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Scent Of A Woman
5 Plays5 days ago
FINALLY SOME GOOD GL. Ben, NiNi and Twig talk Fragrance You Inherit and Fragrance of the First Flower.
Episode transcript available here.
00:00 Welcome
00:55 Introduction
03:16 Fragrance You Inherit
08:34 Fragrance You Inherit: All About the Relationships
17:46 Fragrance You Inherit: Sakura's Coming Out
21:50 Fragrance You Inherit: On-chan
24:21 Fragrance You Inherit: Final Thoughts and Ratings
29:08 Fragrance of the First Flower
37:14 Fragrance of the First Flower: A Friend and a Foe
45:22 Fragrance of the First Flower: Life Life-ing Is Good Drama!
52:49 Fragrance of the First Flower: Final Thoughts and Ratings
57:04 Outro: Lesbians!
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Transcript
Introduction to The Conversation Podcast
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to The Conversation, the queer media and brown liquor podcast. I'm Ben, the media critic. I'm Nini, the Vibes Queen. And we're your drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie who are sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.
00:00:33
Speaker
We're here to talk queer film and dramas with a special focus on Asian QL. If you like deep dives into queer stories. If you like cracked out takes on art and commerce and queer media. If you just enjoy simping for attractive people.
00:00:48
Speaker
We believe in simping.
Excitement for Lesbian Representation in Film
00:00:50
Speaker
Tune in.
00:00:55
Speaker
And we're back. Tonight, we're talking about lesbians. It's time. It's gone too long. Thankfully, Japan and Taiwan offered us up something worth
Guest Introduction: Twig the Queer Film Aficionado
00:01:10
Speaker
discussing. Tonight, we're talking about fragrance you inherit.
00:01:13
Speaker
And we're also talking about fragrance of the first flower. Because we're going to be discussing lesbians at length, we've brought our most powerful lesbian with us. Twigs, say hello. It's really, truly accurate.
00:01:24
Speaker
Everyone I know thinks I'm insane for having watched 300 BLs. Twig has watched over 600. She is the most powerful lesbian we know. think we're at over 700 now. 700 QLs from Twig T. Yeah.
00:01:37
Speaker
Okay. She is our oracle. Before we start talking about the shows directly, Twix, since you have your spreadsheet in front of you, what's the ratio at this point of GL to
GL vs BL Content: Current Trends
00:01:49
Speaker
BL? How do you know she has her spreadsheet open in front of me? She definitely has it in front of her. Don't worry. I always have it in front of me.
00:01:55
Speaker
I think about 100 of the entries are GL now. So we're up to like a 7, which is actually pretty impressive. 1 to 6 is the ratio. oh my god.
00:02:07
Speaker
Listen, that is significant improvement over just a year i know. I was going to say like a year ago. I think it was 1 to 11. Yeah. Hot damn. We have finally started getting more GL.
Quality in GL Content: Improvements and Challenges
00:02:20
Speaker
And we have been disappointed recently, but not by these two.
00:02:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the things about GL fans is we were all hoping that we would skip the stage where a lot of crap was put out. Yeah. Instead, we're speedrunning it.
00:02:36
Speaker
That's just the way it is. Oh my god. Not me singing. It's been a minute, folks, and we are on the edge of Pride Month, so I am deep in my feels. I've finally graduated. I'm free, and I'm having a mental breakdown.
00:02:50
Speaker
But it's all good in the hood. Don't mind me. She says she's stumbling back into the booth. We need record today! Okay. Ha ha ha ha!
00:03:02
Speaker
I just need to get my head back on straight and talking to my friends is the best way to get my head back on straight.
Plot Analysis: 'Fragrance You Inherit'
00:03:16
Speaker
Well, that note, let's head into Fragrance You Inherit. This won one of our standout queer narratives of the year in the Vibe Awards for 2024.
00:03:27
Speaker
And we did say that we were going to talk about it in more detail. So let's get into it. Ben, what is Fragrance You Inherit about? oh How the child of your biggest love showing up at your house does not have to be the end of your entire world.
00:03:45
Speaker
In Fragrance You Inherit, our lead Sakura attends the wedding of her closest girlfriend in college and is distraught that the woman she loves is marrying some guy.
00:03:59
Speaker
Literally some dude as far as she's concerned. In her despair, she has an anonymous hookup with a man at a bar.
