Remarks and Observations Directed at the Clouds -- Korean TV Shows

My Sassy Girl  Image: https://www.viki.com/tv/35705c-my-sassy-girl

In this episode of an old man yelling at the clouds, I’m going to highlight a number of excellent Korean TV shows, or if you're hip enough, “K-dramas.” I must admit that despite my interest in China and Asia, I have paid no attention to Korea. It seemed like a minor player in the area, sort of a minor offshoot of China and Chinese history. And as a result, I didn’t pay much attention to its TV shows many of which are offered by Netflix. I did sample one comedy, whose name I can’t recall, but it seemed rather silly, and quickly forgot it. Later, I tried three episodes of the historical drama Mr Sunshine, but found it a bit more violent than I cared for. All that changed when, with nothing else to watch, I tried the Korean historical drama, Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung. I think I watched three episodes before I decided to invite my wife to watch with me. (I audition these shows before suggesting that she might like them as well.) In any event, it was a winner.

Ah, don’t let the silly translation of the show titles put you off. The shows are nowhere near as silly as their English titles might suggest.

Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung  Image: https://www.tvtime.com/en/show/364834/recommendations

Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung (16 episodes Netflix)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rookie_Historian_Goo_Hae-ryung

The story is set in the 18^th century Korea. It, like those Chinese historical dramas, is centered around the court of the Chosen Dynasty, who employed court historians that recorded everything that went on in the court. These historians were historically independent of the King’s authority and allowed to record what was said and what they observed, impartially. In the story it is decided to add a number of female historians to the department, in part, to try to discover who is behind a perceived threat to the king. Our heroine, Goo Hae-ryung, escaping from an arranged marriage, and wanting to be something more than a wife of an official, applies and is accepted as one of these female apprentice historians.

As with all the shows that I like, Rookie Historian Goo Hau-ryung is a mixture of comedy, romance, plus mystery, intrigue, danger and drama all deftly woven together in one story. And like almost all of the shows, it is carried along by an appealing female lead. The male romantic lead is a cloistered prince who moonlights as a writer or romance novels. The story unfolds, sometimes with a lighthearted episode, and sometimes with a dark episode full of danger and/or tears as the main characters come ever closer to the central mystery of what happened a decade before to bring to power the current kings slowly comes to light.

Rookie Historian   Image: https://www.soompi.com/article/1333638wpp/astros-cha-eun-woo-and-shin-se-kyung-impress-on-1st-day-of-filming-for-rookie-historian-goo-hae-ryung

The actors, female and male, in this, and indeed, in all the Korean shows I’ll talk about are wonderful. The writing is clever, funny, and dramatic in turn – and so must be the translators as well. Compared to their Chinese counterparts, the settings are much less elaborate, and the courts less impressive, but I think the stories are tighter, and more focused.

On interesting feature of this and the following show, is that marriage is not the end all, be all of the heroine. In both, they pursue their own futures, independently of their true love.

I’d rate Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung 4 ½ stars.

Next up is another historical drama set roughly in the same time period as Rookie Historian. The name is still silly, the men still wear those silly looking hats and it still concerns intrigues of the court.

My Sassy Girl  Image: https://www.soompi.com/article/992093wpp/first-impressions-sassy-girl-drama-finally

My Sassy Girl (16 episodes Netflix)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Sassy_Girl_(TV_series)

The heroine of this story is a princess, whose mother was supposedly killed in thwarted palace coup ten years before the beginning of the story. She is free spirited and bold, often escaping the confines of the palace. Worse for drink, she is saved from falling from a bridge by the male lead, a scholar just returned from China, and things get more complicated after that. Later, he is appointed the teacher for the princess’s little brother, and together, with much bickering in the beginning, they set out to unravel the mystery of her mother’s supposed death, and its implications in the court. Like Rookie Historian, there are lighthearted, largely comical episodes along with dark, dangerous, and dramatic episodes. Both my wife and I looked forward each evening to watching the next episode. (We limit ourselves to one a night.) Another winner.

Another 4 ½ star show.

I can highly recommend both of these shows, though it probably takes watching the first two episodes to get fully involved with the characters and the story line, but once in, I think that you’ll enjoy the ride.

Next we turn to shows set in modern Korea.

Romance is a Bonus Book  Image: https://medium.com/@togoandoreoo/reasons-why-romance-is-a-bonus-book-is-a-big-bonus-everyone-2089c80b0a78

Romance is a Bonus Book (16 episodes, Netflix)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_Is_a_Bonus_Book

The story is largely set in a small Korean publishing house, and if you like books, it is interesting just on that account alone – how books to be published are decided upon, printed, sold and, if necessary, disposed of in Korea. The story concerns a woman who took time off from work in an advertising to raise her daughter. Now divorced, she tries to get back into the business, but finds that no one wants a 30 something year old woman who is 10 years out of the business. To make ends meet, she secretly works as the housekeeper of an old friend, and when she finds herself homeless, stays in his attic as well, until discovered. Unable to get a job in her field, she applies for an internship at this friend’s publishing firm, without listing her university degree, and gets the low level job… And well, once more we have a romantic comedy, with a dollop of mystery. It is a very character focused show, with a likable ensemble cast, and without any great soap opera/melodramatic endings, like a number of other shows like this seem to think you need.

