Adult Swim: Celeb-Nerdy with Jessica Chobot

You shouldn't call girls names, and you especially shouldn't call them "nerds." Chief among the reasons why is that many of them grow up to be quite the lookers. And they may not forgive you for the ways you teased them, dunking their pigtails in inkwells and using their hair to write dirty limericks about unusual men from Nantucket. For example.

In Celeb-Nerdy, we open up Hollywood's Little Black Book and ask one glamorous nerd to proudly gab on his/her golden telephone about his/her collection of steampunk swivel chairs or alphabetized spoon assortments. This week, Jessica Chobot, of IGN and G4TV's new Proving Ground, looks back on a lifelong love of quirky and enlightening Korean dramas. Love triangles, kim chi, and confusing plots abound.

How did you first become aware of Korean dramas, and how did that blossom into a full-on fascination with them?

I would say that it was a natural progression. It started because I was really, really into Japan. I had an aunt who lived there for five years, kinda traveling throughout Japan while I was growing up. She would send us these really cool gift baskets at Christmastime or birthdays filled with a bunch of Japanese stuff. At the time, back in the late '80s/early '90s, as a kid in the suburbs, you didn't come across anything like that. That might as well have been another universe. It just kinda enchanted me and I thought it was really cool.

“It started because I was really, really into Japan.”

As I got older, and I knew where to go to find different things, I got obsessed with anime and manga, and I started reading a lot of that. I ended up eventually going to Japan. That dipped my toe in the water for international travel in Asia in general.

For a while the only thing you could get was late-night Adult Swim or back in the day Sci-Fi Channel. You would hunt down these random volumes on VHS of anime to watch and it kinda made you feel like you were part of this special club, and you were on this treasure hunt, and you were a really hardcore fan if you could scrape together an entire VHS collection of a series. Then it became all the Narutos and all the Full Metal Alchemists, and that's not to say those series are bad, in fact those are some of the better ones, but for every one of those you got 20 that were terrible.

How did you go from anime to Korean dramas? Was there one Korean drama in particular that first caught your eye?

There was not really one specific title. It was more difficult to finally find a title, whether it was an anime or a manga, that was unique and different. You started to see these storylines get recycled again and again and again. The artwork started to look the same. It just lost its luster a bit. I knew a few of the companies that were bringing them and importing them to the States and then translating them for the US market. For every one good title that the Japanese signed off for them to have, they'd have to take 50 s***y titles. It was unfortunate that the challenge was no longer there to try to find the good stuff. You didn't really feel like part of a club anymore. That you had to go to the dank cellar in the back corner of some independent comic shop to find some random, weird Japanese comic book. Now it was too easy to find.

So then, at one of these anime-fests that I went to, I ran into this one site called crunchyroll.com and I kinda gave it a glance. I didn't think anything of it. But I was also watching the International Film Channel before it went out of business. The IFC, right before it went out, was running a marathon of Hotelier and Winter Sonata. Those are two big, big, big Korean dramas. I got so sucked into them that I actually called sick into work because I couldn't miss the next episode. I sat there for three days and watched Korean dramas all day long, like, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. I got completely obsessed.

“I got so sucked into them that I actually called sick into work because I couldn't miss the next episode.”

Hotelier - Time to Say Goodbye

What was it about them that sucked you in so much?

It was strange, because it was cool to see the culture [from] a non-touristy perspective. Yeah, it's glorified because it's TV, I'm not expecting it to be a perfect representation. But there's that sheen of tourism from an outsider's perspective, where you can't really see how a person's everyday life living in that country would be like. Even though these characters for Korean dramas are glorified, I thought the stupid little stuff, like how they get their milk or how they hang out at restaurants and things like that, were very interesting. It's just different there. Also I love the cheesy, cheesy, cheesy, cheesy drama of it all because it really is like a soap opera. [Laughs.]

How do they get their milk?