00:04:10
Speaker
This hookup leads to the birth of her son, Toki. She goes on to become fairly excellent single mother. She and her son have a very communicative, supportive relationship, but she's never told him this important thing about herself.
00:04:26
Speaker
One day he tells her while they're hanging out in the evening that he's got a girlfriend and he wants her to meet her. So he brings over his girlfriend, Kane, and Kane is the spitting image of Monet, Sakura's friend.
00:04:41
Speaker
She learns that Kane is indeed Monet's child and kind of has a bit of a freak out over it internally. The kids want their moms to get along, and so she meets her friend for the first time in almost 15 years and is going to spend the show working through her complex lingering feelings for Monet that she never got over while trying to deal with her son's growing uncertainty about things his mom isn't telling him and other complications ensue.
00:05:17
Speaker
Where do we even start with this magnificent piece of magnificence? Twig, you and I watched this show and we're basically like sunbathing in it after each
Character Dynamics and Relationship Bonds
00:05:28
Speaker
episode.
00:05:28
Speaker
Why don't you tell the people how it felt to watch this show? I keep using the word kind for this show and it's really the one that fits the best.
00:05:40
Speaker
It's gentle with its characters and it's gentle with the audience. It doesn't traumatize the audience when it could have. Any of the drama that happens is relatively quickly handled and not overwrought and that makes it sound boring but it's not boring at all it's just really lovely it's like taking a warm bath you just get to hang out with these people who are just trying their best and not always perfect but really gentle and honest and interested in each other's well-being and you get to see them grow together and you see their relationships build and oh it was just such a lovely show
00:06:15
Speaker
Lovely is a great way to describe it. I felt, like you said, Twig, like they're all invested. Everybody had gone on to build a really happy life.
00:06:26
Speaker
And when Monet and Sakura re-entered each other's lives, they wanted those happy lives to continue, not just for themselves, but for each other as well. And so they navigate the fact that they had these incredibly strong feelings for each other, and in Sakura's case, and maybe in Monet's case as well, still do.
00:06:45
Speaker
It could have gotten ugly and it wasn't about any of that. It was this really gentle, really, like you said, kind way of dealing with these lingering feelings.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, the choices that everyone makes in the show aren't necessarily perfect choices, but they're choices that they all own for being the choices that were right for them and they're content with where they ended up because of it, which is such a rare thing to depict in shows.
00:07:15
Speaker
So many times the conflict of the show is about how the choices that people made were the wrong ones and they have to realize that. Whereas in this show, it's more about just having closure. The shows that I find that I enjoy the most are ones where the characters have a very strong internal motivation.
00:07:30
Speaker
What works is so well about fragrance you inherit is every single character at every moment is trying to do the most decent thing they can with all of the things they're trying to juggle.
00:07:43
Speaker
You might have expected this to be about Sakura and Monet throwing away their family lives and other relationships to pursue this long-lost lesbian love between them that they never consummated properly.
00:07:57
Speaker
And it's not. It's about both of them recognizing that there was a thing there between them that they maybe could have done something with. But they're, like Twig said, content with where they are in their lives now. And they're able to move past that.
00:08:12
Speaker
Jumping ahead, I really like that we end on Sakura... properly completing her confession to Monet at their kid's wedding to each other. Like, now that we've completed this very important familial ceremony, I will now put this to bed finally.
00:08:35
Speaker
Takenikohei is in this show. Yes, Takenikohei is in this show playing Ryosuke, who is Sakura's best friend. And listen, truly one of the great performances. I love Ryosuke so much and what he is for both Sakura and for Toki.
00:08:54
Speaker
Onchan! Onchan. He's a safe place for Toki when Toki is struggling and he does it in a way that's not cloying. Like when Toki shows up at his house he's like what are you doing here?
00:09:06
Speaker
But he's also incredibly kind to him and sort of helps him navigate without spilling something that Sakura wants to tell Toki herself. One of the things that I really loved about this show was that, like Ben said, the characters were really driving the story. The web of interrelationships between all of the characters was important, and the show treated them as important.
00:09:29
Speaker
The core of the narrative is about the lost or never quite got off the ground relationship between Sakura and Monet. That's what connects everybody together. But the relationship between Sakura and Toki, that mother-son relationship, is also ah really huge part of the story.