I liked it a lot. 4 ½ stars, yet again.

Something in the Rain  Image: https://heychingu.com/157/something-in-the-rain-2018

Something in the Rain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_in_the_Rain

This proved to be a darker romantic drama than I expected. It has its comedy elements, and its romance, but it has a lot more drama and heartbreak than I usually prefer. What it does have going for its female romantic lead, Son Ye-jin. Son Ye-jin is simply a wonderfully expressive actor. Here she plays a 35 year old coffee company supervisor who falls in love with her brother’s best friend, who is some 10 years younger. This romance is bitterly opposed by her mother, and most of the family, for reasons that are not quite clear to this viewer, (It might be a cultural thing that I’m missing.) and much drama and heartbreak ensues – along with drama at her office concerning pressing sexual harassment charges. Overall, not exactly my cup of tea, but certainly not bad. We watched the entire series.

On this one, I’d only give it 3 stars – but just because I like my entertainment more lighthearted.

Cinderella and the Four Knights   Image: https://www.soompi.com/article/1371147wpp/4-reasons-cinderella-and-four-knights-is-the-ultimate-guilty-pleasure

Cinderella and the Four Knights (16 episodes Netflix)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_with_Four_Knights

The premise of this show is that a very rich man has three grandsons from three different and deceased sons living in a modern mansion together, who don’t get along. Two of them are more or less jerks, one is nice, but none of them he considers suitable heirs to his wealth, as they are. One of them, on a bet, hires our heroine to play the role of his fiancee for the 5^th wedding of his grandfather. The wealthy grandfather is impressed by the actions of our heroine and hires her to live in the mansion and make his grandsons better people. She accepts, needing the money to go on to college, and set out to complete the missions he assigns her. The first having all three cousins eat a meal together…

Like most of the other shows I’ve reviewed in this series, it is an enjoyable comedy/romance/soap opera. My biggest ding against this one is that it ends with a very melodramatic ending, that I didn’t think necessary. I like slice of life stories, and don’t need a dramatic ending. But I am likely in the minority on this issue.

Because I dislike melodramatic endings, I’m knocking half as star off: 3 ½ stars

Well, I see this rant has gone on longer than I had expected, and I still have one Korean show to go. It, however, is a show that I’m going to gush over, being perhaps the best show I’ve ever seen. I’m already watching it for a second time. So I think I’ll save that for its very own post, coming soon.

Romance is a Bonus Book  Image: https://aminoapps.com/c/k-drama/page/blog/romance-is-a-bonus-book-episode-8-preview/qkGs_Ru5B7be2E76omm20rRZEvpQpk7

Remarks and Observations Directed at the Clouds – Asian TV (Part 1)

Image credit:https://ninja-reflection.com/2018/09/24/rise-phoenixes-novel-ending/

After trashing the TV sf show, Vagrant Queen, in the last post, I’m going to tell the clouds about something positive this time around. I’m going to talk about how much I enjoy Asian TV shows, mainly Chinese and Korean TV shows – and why.

But first, a little background on how I came to discover them. I can draw a direct line back sixty years to grade school, and to the fact that I can not memorize by rote. I could not, and still can not, spell words, because spelling, in English, anyway, makes no sense. Rules have been broken at will, (though you dare not try it yourself) and a word’s spelling is not necessarily connected to its modern, or its regional pronunciation. Correct spelling can only be achieved by rote memorization. See Dr Gerard Nolste Trenite’s poem “The Chaos” here: https://the-digital-reader.com/2020/03/03/if-you-can-correctly-pronounce-every-word-in-this-poem-actually-most-people-can/

But enough of that, I’m trying to remain positive in this post. However, I must also mention that to pass a language class in high school, rote memorization was also necessary, at least back in my day. I failed freshman year Spanish in high school, and so I had to take five semesters of a foreign language in college. Given that I could not spell English, it seemed unlikely that I would be able to correctly spell French or German words correctly, (Spanish was a non-starter after my high school experience.) even if I had managed to memorize enough of the grammar to have a chance of passing any test. Faced with this reality, I signed up for Chinese.

