EXO Next Door (우리 옆집에 EXO가 산다) Episode 12 Recap

Previously: Yeonhee is happy about being D.O.'s acting partner. We learn that Yeonhee and Chanyeol knew each other when they were kids. Chanyeol tries to surreptitiously tell her this, but she's too dense to remember who he is. Gaeun tells Yeonhee to join EXO's fan club. Sehun and Gwangsu figure out that Chanyeol and Yeonhee used to know each other. Sehun tells D.O.

Chanyeol's Room:
We open on Chanyeol yelling like a foghorn (cuz he has a deep voice, see, ha ha), telling Baekhyun (who is remarkably chill and rational compared to Real Baekhyun) that he's "screwed". Chanyeol worries that he's not able to think of a melody, and tells Baekhyun to find another song writer. Baekhyun, meanwhile, is worried about Suho: he's "depressed" and doing badly because he's alone in the hospital. First: Wait, what? He looked fine at the photoshoot...why is he back in the hospital? Second: aww, poor Suho bby!

We get a quick flashback of Suho's narm-y moment after he tripped over homicidal Water Bottle. (ㅋㅋㅋ) Chanyeol leaps up and leaves his room, muttering that he has to find "it" (the necklace, presumably). In the kitchen, Sehun and D.O. are drinking out of cutesy teddy bear cups, and discussing whether or not they should tell Chanyeol they know his Deep Dark Secret. Chanyeol stalks into the kitchen as if he's been summoned by their worried whispering, jerks open the fridge, grabs a water bottle (of the non-homicidal variety, hopefully), slams the door closed, and angrily takes a drink. Ooh, you should have checked to see if Yeonhee already took a sip, dude. You wouldn't want an indirect kiss, would you? He stops when he notices Sehun and D.O. looking at him like he just peed on the carpet. 

"We're very disappointed in you, son."

He yells at them and stalks out, so they decide to save the Dramatic Reveal for later--you know, to make the story and drama as long and drawn-out as possible as they can be in a web series--come on, there's five twelve-minute episodes left. Do you really think they'd let Chanyeol and Yeonhee "get together" when there's an hour left? Yeah. Didn't think so.

Cut to Yeonhee hallucinating/dreaming that she's in the palm of Chanyeol's grandpa's hand and no matter how much she runs, she'll never escape his giant palm. [??] Is this like having a bad trip when you're on shrooms or LSD or whatever makes you have bad trips? He says he'll let her go if she answers the riddle "Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is red. What else is red?" *headdesk* Yeonhee, in her infinite (heh) wisdom, answers "apple" and "Hyuna" (that chick that sings with one of the guys in Beast or something). I guess she said that because one of Hyuna's songs is called Red??



Thinking she's doomed to an eternity of running in Chanyeol's 할아버지's  palm forever, Yeonhee screeches and falls on the floor of her room wrapped in a blanket. Thank goodness it was just a dream--it would be difficult to explain why she was tripping on shrooms in a cheesy squeaky clean webseries like this one. (BTW, why is squeaky clean actually good? If the floor squeaks, that scares me, and I fall. If my teeth squeak, they hurt. Is it normal for teeth to squeak? Google says maybe.)

Anyway, Mama yells at Yeonhee for "sleeping with her eyes closed." [??] What, does she think Yeonhee should sleep with her eyes open like Spock or something? Yeonhee says that she was dreaming about "Chan's" grandpa because she kept going next door. Oh, so she remembers his grandpa but not him? Just...I...whatever...

Chanyeol enters the living room/foosball room/Blah Blah Blah room of House EXO and glares at the walls like he expects them to start bowing and tearfully 죄송합니다-ing and revealing all their secrets. He begins searching again with renewed vigor. Irritated with his lack of success, he takes off the long sweater he's been wearing (it looks like a cross between a trench coat and a bathrobe), and hangs it on a coat/hat tree.

The hook he hangs it on goes down, and a door opens up in the wall. OK. Give me a moment to laugh. A shocked Chanyeol enters the dark, dusty secret room(s), one of which--guess what--is the record/grandpa room where his grandpa gave Little Chanyeol the necklace in the flashback. Okay, *why* didn't he remember the secret room? Seriously, if I would have known about a secret room as a kid, that shiz would have stuck in my brain better than...uh...flypaper. And...gorilla glue. And even if the room was always open (and therefore not secret) wouldn't he remember that there was a room missing in the house?

