A few weeks ago, after watching the premiere of the 4th season of Lost, ABC’s new show Eli Stone premiered. The show’s namesake, Eli Stone is a San Francisco lawyer at a prestigious law firm who starts to hear music in his head, which is later discover due to a small brain aneurysm.
In trying to resolve his “hearing” problem, Eli tries seeing Dr. Chen, an acupuncturist in Chinatown played by James Saito. The few times Eli visits, Dr. Chen comes across as a stereotypical Hollywood Chinese traditional acupuncturist, with accent, dressed in Chinese wadrobe and ancient wise words. However, later in the episode, Eli bumps into Dr. Chen out of his “costume” to discover he is a perfectly unaccented English speaking Asian American - much to the surprise of Eli:
Dr. Chen (Chinese accent): “You always show up - no appointment. Dr. Chen not Jiffy Lube. Come back Friday.”
Eli: “I went to the doctor. The real kind. You wouldn’t, uh, happen’ to have any needles for an inoperable brain aneurysm I inherited from my alcoholic father who I wrongly hated for 20 years?”
Dr. Chen (unaccented English): “Oh wow, that totally blows bro.”
Eli: “What happened to your accent?”
Dr. Chen (unaccented English):” ‘Long story. Want’ beer?”
…
Dr. Chen (unaccented English): “Grew up on a commune. From there, UC Berkeley, philosophy major. There’s no future in extensionalist ethics, so I got into acupuncture. Unfortunately, nobody wants an acupuncturist named Frank Lebokowski. They want incense, mystique, foreign accent. You know’, [Chinese accent] they want the Dr. Chen”
Eli: “That’s great. Even my treatments were imaginary.”
Dr. Chen (unaccented English): “Hey, 8 years of course work in holistic medicine, two years in Beijing. Give me some props’.”
I thought this was very clever. I was thinking that during the episode, that Dr. Chen was such a stereotype of a Chinese foreign-born acupuncturist, and was pleasantly surprised that he was actually not, and even defended his acupuncturist’s credentials. See for yourself in this video clip:
Other posts you might be interested in:
Blog RSS Blog Comments RSS
Lori wrote:
John Steinbeck wrote essentially the same dialogue (but longer) for his character “Lee” in East of Eden - the story is set around the turn-of-the-century through WWI, so the Chinese butler speaks ‘pidgin’ English, but once his trust of one of the white characters builds he lets down his guard and reveals that he’s more American than the Irish immigrant he’s talking to, and a college graduate to boot, but that since white people expect pidgin (and don’t seem to understand when he speaks normally) that’s what he speaks. Just FYI.
Posted on 11-Feb-08 at 4:30 am | Permalink
yoko wrote:
Lee in East of Eden is one of my favorite characters.
I do like that clip from Eli Stone. I recently read a similar zing on Nikkeiview about an episode on Bones: http://www.nikkeiview.com/blog/2008/01/14/a-jones-for-bones/
I don’t watch much TV these days (working too much), but these clips make me feel like I should get back into it.
Posted on 11-Feb-08 at 6:45 am | Permalink
alienman wrote:
hm, wow. maybe i should give this show a try. I don’t visit this site all that often, usually b/c I keep forgetting about it, but it looks like you’ll have me back soon
BTW have any of you 8Asians watched Las Vegas lately? You’d be horrified with Polly, the Korean salon lady. Truly a step backward.
Posted on 11-Feb-08 at 1:07 pm | Permalink
John wrote:
alienman - I don’t watch Las Vegas. I guess I’ll try to catch it to see what you are talking about in regards to Polly. - John
Posted on 11-Feb-08 at 6:25 pm | Permalink
THE_BANANA_REPUBLIC wrote:
Hey man, philosophy majors have a future.
Posted on 11-Feb-08 at 10:17 pm | Permalink