00:09:47
Speaker
Toki's relationship with Kanai as a first love, we get some of that. We get Toki wrestling with his relationship with Sakura and what his history means for their relationship, and also then what Sakura and Mone's relationship means for his relationship with Kanai. We get Kanai and Mone, the mother-daughter relationship, and Hirohiko, the father, we get his relationship with Kanai as well.
00:10:09
Speaker
And then Onchan, the friendship relationship with him and Sakura, and the sort of mentorship relationship between him and Toki. Like, literally everybody is interconnected. There's story with all of them.
00:10:21
Speaker
We get the initial setup of Sakura and her son seem to get along really well. Clearly she's gay, but she ain't told him. she's probably going to need to tell him at some point. Toki brings Kane over and Sakura was running around the house trying to get ready because she wants to put on a good impression for her son's first big girlfriend that he wants to bring home.
00:10:38
Speaker
Incredibly endearing. Sakura has to sort of emotionally muscle through meeting the daughter of her first love, who's also wearing the damn perfume that she gave her 15 years ago. This show came to torment lesbians in particular.
00:10:56
Speaker
And then the kids are like, we want our moms to meet. So she ends up hanging out with Monet and she's trying to do the right thing. Like she's clearly nervous about meeting her again, but resolves after seeing her that she is ready to be ah mom friend to her.
00:11:11
Speaker
In any other show, we might've expected like the husband to be secretly shitty. But like when we finally meet Hoshi Hirohiko, he's just a dork dad who loves his wife and his daughter. And they clearly love and respect him too.
00:11:26
Speaker
Like, she tells him she's got a boyfriend, and then she, like, goes to sit on the couch, and he's sitting behind the couch, like, peeking over it like it's, like, a fence or something. Like, wait, who is this boy? Tell me about him!
00:11:38
Speaker
It's just so endearing.
Exploring Parental and Past Relationships
00:11:41
Speaker
He gets a moment with Toki, too. Where he's like, yeah, of course this boy is actually good. Goddammit, I raised my daughter well. Yeah. And then, of course, we get the incredibly important moment where Sakura realizes that she and Toki have the same taste in women. Very critical for lesbian mom.
00:11:57
Speaker
That was very cute. Like, she said the thing, and I was like, oh, does Toki already know? And then as the show goes on, you realize, oh, no, he doesn't know. But if she makes comments like this all the time, that's why maybe he feels like there's things that he's not being told.
00:12:12
Speaker
The runner that's holding all of the major plot developments together is Toki wants to understand his mom. He recognizes fairly early that something about Kane triggered something in his mom.
00:12:26
Speaker
He ends up investigating through like old yearbooks and old photos to realize that Sakura and Monet were friends 15 years ago. He's always been bothered that his mom doesn't have any friends other than One-Chan.
00:12:38
Speaker
And it's interesting watching Toki grapple with the loneliness that he's worried about for his mom. The fact that his mom... Doesn't really know who his dad is and has never lied to him about that.
00:12:51
Speaker
Plays into some of this and his own struggles. Anchan's role, he was accidentally a problem for them. 15 years ago, Monet liked that she was Sakura's basically only friend. Met Anchan, totally misunderstood, and thought that Sakura and Anchan were dating.
00:13:10
Speaker
Anchan is asexual and a romantic relationship. completely misunderstands this and ends up committing harder to Hoshi as a result. This continues to plague me.
00:13:20
Speaker
I feel so much about the fact that Monet was maybe interested in Sakura, but the way she commits to Hirohiko at the first sign of any sort of uncertainty tells us that it's probably for the best, that they didn't go forth with this.
00:13:38
Speaker
There's a part of me that doesn't believe that Monet was going to be able to handle being in a full-time relationship with the Yeah, totally agree with that I think that that's one of the really interesting things that we see her grapple with in the present.
00:13:52
Speaker
She feels guilty about the way her friendship with Sakura ended. Sakura and Monet both sort of have in their head that they were the ones responsible for the ending of their friendship.
00:14:06
Speaker
They both have to come to terms with the part that they're responsible for separately and then Together agree to both like forgive each other where they're really forgiving themselves because neither of them were actually mad at the other one.
00:14:18
Speaker
What it felt like to me was that Monet was maybe thinking that she had feelings for Sakura, but then thinking that Sakura was with Anjan, in a way buried it on purpose. Like, oh, I shouldn't have these feelings. And Sakura was kind of feeling the same way because it was this weird feedback loop.
