Tuning In

I am a certified child of TV, having fond memories of watching Sesame Street, Smurfs, Fraggle Rock, and when I got older, Wonder Woman and Batman reruns, The A-Team, MacGyver, Remington Steele, as well as Who's the Boss. In my midtwenties, I would eagerly await each installment of popular series (before they were even famous) such as Friends, Sex in the City, and CSI.

Nowadays, I love certain shows so much I resort to looking up episode summaries or Windows media player files to get ahead of the pack. My latest addictions are Monk, Gilmore Girls, Smallville and Lovers in Paris.

I look forward to Monk because the whodunnit show makes me want to guess who the bad guy is before the tale unravels. For Gilmore Girls whose season five is yet to show in the Philippines, I get my transcripts from a site which sadly, closed down November as the person maintaining it found updating difficult to sustain. I am fortunate though, that an officemate who is a bigger fan than me, downloads episodes which I convert to VCD format and watch during weekends.

Smallville wasn't on my list early this year, until I learned that the young Superman already flew and that Margot Kidder, the quirky Lois Lane I remember from Christopher Reeve's films, guested on the show. So now I rely on my ever resourceful officemate to download episodes of season four that is currently being shown in the US.

I have fallen prey to the Korean soap opera craze and anticipate the daily ritual of seeing what happens to Carlo, Vivian, and Martin. In one of the sites I came across while looking for info on the series Lovers in Paris, I read that there are VCDs already available with English subtitles. Through another friend I was able to buy the complete 20-cd series.

A word of warning: the next few sentences will contain episode recaps so for the faint-hearted Lovers in Paris viewers, beware! I was disappointed to learn Vivian ended up with Carlo, not Martin. I think Martin treated Vivian better, and the fact that he is better looking than Carlo makes him a more logical choice.

I skipped a few episodes after Vivian got back from her vacation with Carlo and started working at the car manufacturing firm owned by Carlo's family. However, I was able to watch the last episode, where Vivian broke off her engagement to Carlo. She leaves for Paris with hopes that after all the pain and hurt she caused the Han family, she and Carlo will still end up together.

Happily, Carlo does follow Vivian although two years later. In a repeat of a scene earlier in the series where Vivian makes a wish on a fountain, Carlo throws in a coin and reunites with his lady love. What follows next is a confused mix of scenes ala 'Sliding Doors'. A second set of Vivian/Carlo appears and a new love story unfolds just as the previous couple marries. There will not be a wedding scene for Pinoy viewers to look forward to, however, as the first couple's marriage is only learned from a newspaper that the second Vivian comes across while cleaning the second Carlo's apartment.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Lovers in Paris for its humor and beautiful Parisian setting. I am a TV addict after all, sucker for formulaic plots and happy endings.