And then the ghost of his grandpa jumps out with a bloody ax, a la Supernatural.

As Chanyeol searches the room, we get some nice piano music that sounds like the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack in a minor key. In the Blah Blah Blah room, Yeonhee finds the picture, which D.O. and Sehun apparently left laying there. Idiots. Wanna guess whether she recognizes Chanyeol or not? Nope. She doesn't. Gotta milk that tension and "dramatic reveal" for all it's worth. She gets PO'd that a picture of her is there, blames it on Gwangsu, and throws it into her laundry basket.

Noticing Chanyeol's sweater hanging on the coat tree (cuz it's just SO weird to see a sweater on one of those), she goes to investigate. Noticing the HUGE FREAKING HOLE in the wall, she takes the sweater off the coat tree and goes inside the secret room (well, actually, it's a hallway leading to several secret rooms) with her laundry basket. As she goes in, the hook flips up again, and the door (which is a sliding bookshelf) closes. 

So Chanyeol and Yeonhee are probably going to be trapped in there for a while. And they'll end up having a giant argument and killing each other. Like dogs. Chanyeol hears her cry of distress and goes to investigate. In an asinine attempt to hide, Yeonhee sits in a corner of the secret hallway and puts the laundry basket over her head, like a little kid who thinks they're invisible when they cover their eyes. Of course her legs are still plainly visible. But yeah, comedy or whatever. Chanyeol is having none of this. He slaps the laundry basket and tells her to knock it off. (The only appropriate response.)

Yeonhee gets up, leaving the laundry basket and its scattered contents by the door, and follows Chanyeol into the Record Room. Hmm, I wonder what's going to happen to the picture. Yeonhee wonders what the place is, and Chanyeol curtly replies that it's none of her business (lol, he can't answer because he doesn't know himself), and then starts messing with some records and grinning. Huh, I think this is the first time he's smiled in this whole dang show. Except for maybe during the flashbacks.

Yeonhee gives him a stare. Yeah, like, really, who grins at boring old records? 

Chanyeol's like "hey u like me bby? ;)" Well, someone's undergone a massive personality change. Trying to change the subject, Yeonhee muses that it must have been "할아버지's" secret hideout. She digs around and finds a hot pink jump rope (snicker) and says that her friend used to live there too. *sigh* Excuse me for a moment while I ram my head through my desk. 

She says that her friend (Little Chanyeol, obvi) gave her the jump rope so that when her face got red, she could say that her face was red from jumping rope (and totally not because she's a weird freak who blushes when she's six and no kid should do that ever unless they're embarrassed or mad). Smirking "devilishly" (ugh, I hate to use that word, brings back memories of horrible YA "fiction" and stupid stupid romance novels set in Victorian London where the hero is a vampire or some rich dude that walks around half undressed all the time and is so sexually experienced and the girl is a virgin and they do it and it's SO GOOD for the girl and she's so stupid and he's so devilishly smirking deviled eggs and she thinks he's some kind of sex god and he thinks he's the greatest thing in the world EVAR and gaaaaahhh), Chanyeol says, "What a smart six year old."

Yeonhee still doesn't get it, because I guess a little of her brain matter leaks out her ears every time she blushes. Saddened/irritated/gassy/constipated/diarrhea-y that she STILL doesn't remember him, Chanyeol says it's time to leave. It comes as no surprise, of course, that the door is locked and they are trapped inside the secret room(s). Let's hope none of them farts or has to pee.

Chanyeol blames her for closing the door, complains about the laundry she brought in, and says he doesn't have a key. Neither of them have their phones either. Real Chanyeol does a very unconvincing job of being PO'd, and softly bangs his head against a door jamb. Gotta keep that face pretty. It's a moneymaker. Chanyeol and Yeonhee bang on the bookcase door and yell. Chanyeol yells for Baekhyun and Sehun, but not D.O. Heh. If I was D.O., and I was listening, I'd be like "He didn't call for me? Screw them," and leave them in there to rot.

Meanwhile, Baekhyun and Sehun are loudly playing video games together and mock wrestling. Ah yes. It's been waaaay too long since we got some skinship/fanservice. 

