MSV, who speaks Mandarin and reads Chinese, has not been watching the program (for reasons she doesn't explain, but I suspect it's because it's so bad that watching it can be painful) so I can't ask her what's keeping the couple from getting back together. Gives you an odd perspective watching just the body language and facial expressions, tears and grimaces, all the while thinking: “What is the matter with you people? What could you possibly have done that's so obviously turned you both into blithering idiots?”

Then again what would a soap be without sexual tension and idiotic misunderstanding? One evening at the end of last week I cut to another program for about twenty minutes just as the couple seemed to have finally gotten it together to live happily ever after, leaving them briefly as they were running down the beach silhouetted in the sun; thinking I could, you know, come back in just a few minutes and see them finish this all wet and happy; only to return and discover something terminal had occurred and they're not only not speaking to one another anymore, they seem absolutely serious about it.

So much for checking out another program and missing a critical twenty minutes, particularly when you can't understand the language. Does this sound weird? Nah. Certainly not. Eccentric? Well, maybe. Indicative of advancing age and mental deterioration, sure, but certainly not weird. Just us kids watching Korean soaps over dubbed in Mandarin with Chinese subtitles. Here in Oakland.