The behavior of the bald headed asian dude from last week’s Lost is bothering me the more I think about it.
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Why would he go on a matchmaker date with Sun if he’s already engaged to be married?
Clearly, he knew it was a matchmaker date, he talks about their parents trying to push them to marriage. He didn’t seem to be in it for Sunookie… he acted like a gentleman.
The only reason I can fathom is that he didn’t want his (presumably conservative and traditional-minded about same race marriage) parents to know he was serious with a non-Korean and is playing along with a charade.
But if so, why didn’t he explain his intentions to Sun earlier, rather than casually toss out during a later date, “Oh, by the way, I’m engaged”.
He acted like such an upfront and decent person, that seems like an extremely uncharacteristic act of asshattery.
Yep. He was using dating her as a decoy to get his parents off his case. He was dating her because he’s not blind, gay, or dead. However, since he’s planning on getting married in six months, he told her about it so she could play along with it, provided she wanted to jettison every scrap of her dignity in the process.
I think that was the first time the two were alone together, sans matchmakers.
And I believe he assumed that she disliked matchmakers as much as she did, and was only seeing him out of politeness. Having lived in America he probably saw the whole process as absurd and was projecting those feelings on her. A miscalculation, but not asshattery.
I guess it wasn’t clear to me from watching the show that he wanted to fool his parents. The guy went to Harvard and he’s acted so level-headed, I couldn’t understand how this guy could think he could keep his parents from eventually knowing about something like that.
The asshattery part is that he did this already knowing two things. 1. The woman he is dating is there to find a husband. 2. He is engage to be married to another woman in six months. A jerk doing this is understandable, but when a polite, intelligent, seemingly classy guy does it, I get the feeling.
See, that’s the thing; he didn’t know #1. He assumed, quite correctly ay least at first, that she was just going along with it to humor her parents. They joked about it during the first meeting. Had she seemed more earnest about it up front, he may have let her down sooner.
No, even though at first she was there just to humor her parents, she didn’t know that he was completely unavailable. The understanding in such circumstances is that both people are available. I think he was rude for not making his situation clear upfront.
i’m not, and don’t pretend to be, any kind of major socialogist or specialist on Asian cultures, but…
my understanding is that the whole “respect and obey your elders, ESPECIALLY your parents” thing is much, much, MUCH stronger for their cultures than for American or European ones. while we might see having to swallow our annoyance and accompany Mama-san to the matchmaker’s luncheon as ridiculous and unthinkable, it’s part of expected everyday life for them.
and we all know how overbearing some parents can be. you cross (or even question) their wishes at peril to your soul and sanity. in the long run, both Sun and almost-boyfriend were most likely just going through the motions at the first meeting, trying to get the 'rents off their backs for a breather or two. however, once he saw that she was an intelligent, educated woman, he probably made the assumption that she was no more interested in being matched up than he was, and that they could provide a mutual shield to each other by playing along with the show until he skipped out for the wedding bells. his fatal miscalculation was in not taking into account that Sun would actually be attracted to him enough to start looking at him as a true romantic prospect.
i suspect that if he had found Sun to be more of a traditionalist mindset, the kind who obeyed all parental edicts without question and would marry at their dictates, he would never have even proposed the charade, and would have found the first opportunity to decline her as somehow “not suitable”.
feeling.