Han-Sung and his crappy girlfriend, they not only got back together, they got married! She proposed, saying something romantic like, “we can always get divorced”. Awwww. She was pregnant briefly, but it was implied that she had a miscarriage. While I would never wish that situation on anyone in reality, in the case of these two fictional characters, thank God! I was betting that she was going to have the baby, and then two weeks later be like, “you know what, motherhood is kind of cramping my style. I think I’ll move to Canada,” leaving her doormat husband to raise the kid alone. I really don’t quite get what the makers of Coffee Prince were trying to say with this story line (it wasn’t covered in the “Making Of” special shown after the finale). Are they really holding these two up as an example of a mature, long-term relationship? I can tell you one thing: if this couple were real, they would not age well. Their adorable jabs at each other would not stay cute for long – before you know it, they’d be fifty and screaming at each other like the couple in the Stella d'Oro Breakfast Treats commercial. “Where’s my pre-amp?” “How should I know, you cheating asshole? Maybe your trannie ex-girlfriend took it!” “Fuck you, you fucking whore! Why don’t you run off to New York again?” Actually, I would TOTALLY watch that show. They could call it something like “Bitter Screaming Couple”. Hello, SBS?

OK, next up: shit is totally hitting the fan every which way on Bride From Vietnam. Where to start? Young-su and Se-mi have run away from home, the parents are freaking out and searching for them, and everyone is ready to let them get married except for Sung-il, for reasons no one has figured out yet. I’m sure this reinforces a valuable lesson to Korean kids everywhere: if your parents say no, just run away! They’ll reconsider. Well, unless your father has an illegitimate daughter in your girlfriend’s family that he can’t let anyone know about. In much, much bigger news, though, Ji-young got BUSTED! Young-min encounters a blotto In-kyong in the parking lot and chivalrously offers to drive her home (actually, he offers her a ride in his chaufferred limo – he’s that rich). In-kyong isn’t drunk enough to spill the beans, but she is out of it enough to leave behind her date planner – with the picture of her, Ji-young and Jun-wu from college sticking out. OHH SHIT! I expected the quaking Young-min to run upstairs and slap her silly, but he holds on a little longer to confirm a few details that leave no doubt that she’s been lying. When he does finally confront her with the picture, she actually has the balls to keep lying! She says Jun-wu was never her boyfriend, that he was a crazy stalker and of course she couldn’t tell him about it. It’s like she has a pathological disease where she just can’t stop lying. It doesn’t work, though – Young-min follows her to Jun-wu’s place of employment where she interrupts his meeting (!) to have a royal freakout. She thinks he sent the picture to Young-min to get revenge (strangely, no one has corrected her on this yet). Young-min, standing outside, overhears the whole thing. It’s so over. Now Ji-young is really starting to go bananas – even threatening Jun-wu, saying she’ll never forgive him (him!) for how things turned out for her (is she serious???) Jun-wu is haunted by her remarks in the very next scene, in one of my favorite K-Drama conventions, “The Flashback From 30 Seconds Ago”. Young-min doesn’t want to worry his parents –they’re already freaking about Young-su running away – so he’s keeping his mouth shut for the time being, but is absolutely set on a divorce. He isn’t buying another word out of Ji-young’s mouth, not even her tearful declaration that yes, she might have married him for his money, but she really loves him now! Then, in a bizarro move that would make In-kyong proud, Ji-young decides the solution to her current problems is to…become an artisanal rice cake maker? I really have absolutely no explanation for this turn of events. Are there no other options open to women in Korea besides housewife, corporate drone, or rice cake maker? She shows up at Grandma’s (aka Mrs. Huh or Auntie) to beg for an apprenticeship, oblivious to the fact that Jin-ju is already her apprentice (and also, we learn, about to become Mrs. Huh’s successor). Mrs. Huh angrily turns her away multiple times, culminating in her sitting out in the pouring rain and having to be hospitalized as a result (I know, right? Ooohh, she got wet! Get this woman to the hospital immediately!) Oh, wait, I forgot maybe the biggest news of all – Jin-ju IS pregnant! The Degrassi scenario wins. I guess they must have done it after all.