Gwangsu and Mama are asleep on the couch (presumably in House Yeonhee) leaning on each other and snoring loudly. Disturbingly enough, I can't figure out who's snoring. As odd as this may look to Americans unfamiliar with Korean culture, K-dramas have led me to believe that this sort of family skinship is quite common. They've also led me to believe that Korean mothers love yelling at their kids and hitting them on the head, and making GIANT batches of kimchi. 

After an outside shot of House Yeonhee (which looks disturbingly American) 



and an extended bonus audio cut of Gwangsu/Mama snoring, we cut to the Record Room, where Yeonhee is complaining that they have to stay there all night with no heat. Chanyeol, who is wearing a blanket from the laundry basket and his sweater, tells her to move closer. *agonized scream* OF COURSE they would make them have to be closer together...! He puts the sweater over her and sniffs that it's an emergency (and heavily implies that if it weren't, she'd NEVER be able to get so close to God Chanyeol). Again, he's having major mood swings today.

Cue a ridiculously long scene of them trying not to look at each other. Finally Chanyeol stands up, dramatically throws off his soft baby yellow blanket, and prepares to spill the beans on his identity. And of F-ing course, the episode ends there.

EXO Next Door (우리 옆집에 EXO가 산다) Episode 11 Recap

Previously: Chanyeol got sick from digging in the front yard, Gwangsu sacrificed himself for Sehun, Kai flirted with Yeonhee some more and left, Yeonhee cut her finger, and D.O. confessed his feelings for her.

This episode begins right where the next one left off (which I find really irritating; 90% of the so-called "cliffhangers" at the end of K-drama episodes are resolved in about a minute in the next episode). Chanyeol comes downstairs, butting into their Romantic Moment. (BTW, why is there a skateboard stuck to the bottom of the stairs?)



In order to avoid invoking Chanyeol's wrath plus a very embarrassing situation, D.O. pretends like they're practicing lines. Chanyeol tells Yeonhee to get back to work, and sends her off with a glare. He similarly sends D.O. off to bed, because he (D.O.) apparently stayed up all night. Sitting on the couch and hugging a giant stuffed bunny, Yeonhee thinks that she's now become D.O.'s "permanent acting partner", which is a perfect job for her, because of all her "religious drama watching." Every fangirl's dream, I guess.

And about the acting in K-dramas--most of it--at least the girls' acting--seems pretty formulaic. They're a little bit sassy/plucky/positive (especially at the beginning), they get REALLY REALLY mad when the guy does anything, they flail, whine, and ruffle their hair, they stuff their cheeks with food, they get drunk *quite* often and stumble around, slurring their speech and spilling secrets. So...yeah, if you watch a lot of dramas, you probably will be able to portray most of the female characters pretty well.

Meanwhile, Chanyeol is in his room, playing an upbeat song on his guitar. Cut to a flashback of Little Yeonhee crying on a playground. *sigh* So here's where their backstory comes in--it seems that most K-drama couples have met before and had some sort of past history/past relationship. Because meeting each other and getting to know each other for the first time is boring and takes too long. Or something. 

Little Chanyeol asks her why she's crying (someone took her teddy bear), and Little Chanyeol says he'll get it back if she stops crying and being a baby. As he walks away, Little Yeonhee blushes. Ah...for goodness' sakes...they're just KIDS...do kids like each other like that?? Little Yeonhee gives him an ugly picture she drew as a thank-you, and blushes again.

Cut back to the present, where Chanyeol looks at the picture and asks his grandpa if Yeonhee knows him or if she's just pretending to be "dense." Chanyeol remembers the times he hinted that he was someone other than EXO's Chanyeol, and does the Irritated Korean Click. He looks at a picture of himself and his grandpa (taken in the room with the record player and the other grandpa stuff) and muses that he doesn't know where it was taken. Oooh, I forsee this becoming a Very Important Plot Point later on.

The next day in the living room, Yeonhee's dusting while D.O. sits on the couch. He thinks to himself that they should discuss what happened yesterday (his confession, not when Sehun clogged up the toilet with a sock). Yeonhee is prepared to rehearse. D.O. comes up behind her and she screams "Don't come close!" (one of the lines she practiced with him). She apologizes, and Chanyeol calls her up to his room in his foghorn voice.

