Just a little random review.

I watch Asian dramas from time to time. I'll even go so far as to say that I like them more than American ones, because they have a set story line and a set number of episodes, and then they end. The actors are free to move on to other projects, and new shows get moved into the time slots, and everyone goes home happy, including the viewer, who doesn't have to invest years of her life into a series just to watch its narrative slide down the crapper in a misguided attempt to rejuvenate the story and/or audience appeal.

(I'm talking to you, series where a prominent character suddenly learned he had a ten-year-old child that he never knew about, and to you, series where the two main characters randomly discovered that they shared a half-brother. Why couldn't you just resolve the conflicts you already had going and call it quits instead of venturing that far down the road of Pointless & Ridiculous Plot Twists?)

With this short preface, I bring to you my latest distraction in the world of Asian dramas: My Princess, starring Kim Tae Hee and Song Seung Hun. The show is available for subtitled viewing at, of all places, Hulu.com (who knew?), and it is adorable.

(This coming from the girl who currently believes that the Disney Princesses are Satan's pawns shoved into a sparkly, homogenized packaging. Put down the tomatoes, people. Deep down in your hearts you know I'm right.)

My Princess follows the life of Lee Seol, an affable, penny-pinching college student whose main concerns are her lack of money and her one-sided crush on her history professor. Through a series of happenstances, she encounters Park Hae Young, a diplomat and the grandson of a wealthy businessman, only to learn that she is the great-granddaughter of the last Korean Emperor, and that Hae Young's grandfather is determined to restore the Korean dynasty, with her as its only living scion.

It's a standard rags-to-riches setup, the forgotten princess discovered among commoners, but My Princess introduces a number of lovely little twists to the story. Seol's father, Lee Han, didn't want any part of a restoration and died twenty years before in a car accident while trying to evade Hae Young's obsessive grandfather. Hae Young, who's been put in charge of training the fledgling princess, stands to lose his inheritance if the dynasty is actually reinstated. His fiancee, Oh Yoon Joo, projects an aura of grace and efficiency while she moves around behind the scenes to undermine, well, basically everyone. Seol, innocent and a little naive, has to navigate her way among people that want to use her and those who want to destroy her, all to claim a position that goes against her very nature.

And she does it all in such an adorable manner that I'm left giggling to myself like a fool every time I watch an episode. If that's not entertainment, I don't know what is.

Each episode is about 1 hour, 5 minutes long without commercials. The Hulu experience gives you probably another 5-7 minutes of ads, but they're in short spurts. I've only watched the first 7 episodes so far, and Hulu only has the first 13, but since the series is currently running in Korea, I trust that they will upload more of them in good time.

And just to save you a couple seconds of point-and-click, here is the link to the first episode:

My Princess, Episode 1

Tuck it away someplace safe for the next time you need to get away from the "My brother is really my aunt?!" plot twists of American dramas.

You're welcome.