Finally, there is a new show I have to tell you about. Two weeks ago, I had just finished watching one of the last Coffee Princes (I always record them and give them enough lead time to fast forward through the commercials, because the commercials on AZN are, no joke, THE WORST COMMERCIALS on cable TV. More on that another time) when I found myself in the middle of another drama I had never seen before. The very first thing I saw was this:


I immediately set my DVR to “Record Entire Series”.

The show is called “Love Truly”, and you know what? I Truly Love it! The aforementioned episode was the second in this 34-episode series about, according to a synopsis, “those who work in the Blue House (Korean presidential residence). This drama introduces the viewers the place considered mysterious and tabooed in TV dramas. It also features the people working inside the most unknown place in the country.” That may be, but this is no West Wing: no boring politics interfere with the non-stop barrage of insults, poop jokes, and ducks crying animated tears. In a nutshell, the story follows three characters: Bong-soon, a young woman raised in the remote rural mountains by her grandmother who comes to Seoul to find her real parents after her grandmother’s death; Joon-won, a surgeon, low-profile son of the President and general Mr. Wonderful; and Bong-gi, an arrogant Secret Service-type employee of the President who keeps getting assigned to guard Joon-won – even though he doesn’t know Joon-won is the President’s son. That must be why he keeps calling him a piece of crap. The three cross paths when Joon-won, alone on some emotional hiking expedition in the mountains (I still haven’t seen the first episode, so I’m not sure why he was out there) is rescued by plucky Bong-soon. Bong-gi is assigned to go to the mountains to escort Joon-won back to Seoul, which ruins his vacation plans, so things don’t exactly start off on the right foot with those two. Bong-soon’s ailing grandmother dies, but on her deathbed reveals that she is not Bong-soon’s real grandma, and that she should find her real parents. Bong-soon digs up some photographs of herself as a baby with her real parents – one of whom bears a striking resemblance to the President. Kindly Joon-won has offered to be her guardian from now on, so she sets off, Bong-hee the duck in her backpack, for Seoul. Within days naïve Bong-soon has had all her money stolen, been kidnapped by a cult, and had her prize 100-year-old bellflower eaten, but she perseveres. She’s befriended Bong-gi’s father, a gardener/custodian at the Blue House, and is staying with him and Bong-gi. Bong-gi is beside himself that this hillbilly – who maliciously stole his very important badge and hid it because she didn’t like him – is living not only in his house but in his room. He’s the one who ate her bellflower without her permission, after all. He’s kind of a jerk, but I have a feeling he will develop a heart of gold by the end of this series. Anyway, check it out. It’s on AZN Monday through Friday at 10:30 PM.

Bride From Vietnam, Episodes 39-40

Things are moving along. In this past weekend’s installments, In-kyong finally cracks! And not a moment too soon – this storyline really overstayed its welcome. Can you imagine your husband or wife’s coworker having an obsessive crush on them, and calling you every other day – not them, YOU – to tell you that you’re not good enough for them, and that you’re not being supportive enough of their career? Well, that’s what this character has been doing to Jin-ju for, I dunno, 20 episodes now. This bitch is crazy! I love how the actress who plays her shows that little gleam of madness in her eye every time she has a moment alone with her thoughts. While I was disappointed that a full-blown catfight never erupted, Jin-ju did have it out with her and forced her to confess that she does in fact have feelings for Jun-wu. Jin-ju finally said what I’ve been wanting her to say to In-kyong all along: you love him so much, where were YOU during the 3 darkest years of his life? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Oh, snap! That shut her up for a few minutes. In a last-ditch effort to win Jun-wu’s heart, she arranges a lunch with Director Min (the trash-talking lady) and gets Jun-wu to show up, hoping they will reconcile and Jun-wu will get his promotion. I wonder if In-kyong’s relentless drive to get Jun-wu promoted is not out of “love” so much as “well, once he leaves his lowly foreign mail-order bride for me, he’d better bring home more coin”. Predictably, it doesn’t work out – within about 15 seconds of Jun-wu’s arrival, Director Min makes some racist comment about Jin-ju. The best part is that after Jun-wu storms out, declaring that he’ll “never work for the likes of her”, In-kyong comes running after him and tries to placate him by pointing out that any “normal person” would be just as racist. Right? Not long after that, In-kyong snaps and confesses her love to Jun-wu – on the roof of their office, the traditional place for private conversations in K-Dramas. When he doesn’t go for it – did she really think he would at this point? – what does she do? She casually drops by Jun-wu’s house before he gets home, to find Jin-ju waiting outside for him (something I always found slightly creepy), saunters up to Jin-ju, and demands that she make her a cup of tea! WHAT?? This might be her craziest moment yet. For some reason, Jin-ju lets this crazy bitch in the house. After seeing Jun-wu’s treatment journal that Jin-ju kept (sure, while I’m here I’ll just go through all your personal things) and hearing Jin-ju talk about that period of their marriage, In-kyong finally starts to understand that there might be something to their relationship. Hopefully now she’ll get over it and move to New York by herself, and we’ll never have to see that pinched look on her face again. Good riddance.