Chanyeol sits his desk and complains that it's dusty. Even though I'm not that dirty-minded at all, I can't help but imagine this turning into a scene where he punishes her for not dusting well enough...in a kinky way, of course. (Now Baekhyun's statement about watching rather than participating takes on a whole new meaning...) Chanyeol hints again that they used to know each other, saying he's been allergic to dust since he was six (is Real Chanyeol tho?), he used to sing H.O.T.'s Candy when he was six, and he put trash in the trash can since he was six (good boy!). He goes on to explain his six-year-old self's wardrobe and favorite games.

Yeonhee starts, surprised that he was always such a good boy, and continues to be utterly clueless about their past relationship. Chanyeol, naturally, gets upset and slams his hand in front of the door as she tries to leave. I TOLD YOU THIS WAS GETTING KINKY!! I swear, this piddly half-parody of a webdrama has more sexually charged moments/sexual tension than several actual dramas I've seen. Chanyeol says that she's dense, and the scene ends. Um, hello? Why did they have to cut at that moment??

In the next scene, Yeonhee paces her room, remembering that Kai called her dense as well. W8, wut?? So Kai knows? Gaeun eyes Yeonhee disparagingly as she paces, also saying Yeonhee's "denser than concrete." Well, no argument there. Gaeun explains that the reason why Chanyeol is acting the way he is is because he wants Yeonhee to join his fan club and become an EXO-L. According to Gaeun, Yeonhee has "insulted" EXO by meeting them and not joining their fanclub. I might try to join if the application process/questions were in English, but I guess I don't love EXO enough to try to wade through confusing pages of Korean. 

In Gwangsu's tent, Sehun flips through a book while Gwangsu sits cross-legged, holds nunchucks, and meditates. Or something. A picture falls out of the book. 



Ooh, Sehun and Gwangsu are going to figure out the Secret of Yeonhee and Chanyeol's relationship, aren't they? Sehun says that Gwangsu was "a cute boy" (ㅋㅋㅋ).The other kids in the picture are Yeonhee and Chanyeol. Sehun recognizes Chanyeol, and asks to borrow the picture for a while. He shows it to D.O. (who gives the obligatory mention that Yeonhee was a cute kid), and they both realize that Chanyeol and Yeonhee must have known each other as kids. Cut to Chanyeol Korean Ruffling his hair. Cut to Yeonhee back in her house, eating and laughing at something on TV. The episode ends there.

Engrish and English in Asian Shows

In my time watching Asian TV shows and movies, I've come to notice that most of the English in them is bad. Really bad. Both spoken and written English. It isn't just the fault of the Asian actors/writers either; most of the Token White People in Asian shows are horrible, horrible actors, say their lines like robots, put emphasis on the wrong words in a sentence, or have the wrong accents for their characters.

White People in Asian Shows
She Was Pretty (Korean) has fairly good examples of shudder-inducing Token White People scenes. I'm pretty sure that the White Guy from the New York office of The Most magazine was played by a robot, considering his utterly wooden and cringy performance. Also, there's one scene at Ha Ri's hotel where a White Guy with a very posh British accent is supposed to be playing an American.



William, the White Guy in Tamra, The Island is supposed to be British, but he has a very strong non-British accent (I'm guessing French, based on the actor's name) and doesn't appear to be able to speak English well at all.




But this problem goes both ways, I'm sure--I believe that most, if not all, of the non-Korean cast members in Moorim School had accents when they spoke Korean.



Asian-Americans and Americanized Asians
Then there's the characters that are supposed to be Asian-American or supposed to have lived in America for quite a while, but act very Asian (familiar with the culture, food, public transit systems and whatnot) and have extremely strong Korean accents when they speak 
English. 



She Was Pretty illustrates this quite well: Sung Joon, the Main Guy character, is supposed to have lived in America for quite a while, around 10 years, I believe. He moved there as a kid, and eventually got a high-profile job at a high-profile magazine in New York, The Most. While it's reasonable to expect that he would have some type of Korean accent, you would expect him to be able to clearly communicate in English, right? Well, his Korean accent is so strong, he's barely understandable when he speaks English. Also, he seems to mesh right into the culture (aside from his a-hole attitude, but that's to be expected for a main male character in a K-drama), with no culture shock whatsoever from having lived in America for ~10 years.

The 2007 and 2011 versions of Hana Kimi (Japanese) feature an Americanized Asian (Ashiya Mizuki) who speaks Japanese fluently and adapts perfectly to living in Japan. Same with To The Beautiful You (Korean). Then again, I'm not really expecting realism from either of those shows.