They get it at the store like everybody else, but they say it in Korean. [Laughs.] I can't remember which drama I was watching, I think it was Coffee Prince, which is one of my favorites, and there's this scene in the very first episode where there's a guy -- who in a later episode you learn is actually a girl dressed up as a guy, a tomboy -- who's a noodle-delivery person. There's this scene where she's delivering all these lunch noodles to the local womans' baths. We don't have that here, and we certainly don't have noodle-delivery people. It's just interesting. She goes in there and all the women freak out because they think she's a boy and she's not supposed to be in there. The little things like that. The US would have somebody coming and delivering a pizza in a car. Not noodles on a street bike. [Laughs.] It's weird.

We've seen stuff like the Bumblebee Man pop up on The Simpsons to signify we all have this unspoken love for telenovelas, but it doesn't seem like there's as widespread an appreciation for stuff like Korean dramas on these shores. Do you think that's because Mexico is closer to the US, whereas Asia is so much further away and we're more removed from it?

I definitely think that plays a part of it. There's a certain mystique the East has because it's so far away and because it's so different from what people in the US are used to. Like you said, there's a lot of Spanish-speaking people that live here, so you're kind of always coming across that here. Moreso when you live out in California than in Michigan, but it's not a foreign concept by any means. It's one of those things where you can kind of guess what the lettering means and figure out what the advertisement is. Over there it's strictly pictorial. There's no guesswork.

I definitely do think that it's so different. Just the Asian lifestyle, specifically Korea and Japan, for me, it's so much more aesthetically pleasing than what we have here. Certainly the functionality of their society as far as the politeness of their culture is something we definitely don’t see in the States. There's more of a "we're all in this together" mentality over there. I just find that very attractive. My whole viewpoint, and this just extends to my viewpoint in life, and it's why I'm attracted to these shows that have controlled drama in them -- I don't care if you don't like me, just be polite to me and let me get through my day. Everyone here has something to prove, and they're going to take that spot if they want it. I prefer [their] way of doing things.

“Everyone here has something to prove, and they're going to take that spot if they want it.”

According to my research, most Korean dramas tend to fall into two categories: soap operas with lots of love triangles, and historical dramas. Is that pretty accurate, or is it more nuanced than that?

From what I've experienced, I would say that's pretty accurate. They basically do follow those two basic archetypes. Honestly I don't really watch any of the historical ones because I don't know anything really about Korean history. A lot of it is lost on me. The ones that I have tried to watch are so heavy in their historical context and content, and some of it is slightly altered for TV, so I have a really hard time getting interested in it. It's a little dry for me. While I'll watch one of the more historical-based ones, I really, really, really like the romantic ones. Which is embarrassing because they're really girly. I didn't think I would ever end up liking them the way I do, but I seriously can't help it.

Within the romantic ones I guess you could say they break up into two different sections as well: you have your sad romantic drama and you have your happy romantic drama. Your sad romantic drama is the two people have this bittersweet "we can't be together although we're always going to love each other" moment, and the happy one is like "we're going through our trials and tribulations, but eventually, one of us succeeds and we get married and everything works out and we live happily ever after!" I like them both.

Why do you like them so much?

The reason that I get squirrely over the romantic ones is because I see myself as being a practical, level-headed, non-romantic "this is the way we're gonna do things and it's gonna be my way" kind of person in relationships, and life in general. To have this soft spot is like, "Aww, that's so cute, they're gonna get married, and they're gonna be so happy." It's an aspect of my personality that I can exercise through these soap operas. I don't ever want anybody to see that side of me, ever.

Which ones have gotten a strong reaction out of you?

Winter Sonata made me cry. I get the vibe that that was one of the ones that hit really big in the States. It was so popular overseas that it eventually got released over here, and people still love it. It's really good. But that one, the two people who are falling in love with each other and having this relationship, they are constantly coming up against these obstacles, whether it's people trying to break them up, or he gets sick, or something like that. "God, can't these people just catch a break?" At one point I just lost it and started crying.