In other news, Ji-young’s mother has done a real number on Se-mi to keep her mouth shut. She has Se-mi believing that the contract given to her father’s rice cake factory by Sung-il’s company was a kind of reparations, brought about by Ji-young out of guilt over what happened with Jun-wu. But if Se-mi blabs and Ji-young gets the boot, there goes her father’s business. In fact, the contract in question IS a kind of reparations – but not for the reason Ji-young’s mother is fabricating. Sung-il himself ordered it to try and help his illegitimate daughter Jin-ju’s family, but no one was supposed to know. Sung-il only recently discovered that Han-suk is Jin-ju’s mother-in-law, so just when everyone was starting to calm down and consider letting Se-mi and Young-su date each other, Sung-il did an about-face and is now totally against it. Now, maybe someone more familiar with Korean culture can fill me in on this, but based on other shows I’ve watched, I have a feeling that Sung-il’s “this can never happen” attitude is based not on a reluctance to get involved with Jin-ju’s family and risk being found out, but on a specific taboo against his daughter and his son becoming in-laws if Se-mi and Young-su were to marry. Is this about right? Anyway, Se-mi starts to give it up, and even tells Young-su to go ahead and go to America –they can always try and get married later. This is after Sung-il calls Se-mi to his office to have a friendly chat with her, and pleads with her to convince Young-su to leave Korea. She tries to tell him about Ji-young – with Ji-young freaking out right outside the door, of course – but she just can’t do it. They manage to get the despondent Young-su to the airport to send him off to Philadelphia (Philadelphia! I love it) but at the last minute he makes a break for it.

Annnnd…. Jin-ju may be pregnant! Or is she? Showing some telltale signs of TV pregnancy, Jin-ju is urged by Grandma to take a pregnancy test. It come up negative, however. This probably means one of two things. Possibility #1: she is pregnant, but it didn’t show up on the test (it happened on Degrassi, it could happen here!) Possibility #2: she isn’t pregnant, she has a horrible disease and will die in the second to last episode. This is a drama, after all. Although given the general tone of the show, #2 might be a little heavy. Let’s revise that – she has a horrible disease but will recover, OR, we’ll all think she has a horrible disease for a while, but it will turn out to be nothing. This happened on Get Karl, Oh Su-Jung (another really great show that I’ll write about another time) where for a couple of episodes everyone thought Su-Jung had cancer, and much rethinking of priorities was done. Since that show was a comedy, of course it turned out that she just had indigestion or something. I’m betting something similar happens here. Besides, how could Jin-ju be pregnant – those two can’t possibly do it. In every scene where they’re in bed, they’re wearing matching his-and-hers polka-dot pajamas, for crying out loud. In fact I can’t imagine ANYBODY on this show doing it with anybody else, married or not. That’s one of the things I like about Coffee Prince: actual acknowledgment that occasionally, real people screw. Except for Eun-chan, that is… so far.

Coffee Prince: Twelfth Cup

Awwww. They made up. It’s pretty freaking adorable, even I have to admit. I’m always on the alert for this show veering into too-cuteness, but for the most part they keep it respectable. Even the mopey, indie-rock-style songs that accompany every emotional montage on this show don’t bother me that much. All they have to do is cut to that dog and I’m like, fine, Coffee Prince. You win.

