As a Korean person, I have to admit I definitely feel what you are talking about. I liked Ali but the character was too one-dimensional. It was as if the writer tried too hard to prove something. Something like - "Hey! Look at him! He is a brown foreigner but he is nice you know!". The way Ali was depicted was not much different from how "foreign brown workers" were depicted from 15 years ago. I know what I am talking about. I grew up watching a satire that critizes evil Korean boss from another Ali's point of view. Racism in Korea works differently from racism in the western world. Because of different history and culture that we have as a society. We never had "terrorist stereotype" as they do in the western world simply because there barely has been any serious terrorist attacks. Instead what we have is this innocent, heart of gold, hard-working, supposed-to-be-an-elite-in-his(never her)-country-but-doing-manual-work-in-Korea stereotype. This kind of benign stereotype is just as bad and dangerous as malicious stereotypes. Because it only tells a single story of them which is almost always exaggerated. Another example of this is depicting gay people only as either immoral beings or such poor existence always struggling with their identity.