This is very, very smart stuff.
Bobby Lee, Korean American comedian and actor extraordinaire, does a dead-on hit on Korean soap operas and captures perfectly the reason I don't like them, as well as the reason I don't own a television.
The parody perforates perfectly the excesses of Korean melodrama, such as the overly-long disquisitions on one's suddenly-proclaimed, never-expressed, yet inexplicitly-rooted love or the deus ex machina methods of bringing complex plots to resolution, as when estranged couples find themselves brought back together by a sudden car accident or mysterious disease.
It also captures the Bobby Lee's apparent dual sense (and most likely, experience) of disconnection from and connection to Korean culture, as the dialogue spoken by him is actual Korean, but are the simple phrases one learns by living in a Korean home environment that don't require high-level speech and often results in Korean American adults being stuck speaking so-called "baby Korean", which is often a source of stress and embarrassment for Korean Americans visiting Korea, or finding oneself stuck in Korean-speaking situation.
As the main actress and Lee's doctor character get together in front of the stairs, her words match the subtitles, but when Lee responds to his lover wishing him a "Happy Campfire Day," he looks earnestly into her eyes and replies, "I...cannot...speak...Korean."
Hilarious. Only a few people in the audience got that one, but it was an extra layer of humor that made this piece extra-special for Korean speakers.
She then replies that she has something important to confess to him, and when the camera cuts back to Lee, he expectantly replies, "I...am...very full...now," a phrase that I'm sure Lee has uttered at countless Korean dinner tables.
Then she reveals that she loves him. The character replies, "I'm...sorry," as the subtitles extend out much longer than even a non-speaker of Korean would assume was a real translation of something that short and simple.
And then the kiss followed by the sudden death, which sums up perfectly the cycle of inexplicable love, complication or death, and (sometimes) resurrection inherent to the plotlines of most Korean dramas, which might have the identical twin of a deceased lover entering the fray, or a lover come down with amnesia after a traffic accident, or something equally unlikely and irritating (to me).
Then come the gangsters. That was priceless.
Then the subtitles that don't at all match the spoken dialogue, or are far too complex (or underdone) to translate into English well.
Awesome.
Thanks to Corsair the Rational Pirate, for the link!