So, we’re about two-thirds of the way through this series – there are 17 episodes (or “cups”, if you like) – and the cat’s out of the bag. Everyone knows Eun-Chan is a girl, but is everyone happy? Fun-loving Ha-Rim suddenly got all uptight and righteous as soon as he found out he and Han-Gyul were being deceived. Clearly he’s had the hots for him/her all along. As for Han-Gyul, don’t you think he’d be relieved to find out that the person he’s in love with isn’t a guy after all, and he’s not gay? Instead, he spends an entire episode storming around, furious because Eun-Chan was dishonest and “didn’t believe in him”. I’ve noticed this happens in a lot of K-Dramas – characters get really upset when they find out they’ve been lied to in any way, even when the truth ends up being more convenient for them. I don’t know if this reflects Korean society so much as a need to keep the plot going for a few more episodes. (Actually, when I think about it, this happens in pretty much any drama series.)

Fortunately, they didn’t waste too much time with this non-conflict. Han-Gyul gets over it, Eun-Chan comes back to work, and the whole gang turns into a bunch of giggly schoolgirls. My favorite part was when Sun-Ki (ohh, I can’t get enough of that guy) asked Ha-Rim which “package” he thought Eun-Chan liked the best. Also, the “sweet and sour chicken” text message they wanted to send Han-Gyul was pretty awesome. I don’t know if the subtitles on these are consistent, but the ones shown on the version I saw were pretty classic all around.

What’s up with Han-Sung chasing after that lousy flake Yoo-Joo? What, she disappeared? Good! Maybe she fell into the black hole of her self-absorption. Jesus. I shouldn’t judge – I’ve certainly seen this kind of thing happen in real life enough times – but that guy needs to give it UP. He had the right idea trying to cheat on her with Eun-Chan. At least his dog is dependable.

In Case You Haven't Been Watching

Frankly, the last couple of episodes of “Bride From Vietnam” (aka “Golden Bride”) have been such clunkers, you’d think there was a writer’s strike going on in Korea. Scene after scene feels like it was cribbed from a previous episode: Ji-Young running to her mother and declaring she can’t live like this anymore, her suspicious husband Young-Min confronting character after character about her past to no avail, In-Kyong getting increasingly bitchy and making Jin-Ju feel insecure at every opportunity… and how long are people going to keep wondering aloud about the mysterious “other reason” why Semi and Young-su can’t get married? Can we please advance the plot, people? There are at least 20 more episodes of this show to go!

Oh, sorry, you have no idea what I’m talking about? You haven’t been following the last 38 episodes of Bride From Vietnam? You didn’t even know that many Korean dramas are subtitled in English here, are broadcast several times a week and are, even with the occasional off episode, generally light years more entertaining than anything on American television? I’ll go into how and why my addiction to K-Drama developed at some point later; right now, I’ve got to get you up to speed.

For those who DO know what I’m talking about, let’s dish.

Recap of the Last 38 Episodes of “Bride From Vietnam” (major spoiler alerts):

Jun-Wu, a promising young man from a working class family, is cruelly dumped by his fiancée, Ji-Young when she goes to study abroad and meets wealthy Young-Min. Turns out, her freaky, somewhat terrifying mother squandered the family fortune on a gigolo after her husband’s death. Faced with the prospect of not being rich if she marries Jun-Wu, she decides to dump him and go for the sure thing. When Jun-Wu comes after her to change her mind, she even reports him as a stalker and he spends a night in jail. Jun-Wu has a complete nervous breakdown and for the next three years suffers from severe panic attacks and agoraphobia.

In desperation, Jun-Wu’s mother, Han-Suk, decides what he needs is a wife and travels to Vietnam to, uh, find him one. She meets Jin-Ju, who is not a mail-order bride but a translator working for the matchmaking service – she’s half Korean. Jin-Ju’s father was a Korean man who abandoned her and her mother when Jin-Ju was an infant. Jin-Ju’s mother is starting to go blind, so Jin-Ju is desperate to find her father, her mother’s only true love for whom she has waited for 20 years, so her mother can see him once again before she loses her sight.