“‘God, can't these people just catch a break?’ At one point I just lost it and started crying.”

Winter Sonata - My Memory

The opposite side of that is Coffee Prince. I ended up just racing home every day after work to load it up onto my video player and sit there and watch it. I ended up actually upgrading my subscription to Crunchy Roll so I could skip ads so I could see it faster. [Laughs.] That was more of a funny one.

There's another one I'm watching right now, My Lovely Samsoon, and the way they've described it over in Korea is as a Bridget Jones’ Diary-esque show. That one's very, very, very cute and fun. I kinda like it more than the other two because the main female character, she's a pretty girl no matter what, but she's not ridiculously gorgeous like the previous women. She's a little heavier, she's a little more real, she's a little more realistic. She's a little bit more fun to watch.

My Lovely Samsoon - Opening

Marry Me! quickly became my fave mostly due to the type of strong character Lee Shin Young is within the series. She's career-driven, in her thirties, torn between the ideals of work and having a family, aging and what that means for her in a male-dominated society that focuses on women being damaged and undesirable after a certain age. Yet, through it all, she manages to keep a very witty and sharp sense of humor. I just really identified with her on many levels.

Do you find that happening a lot? Identifying with characters in these shows?

I don't. Some of these characters are really off-the-wall. My favorite character in Coffee Prince, Go Eun-Chan, is the tomboy who is mistaken as a guy, and who the main male character ends up falling in love with. He is probably my favorite character of all time thus far. He's the bad boy that turns into the good guy. Not bad boy in the sense that he's driving Harleys, going to the bar every night, or that he's a jerk, he's just a spoiled rich kid. He always gets his way, he's super-handsome, and he ends up trying to get back this girl who moves back to Korea that he used to be in love with -- but she's in love with this other guy who's more of a bookish type and quiet. So, they have this competition to see who can get this girl back the quickest. While that's going on, his grandmother, who is the head of his family and household, is threatening to take away his livelihood if he doesn't shape up, run his life correctly, and/or get married.

Coffee Prince - She’s So Lovely

She challenges him and puts him in charge of this coffee shop which is owned by them, because they own this big coffee dynasty. [Laughs.] He needs to make a success of it. There's a whole bunch of other side characters who get involved and they play off each other really well, but the main tomboy who is the girl? He hires her thinking she's a boy to basically be his beard in the sense that he's trying to convince these women that he's gay, so his grandmother won't force him to marry them. So it'll seem like he's obviously not interested women. He sets up these situations on these dates with them, where they'll run into this tomboy thinking it's a real boy. Eventually it works out that he has to hire this tomboy as part of the coffee shop. Now they're in closer quarters -- and then the tomboy starts to develop feelings for this guy and this guy starts to develop feelings for the tomboy, thinking she's a real boy, and starts flipping out on himself. "Did I not know this part about myself? Do I actually like guys?"

He's still thinking she's a he, admits to "him" that he has feelings for him and he doesn't care. That it isn't about that, he likes him as a person and would like to make it work in a relationship, which causes her to admit she's a she, and then they have this falling out because it's a drama and they eventually get back together. [Laughs.]

That's almost Shakespearian.

Oh, it totally is. It's kind of that Twelfth Night scenario.

Comparing it to Shakespeare might actually scare some people off from checking this stuff out.

[Laughs.] Don't let the subtitles scare you. If you're gonna give it a shot, don't be afraid of the subtitles. I'm fine with these series having a certain shelf life, I like to see the story play out. But what really grasps my interest with it in the first place -- and with manga, and anime, and whatever it is -- is this is a place that, up to that point, I hadn't been to and I could experience it vicariously through the same television shows the locals were watching. I felt like I kind of was given a travel pass. I've been able to travel to that country without actually having to leave my living room. That's not to say I wouldn't make the effort to go, but it's a great way to scratch that wanderlust itch.