Talk about a bad day. This character’s is one for the records. Imagine your day begins with you thinking your boyfriend is trying to propose to you. It ends with you finding out what he really wants is to break up with you. Trying to erase the awful day, you get wasted, sick and then a trusted friend tries to hookup with your drunken ass. After fighting him off, you run into the jerk who grabbed your ass on the city bus that same morning. You think this is the worst day ever.

Oh but wait, because your next day, thanks to your best friend of 10 years, is going to be So. Much. Worse.

And so begins Personal Taste, my 7th journey into the world of K-dramas. Two episodes in, and I haven’t laughed this much through any of the other six shows. Despite the above description of main character Kae In’s pathetic day. Mistaken identity plays a huge part in the antics and keep the laughs steady throughout the show. The last couple of episodes dissolve into the usual melodrama, but apparently the rules about tongue kissing and premarital sex are relics of K-dramas past.

Mistaken identity of a different kind plays a part in the next show I watched, Lie to Me, also. This show was very sweet, cutesy. Still managed to sneak in the melodramatic stuff towards the end. I guess I’m so used to romantic comedies that even wrap up the secondary character’s storylines in nice happy packages, that it’s still hard to get used to everyone not getting a happy ending.

Side rant: Why are the walk-on American actors on these shows so awful? Seriously, I’ve seen three that I’m sure have “acted” in porn. That’s how bad their skills are. I’ve seen better actors in high school drama club productions.

Don’t judge a culture by its TV shows

I was thinking about how much middle and upper class African Americans worry about how black people are represented on TV and in movies. Sometimes exposure to black people in other cultures is extremely rare. Hence the concern that these people will form negative opinions based on what is shown in American TV and movies.

If I weren’t a thinking person I’d visit Seoul expecting to see totally wasted young women getting piggyback rides from men. Hell, I’d just think everyone needs Alcoholics Anonymous. Or like a Disney movie, all Korean kids have had a parent die tragically  when they were young. Every other young man would be a wealthy Chaebol (descendent of a wealthy business family) and no one except married people are hooking up. Oh, and you can be poor, living in one room, but still have a fabulous wardrobe consisting of at least 20 different coats and an equal number of purses and shoes.

Watch wisely.