Ode To Joy (Chinese) and Big (Korean) did make some sort of effort to make their American(ized) characters go through cultural difficulties. An Di from Ode to Joy (a Chinese girl who was adopted--around 10 I believe--and taken to the US) has some difficulty understanding certain aspects of Chinese culture and is unfamiliar with Chinese food (real Chinese food, not Americanized Chinese food). Though I do wonder why she speaks Chinese so well. I guess it's because she's a genius.

Kyung Joon from Big (played in part by Shin from Cross Gene) has lived in America for some time. While his English isn't quite as difficult to understand as Sung Joon's, he still has a strong accent. His character (from what little I saw of the show) isn't intimately familiar with Korean culture (though some of his odd actions can be explained by the fact that he's a massive weirdo). Shin's normal Korean sounds odd enough, so I'm not sure if his character is supposed to have an American accent.

I'm sure that American and other English-language TV shows commit similar crimes against Asian languages. However, I can't really point them out/complain about them since I'm not intimately familiar with Asian languages like I am with English. Also, I know that learning another language is very difficult and pronouncing English is probably very hard. That being said, having an English consultant (at least for the high-profile shows and movies) might not be a bad idea.

One Asian show that really gets the English right is My Name Is Kim Sam Soon (Korean). A Korean-American is one of the main characters (and actually speaks English like a native American!), and another one of the main Korean characters speaks very good, understandable English. 

Written Engrish and Crazy Books and Backgrounds
The strange and funny English in Asian shows isn't limited to spoken language; it also appears in writing and background bookshelves. I generally don't pay much attention to background bookshelves in Asian or English-language TV shows, and I'm sure that both have crazy, nonsensical background books and text. The two most egregious examples of bad/funny English text and background books I recall seeing so far in Asian shows appear in the Korean webdrama Bong Soon: A Cyborg in Love (Korean) and the Taiwanese drama Bromance.



Bromance
In the office of Du Zi Feng, the main male character/love interest of Bromance, there are a number of...odd book choices. Most notable, however, are the copies of the Divergent series. Now, it's not *entirely* out of the realm of possibility that Zi Feng could read and like a generic English dystopian YA series. However, it's a little odd that he would have the books in his office, and even odder that he would have several copies of each book. He also seems to have some of the same books that Pi Ya Nuo (the main character)'s parents have in their house. He also has several copies of the same book. 







However, there's some good background English in a coffee shop.




So, why the Divergent books? Was one of the cast or crew members a fan? Were they,
along with the other English books, just random filler?

Bong Soon
Bong Soon: A Cyborg In Love stars Kyuhyun of Super Junior and the girl who plays Jin Yi in Let's Eat. It's a silly, unrealistic little webdrama, so the English mistakes are more funny than anything. ("BS Project", "BS Electronics"...hehe.)






An intense debugging scene in the latter part of the show (featuring Token White Guys) shows just how much they didn't try with the English. They used the Lorem Ipsum dummy text instead of actually stringing a few English sentences together.




So there wasn't one English-speaking person that could have noticed and said, "Hey, this looks a little strange..."?? Heck, a recipe for apple pie would have made more sense...maybe one of the White Guys was hungry.

Other Shows
Both the 2007 and 2011 versions of Hana Kimi (Japanese) have some Engrish, though usually just a few letters are out of place. 

Take a look at this scoreboard from To the Beautiful You.




The names of the FBI agents in the 2006 Death Note movie (Japanese) are also gibberish.

However, crazy background text isn't limited to Asian shows. One notable example of this on an English-language TV show appears in a season 5 episode of Leverage, The Corkscrew Job. The text on the TV is supposed to be about the famous Thomas Jefferson bottle.



However, if you actually pause the episode and read the text, it quickly delves into a rabbit hole of weirdness. In fact, it reads exactly like a fanfiction on WTFFanfiction, or a fanfiction from one of those crazy fanfiction generators. Massive kudos to whoever wrote and allowed that in the show, though; that's awesome. 

So why is there such bad English/Engrish/gibberish in the backgrounds of Asian shows? Do they not care because the main audience doesn't speak English? Do they have no one to proofread the English? Is there some copyright issue they have to get around?

If they need an English-speaking person to write/proofread background text, I WILL DO IT. Totally. :)