Spelling was not a problem in Chinese. True, I had to rote memorize characters, but they, at least, appealed to my artistic side, and how they were constructed was interesting as well. (And since our professors were Taiwanese, we were learning the original characters, not the simplified ones from Mao’s mainland China.) However, I found, as I went along, that Chinese grammar is nice and simple. There are no tenses in Chinese. You simply say when the action occurred without changing the word, i.e. “I yesterday go, I today go, I tomorrow go.” Plus, there is no male or female words, or different social caste conventions, and other such nonsense. The spoken language did depend on how one said the word – it could have four different meanings depending on how it was pronounced – so one has to train one’s ears to catch the subtle differences in the four tones. Still, all in all, it had, for me, a lot of advantages over most other languages. Not, mind you that I was any good at it, for I wasn’t. But, it had one other advantage in 1968 – China was still under Mao and was not playing the large role in the world as it now plays – so that the East Asian department at the University of Wisconsin, wanted students, and was reluctant to flunk them out. Where the French or German departments would’ve had me out on my ear, I managed to get my five semesters in, more or less on the basis that at least I was trying… So I was able to earn a BA in international relations, in which I took all the course I could on China and East Asia, because I knew then, as I know today, that China would be the central power of the 21^st century. I did not pursue a career in the foreign service – I didn’t have the right connections, wasn’t motivated enough, and well, it was 1972 and I was not in agreement on how America conducted its foreign policy – and probably will never be.

So, fast forward 40 some years and I discovered some Mandarin language TV shows on Netflix, and decided to give one a try –if only to hear the spoken language to pick out the six words I remembered from two and a half years of college Chinese. And I discovered that I liked the way the Chinese told their stories on TV for a number of reasons.

One of the major reasons is, to put it in a nutshell; they take their time telling stories. One of the first shows I watched was set in Shanghai in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s when the Japanese occupied the city. It was a story of Chinese collaboration and resistance to the Japanese occupation, and was based on a novel. The TV show from this novel probably had a running time of around 35 hours. I liked that they took the time to establish characters and motivations, and allow those characters and their motivations play out over time. The Chinese shows generally have about 40+ episodes of 45 minutes to an hour each. I could watch one a day for a month and a half, allowing it to play out like a soap opera. I doubt that this pace is for everyone, but it is for me – in most cases. I have found that some shows do seem to drag things out and run too long to fill in their time slot, especially the romantic comedies, but still, I’d rather them err on the side of longer than shorter. The Korean shows, on the other hand, run 16 episodes of an hour or more, which is a little more manageable.

The second major reason I enjoy Asian shows is that they portray a different society. Stories set in an exotic world was, and is one, of the major draws of science fiction for me. Stories set in China, and Korea, be it ancient or modern, are set in an exotic world. Neither country scrimps on sets or costumes when they shot a historical show, and their modern settings are both familiar and different at the same time. Chinese cities look like 21^st century cities – cities of the future – because they are. And the Korean shows show a lot of different cityscapes, from ultra modern to picturesque neighborhoods with houses seeming piled one on top of the other.

But of course, the differences don’t stop with architecture. I find it fascinating to observe all the little cultural differences as well, from the food they eat, and how they eat it, how they dress and the various social customs these shows display.

For example, one thing all the Chinese shows seem to have in common, is that when one of the characters gets hurt, say a skinned knee, another character will show how much they care for them, by treating their injury, be it only dressing it and putting on the bandage. You can count on someone getting injured and treated by their romantic opposite in every Chinese show. Another way of showing kindness and affection, is giving a person a piece of food. The Chinese each have a bowl of rice, with all the main course of the meal set in the middle of the table. Everyone uses their chopstick to pick out pieces of these dishes to eat, or to place in the rice bowl of the person they wish to show their regard or affection for. It is also, apparently, not considered impolite to speak with your mouth full, and both the Chinese and Korean shows often have characters talking as they eat. And eating very eagerly apparently shows one’s appreciation for the food and hospitality. In short, there are plenty of these little cultural differences to make the shows just that much more interesting. Another surprising thing is how often an English word or phrase is used on conversation, often to emphasis a point – illustrating how common English language in school must be. Americans, at any rate, rarely, if at all, insert a foreign word into their conversations, unless it is that German word one uses when someone sneezes. Which I can’t spell.

Another thing I like about Asian shows is that they take their time to develop their romances. Romance is almost always a very slow burn. Kissing is very rare in Chinese shows. When people are jumping into bed in western shows, the Chinese may be experiencing their first kiss, if that. I’m a fan of the chase in romances, and the chase in these Asian shows is a long, sometimes rocky, sometimes sweet one.

Oh, well, I guess I’ve gone on long enough, talking to the clouds. So to sum up this installment; I like Asian TV shows because they take their time to develop characters and tell a story, I like that they are set in exotic lands, and that, after several hundred hours of watching Chinese shows, I sometimes don’t need the subtitles…

In my next episode of this series, I will tell the clouds about the shows that I've watched, really liked or loved and can recommend.

Image credit: https://www.thailandtatler.com/style/chopard-steals-the-show-in-crash-landing-on-you