武林外传 My Own Swordsman

As I assume most of you out there are foreigners, I'm surprised you would watch it. Simply, the humour in the drama primarily comes from a recognition of classic and contemporary Chinese culture in China, opposed to Taiwan. I read this on Wikipedia it was broadcast in Taiwan, and the audience rating was miserably low for that matter. You don't watch it, when you don't understand. However if you like it, you must understand what the characters are getting at. That's something. How did you manage to do it?

How many people get all the references in, say, the Simpsons? I've no doubt I miss a lot of what's going on, but there's still plenty I do pick up, and you don't need a huge amount of cultural knowledge to spot stuff like references to search engines, a plan to IPO, parodies of adverts, reality talent shows, etc.

It depends. Say you laugh when it's in reference to Chinese ads, because you've developed familiarity with them. Now you mention it, I like that episode where two girls competed for 老白, making references to ads for products such as 雕牌洗衣粉. That was very smart and funny.

finished watching My Own Swordsman a couple weeks back

probably by far the most creative/original comedy serious out of mainland China I've seen to date

You'd have to be part of Generation Y growing up in mainland China to understand most of what's going on in the series. I remember watching a talk show where they invited the actors and director of 武林外传, braking it down, discussion the different aspects of the series. One thing they talked about was a list of "requirement" in order to completely understand the series, all references included, etc...

I don't think I know a single person who matched all criteria on that list

they mentioned:

familiarity mainland talk shows

up to date on Mandarin/Canto-pop(pretty sure they even had a song form the late '80s in there)

knowledgable with colloquialisms in regional Chinese dialects(no wonder they didn't get it in Taiwan)

up to date with mainland Chinese TV commercials

having read Jin Yong's WuXia novels

handful of classic Chinese lit including 四大名著(for all reference 秀才 makes)

and to top it all off, Level 4 English comprehension.

never the less, it's a great show

my two favorite episodes are the one where 佟掌柜's father came to take her back(the way he talked in his dialect floored me, everything had to do with a horse), and also the one where 无双 and 芙蓉 took on each other in 展堂's show

Unfortunately, I'm way too crap to follow this one

Kudos to all of you who can understand everything, I'll need some serious practice

Ha ha, how pleased am I - I appear to have got hold to the plain text transcripts for the ENTIRE SERIES!!!!!

I'll probably never even use it, but I'm going to attach it here as I'm sure many of us will want to download it and let it gather dust on our hard drives. Will also clip out the first one and add it to the relevant First Episode topic.

Noticed it while searching on emule, took weeks to download as only a couple of people seemed to have it. Finally finished today. Can't testify to its accuracy, but a quick look didn't throw up any issues.

The .txt file is fairly chunky at just under 2MB.

武林外传.rar

Thanks for that Roddy, I am indeed going to let this gather dust on my hard drive and go out to get the series...

Favorite moment is still the visual 招财猫 gag though.

I still smile just thinking about it. I'm going to go and practice it in front of the mirror. I suspect I might be quite good . . .

Read in the paper the other day there's going to be a 武林外传 movie, with he same director and as much of the cast as they can get together. Could be good, could be terrible, but I'll certainly be giving it a watch. Here.

up to date on Mandarin/Canto-pop(pretty sure they even had a song form the late '80s in there)

You're right. In Episode 27 at 0:39, he's singing the beginning verse of 張學友's 等你等到我心痛

 

Ha ha, how pleased am I - I appear to have got hold to the plain text transcripts for the ENTIRE SERIES!!!!!

Thanks so much for that! I had been searching for that since it first came out (very ineffectively)!

Excellent! Enjoy, and post about it!

Don't think I've ever seen any attempt to translate it (would be a hell of a job). The 2011 movie is available on Amazon streaming (paid) and has English subtitles. 

We've got more discussion on it here, btw. 

The movie was so bad I didn't even bother watching it all.