When I visited the Philippines I expected to see a lot of Filipinos. Hey, it’s their land. They deserve to populate and prosper on it.

What I still cannot comprehend is how many Asians are on television shows produced in Asia. That goes for the Philippines, Korea, Japan, and everything else within the continent.

Logically, it makes sense. Asian shows should feature mostly Asians. Yet something about it always throws me off.

I’ve grown up in the USA where shows like Law & Order feature a diverse cast. We have a ton of white cops and at least one bad guy on each episode whose family didn’t come here from Western Europe. It’s something I’m comfortable seeing and miss whenever we watch an Asian program.

I never watched many foreign shows growing up. With Jenny, I have a chance to experience and appreciate them. Netflix is also doing a good job at marketing foreign programs with a wide selection of Korean shows featured. Jenny usually adds these shows to her “watch alone while Timmy Bee poops” list. Some, however, we enjoy together. A guy can only poop so much, after all.

One show we really enjoyed together last year is called The Sound of Your Heart. Netflix claims it’s one of their original programs. It’s not, just so you know. The Korean-based comedy probably received a lot of money for Netflix to claim they came up with the idea. I’m not precisely sure how those things work. All I do know is that Netflix is ready to “Thomas Edison” everyone’s ideas whenever they can. According to them, they invented the Internet for the lone purpose of streaming movies.

I highly recommend The Sound of Your Heart. Whether you love Korean comedies or you’ve never seen one before, the humor on this one transcends race. I do find that among all genres it’s comedy that moves across continents quite well. The Sound of Your Heart accomplishes this, easily making it my favorite thing from Korea other than tales of Kim Jong Il’s tall tales.

The one thing about the show I never could feel fully comfortable with is how everyone is Korean. Well, this show is a slight exception. A few other nationalities show up, but only briefly. It’s not a bias against them or anything. It’s simply something I’m not used to witnessing.

In the 1990s, shows like Friends were criticized for lacking diversity. This was a fair criticism. In New York City, you’re bound to run into every race imaginable. Korean shows don’t have to worry about this as much because their population is, as you can guess, mostly Korean.

On the contrary, another Netflix show I enjoyed, Dark, is a German-produced drama. Everyone on this show looks like a proud member of the Aryan race. Again, when I watched this, I always felt like we needed Eddie Griffin to show up and give a show called Dark a little more color if you catch my drift.

The USA is different from most countries in that regard. As much as some may want you to believe we’re a nation of white people, it’s not true at all. We’re white, black, Hispanic, Asian, some weird tint of orange, and everything else from around the globe. Diversity was shoved down my throat as a kid. Maybe I swallowed too much of it because I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing a TV show with people of one exclusive ethnic background.