This 91-year-old grandma slaps the TV to defend beloved characters

In a living room in Dalian, Liaoning province in China, television dramas are not watched so much as confronted. Here, plot twists are personal, villains are prosecutable, and injustice demands an immediate response—sometimes delivered directly to the screen.

The unlikely enforcer is a 91-year-old grandmother whose binge-watching habits have turned her into an internet sensation and local enemy of flat-screen TVs, says the South China Morning Post..

Her granddaughter, Liu, began sharing videos of the nonagenarian online after noticing that drama nights often ended with raised voices and damaged electronics. One television didn't survive at all. Its successor fared only slightly better. "We bought a new set, but three days later, a black bar appeared on the screen due to my grandma hitting it," Liu said.

The grandmother's tastes are clear and unwavering. She loves ancient-costumed romances and suspense-heavy series, particularly Lost You Forever (Chang Xiang Si) and Mysterious Lotus Casebook (Lian Hua Lou). She binge-watches with focus and fury, driven by an intense sense of justice that leaves little room for narrative patience.

When a male character mistreats a female lead, she reacts as though witnessing a crime in progress. "If she dies, can you live? Have you ever thought about that?" she demands of the screen. In one widely shared clip, she explodes at a character mid-plot: "You've hung her on a tree! She is bleeding all over! Look at what you've done!"

Villains fare no better. Moral ambiguity is not a genre she recognises. "This villain is so bad! I must call the police to catch him. His sins will seek him out," she declares, apparently unconcerned by jurisdictional issues involving fictional characters. Older antagonists who bully younger ones provoke a more ideological response. "This group of old people is bullying the young! They have a conservative mindset. Listen to me: you cannot hold back history from moving forward."

Despite the intensity, Liu insists this fiery persona is limited strictly to drama time. "Only when she is watching TV series does her 'second personality' come out," she said. Off-screen, the grandmother is calm, gentle and unfailingly kind, never raising her voice at family members and never displaying the temper that TV writers so reliably summon.

Still, the physical consequences have been real enough to require intervention. To protect both screen and viewer, the family installed an acrylic shield over the television. Online commenters suggested switching to a projector, but the idea was rejected out of concern that she might strike the wall and injure herself. Justice, it seems, should not come with a hospital visit.

At first, the family tried to limit her screen time. Eventually, they gave up. The calculation was simple. "So we have to yield to her. Grandma is already 91 years old, and her happiness is what matters most to us," Liu said.

The internet has largely sided with the grandmother. Viewers have flooded the comments with affection and admiration. "This grandma is so cute. What's more, she has strong values," one user wrote. Another noted, "She looks so anxious that she really hopes to go save the female character herself, ha!"

In an age often accused of emotional detachment, a 91-year-old woman who cannot tolerate injustice—even scripted injustice—has struck a chord. Some people watch television to escape reality. In Dalian, a grandmother watches it to correct reality, one righteous outburst, and the occasional slap, at a time.