What ends up happening is Jin-ju and Jun-Wu decide to enter into a marriage of convenience. She gets to come to Korea and search for her father, he gets his mother off his back. Jin-Ju actually falls for Jun-Wu early on, but the messed-up Jun-Wu declares that his heart is full of hatred and that there is no room for love (or something to that effect). As far as everyone else knows, though, they are a real married couple – Jin-Ju secretly sleeps on the floor of their bedroom. The cat gets let out of the bag when Han-Suk tries to take Jin-Ju for a gynecological exam (this is a really weird, to my Western viewpoint anyway, recurring theme on this show and many others – mother-in-laws forcing their reluctant daughter-in-laws to go to gynecologists and get “fertility treatments”. Is this an accurate depiction of family life in Korea? I’m really curious). Jin-Ju refuses to be examined – she’s never done it. The family is outraged, but by this point real feelings have begun to spark between Jun-Wu and Jin-Ju, and they decide that they are going to be a “real married couple” from then on (no, it’s not that believable at first. But eventually enough affection and tenderness between the characters shows through that it makes up for the total lack of sexual chemistry). Slowly, Jin-Ju’s devotion and persistence help Jun-Wu recover, and he even manages to score a job at an investment firm with his old school chum, In-Kyong.

Meanwhile, Ji-Young marries into Young-Min’s wealthy family. As fate would have it, the matriarch of this family is Ok-Young, Han-Suk’s bitter rival ever since Ok-Young stole her best friend Han-Suk’s boyfriend and got him to marry her by pretending to be pregnant. Now haughty Ok-Young lives the high class life with her husband, Sung-Il, the chairman of a huge food company. (Han-Suk’s husband runs a small rice cake factory and doesn’t bring home much, but he is probably the most level-headed character on the show). When Han-Suk finds out about Ji-Young, she lets Ok-Young know that she and her children are like enemies to her, but she won’t say why. Ji-Young’s mother-in-law adores her at first, but things go south quickly once the family finds out about her skanky mom. Ok-Young even uses the phrase “marriage fraud”! It blows over, but it’s just the beginning - Ok-Young freaks out every other episode because of something or other Ji-Young has done. Ji-Young has no interest in being an upper-class housewife or having babies – she wants to be a CEO, much to her mother-in-law and husband’s chagrin. With enough arm-twisting, she gets Young-Min and Ok-Young to accept her working at the family corporation. But Ji-Young still lives in constant fear that the family will find out what happened with Jun-Wu, and will figure out for sure that she only married Young-Min for money.

MEANWHILE, Young-Min’s younger brother Young-Su is dating Jun-Wu’s younger sister Semi, although it takes a really, really long time for either family to find this out. When they do, it hits the fan and the kids are forbidden to ever see each other again. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t work (haven’t they ever seen The Fantasticks?). Even when Ok-Young starts to back down, Han-Suk remains dead-set again it – not because of her rivalry with Ok-Young, but because of the mysterious “other reason” (Ji-Young) that she won’t reveal. Ji-Young knows she’ll be screwed if Young-Su and Semi get married, so she tries to convince Young-Su to go study photography in America. It’s around this point in the show that every episode features Ji-Young calling her mother in a panic: “Mom, I’m really in trouble now!”, followed by a scene at her mother’s where she says something like, “Every time I overcome one obstacle, another one presents itself” or “I can’t go on living like this”. Cynical Mom tells her to either get a divorce, or be prepared to “go all the way”, whatever that means. Young-Min becomes increasingly suspicious of his wife, especially after they encounter Jun-Wu in a business setting. He confronts Jun-Wu, who tells him nothing. Jun-Wu, by the way, is now remarkably well-adjusted for a guy who couldn’t leave the house several months ago. Young-Min then confronts Han-Suk, who won’t give up anything either – she thinks Ji-Young is pregnant, and doesn’t want to break up their family, even if they are her “enemies”.

Jun-Wu’s co-worker In-Kyong is a little more loose-lipped, however. She doesn’t come right out and say anything, but hints that Ji-Young “knows all about” Jun-Wu’s ex. In-Kyong was Jun-Wu and Ji-Young’s good friend in college, and always had a thing for Jun-Wu. Only after she helps him get a job at her company, hoping for a romantic reward, does she find out that he’s married – and to a foreigner, no less! Now she’s overcome with bitterness because her friend Ji-Young “ruined” the man she loved. In her view, Jun-Wu and Jin-Ju’s marriage is a joke and is bound to fall apart sooner or later. She takes every opportunity to suggest that Jin-Ju is not a proper wife – to her face! – and warns her that she’ll ruin Jun-Wu’s career by being a burden on him. Jin-Ju slowly starts to overcome her insecurity and neediness, although she still seems to show up at Jun-Wu’s work a lot more often than you’d think she should. Things really come to a head when at a company party, Jin-Ju overhears In-Kyong and and some important Director lady talking trash about them, saying that Jun-Wu was mentally unstable and “shopped for a wife”. Jin-Ju starts to tell them off and ends up injuring the Director, putting Jun-Wu’s big project in jeopardy. In the latest episode, Jin-Ju tried to go apologize to the Director but was humiliated and forced to actually get down on her knees. Jun-Wu, furious, tells the Director where to go and resigns from the project, much to In-Kyong’s horror.

