Coffee Prince ep. 1-4

First off I'd like to say that it has be a couple of years since I've actually sat down and watched soap operas, let alone soap operas other than Philippine ones. It was interesting to sit and listen in on peoples reactions to Coffee Prince, since I haven't seen an episode and had no idea what everyone was talking about. But needless to say, just hearing what people had to say about the show made me curious about the storyline and the execution on screen.

After googling one site after another, I finally found the sites where to watch Coffee Prince and youtube. I know what you are all thinking, "Duh. . .youtube!" But I chose youtube also because they have Tagalog (Philippine dialect) dubbed episodes. In all, I've watched each episode twice, once with English subtitles and second dubbed in Tagalog. I find it interesting that although both versions parallel the plot about Eun Chon being Han Kyul's pseudo queer love interest, the two versions have cultural differences. With that said, now I'm wondering what is really going on in the original version because in the Tagalog dubbed version, some parts of the script is catered to the Pilipino audience. For example, when Han Kyul refers to his grandmother in the Tagalog version, he refers to her as, "Mamita", which is a term for grandmother that has been growing in other "Telenovelas" in the Philippines. Also, another difference I noticed is the difference in names. In the Tagalog version, the cast is given American names, while in the English subtitled version, they keep the Korean names. Even the song choice was changed in the Tagalog version.

With that said, although I found the Tagalog version easier to follow since I didn't have to read subtitles, I am going to stick to the English subtitled version so that I am not lost in the translation from Korean to Tagalog. Overall, I found the show easy to follow and the plot entertaining.