Don’t worry, we’re getting there. Jin-Ju has decided that to help the family business, she wants to become an artisanal rice cake maker, so she seeks out the greatest rice cake maker in the country – I forget this character’s name, but everyone addresses her as “Grandma” – who happens to be Sung-Il’s aunt. Not only does she run a famous restaurant, but she also seems to give yoga and wine-tasting classes (…?) She was also Han-Suk’s and Ok-Young’s former teacher. “Grandma” is a tough, cranky lady who wears a hanbok and is waited on by her mute assistant, Yeon-Ki. People are constantly coming to her for advice, particularly Ok-Young. Grandma tends to give advice by yelling and telling people they’re idiots. When Jin-Ju first approaches Grandma about learning to make rice cakes, she gets yelled at and turned away. But Jin-Ju persists. Eventually Grandma agrees to take her on as a student, but it’s not really because of her persistence: Grandma has discovered that (get ready)…

…Sung-Il is Jin-Ju’s father! Yes, Rich Dad apparently spent a year abroad on business about 20 years ago. His marriage to Ok-Young was on the rocks at the time, and he was planning to divorce her. But, after falling in love with Jin-Ju’s mother and fathering a child, he was forced to return to Korea when his father passed away. His father’s dying wish was for him to stay with Ok-Young, so of course he never went back to Vietnam. Although he sent money, we learn that the person in charge of sending the money gambled it away, so it was as if the Dad had disappeared. At this point, Sung-Il and Grandma know that Jin-Ju is his daughter, but no one else does. (Jin-Ju confronted him once and asked if he was her father, but he denied it.) Now Ji-Young’s mother is starting to dig up some dirt that will probably lead to her finding out. Ok-Young has said that if she ever found out Sung-Il had done something like father an illegitimate child, she would “kill herself on the spot”, so we all have that to look forward to.

I haven’t even gone into the comic subplots involving Jun-Wu’s older sister Won-Mi and his aunt Gun-Ja. They’re not that important, but in a nutshell: Won-mi, a 30-year-old “spinster”, is about to settle for a boring dentist she’s not that into, but ends up with Dong-Gu, a goofy law student who insists he loves her more than anybody else. Both families are against their getting married, so Won-mi pretends to be pregnant to force them to approve. Currently, they are married and living with Dong-Gu’s wacky mother, who up until the last episode was over the moon about her grandson-to-be. Won-mi just spilled the beans, though. Gun-Ja, the aunt, went to work in her brother’s rice cake factory where she kept bickering with her cranky co-worker Byuk-Su. Of, course, they fall in love and get married.

The very latest: Semi just found out the “other reason”. She’s been buddy-buddy with Ji-Young all along, so this is a real shock (I don’t know why Jun-Wu’s sister didn’t know what his ex-fiancée looked like; I may have missed something in an early episode). Enraged, Semi goes to confront Ji-Young and find out for herself if this is true. When Semi threatens to blow the whistle, Ji-Young manages to get her into her car and drive her over to Scary Mom’s place. Scary Mom pushes Semi down on the sofa, and there’s your cliffhanger.

Tune in on Saturday and Sunday at 7:50 PM, Time Warner Cable channel 76 (check your local listings) to see what happens. By the way, the cable guide will identify the show as Yeon Gae So Mun or SBS Weekend Drama. The titles are rarely ever correct: check the TKC schedule. They also show the previous week’s episodes back to back on Saturdays at 1 PM if you want to backtrack a little.

Now, I’m off to watch Coffee Prince (AZN network, Wednesdays-Fridays at 9). It’s not a new show, but this is my first go-round with it and I’m loving the ride so far.