00:14:38
Speaker
It was just like, oh, I shouldn't like this girl. And Monet just double committed, as Ben said, Hoshi. In a way that felt very like, okay, I'm going to bury this piece of me because it seems to have messed up my friendship with Sakura.
00:14:56
Speaker
And Sakura kind of went similarly about it, except that maybe Sakura had more of a sense of who she was. Part of the story in the present is Monet figuring out this thing about herself that she thought that she felt the way that she did it wasn't correct for her.
00:15:13
Speaker
And then realizing that, no, actually, there is this part of her that did love Sakura and does love women. And she maybe doesn't need to explore this part of her life because she's happy.
00:15:26
Speaker
But now that she knows this thing about herself, she feels more at ease, it almost feels like. Yeah, she definitely wasn't ready as a teenager to grapple with any of that. She seemed relieved to bury it, whereas Sakura seemed to be more burdened by burying it.
00:15:43
Speaker
I guess there's a difference between knowing and not knowing because I feel like Sakura knew, whereas Monet maybe didn't really know. i think one of the useful things to talk about there is less about the knowing, more about the role that confessing plays.
00:16:02
Speaker
One of the most important things for you experience as a teenager is romantic rejection. And this is probably the thing that emotionally stunts queer people the most. Because the tension and danger around confessing makes queer people sort of reject themselves preemptively.
Significance of Rejection and Confession in Queer Narratives
00:16:20
Speaker
So they're never forced to deal with the other person saying no to you and then having to sort your relationship out after that. That's what makes me so sad about this particular story.
00:16:33
Speaker
Sakura doesn't really get over Monet for like 20 years. At that point, is she ready to face the lesbian dating pool in the Japanese equivalent of Tinder? Oh my God.
00:16:47
Speaker
This is the question that I have based on the ending. When I watched it, I sort of got the feeling, not that they were saying no, but that they were saying maybe sometime in the future.
00:17:00
Speaker
ah wasn't exactly sure at the end of it what the story was trying to say precisely. I think it was definitely more about Sakura moving on than and Mone having a second chance.
00:17:14
Speaker
The way that we ended with the not yet, I did struggle with it a little bit. I think it's okay that it's not pat that she wasn't quite ready, but I wanted to be able to see her fully move on, and we didn't get to fully see that.
00:17:27
Speaker
But I felt it was still a satisfying ending for me. Oh yeah, it was definitely a satisfying ending. I was just a little unsure about where the ending wanted in me to land, but that didn't make it any less satisfying to me.
00:17:46
Speaker
While Sakura's moving on was part of the ending, the other part of the ending was the release of this tension between Sakura and Toki. There's been this tension as Toki tries to figure out who his mom is, and that sort of affected his relationship with Kainai as well.
00:18:01
Speaker
There's this great scene that he has with Kanai where he kind of is trying to tell her without telling her because he realizes that it's not his thing to tell. But also he wants her to know that it's not that he's keeping a secret from her necessarily.
00:18:18
Speaker
He wants her to be part of his life. He wants to share these things with her and making that clear to her while still maintaining his mother's ability to keep it a secret if she wants to.
00:18:31
Speaker
It was a very interesting tightrope that they walked. there. I liked how seriously they took the relationship between Toki and Kanai because they were taking it seriously.
00:18:42
Speaker
I think that young love is important and whether it goes on or it ends, how it happens is important. so It was nice to see it also being taken very seriously by the narrative. Totally agree. I really appreciated the scenes where they had conversations about the relationship that showed that they were really putting work into it. like It was an effort on both of their parts that they wanted to make it work to show the sincerity and the seriousness but of what they were embarking on together.
00:19:10
Speaker
What you said about the way that Toki navigated the difficulty of having all knowledge about his mother and and wanting to respect her right to share or not share that secret was so good. I thought One of my favorite things about the show is the way that it handles coming out as a concept. I thought it did a really good job of framing coming out as not something you owe anybody, but when you give that knowledge of yourself as a gift to the people who have earned it or who you love, it benefits your relationship as a whole and the world expands and is improved by it. I thought like that was just really beautifully said by the show and the multiple coming out scenes we got in it.
Portrayal of Coming Out as a Strengthening Force
00:19:49
Speaker
It's very easy to make a show where there's pressure in the narrative to come out and where not coming out is treated as some sort of wrongdoing. And I thought that the show did a really good job of making it clear Sakura was never a bad person or wrong for not having told that secret yet.
00:20:08
Speaker
And at the same time, showing how it expanded her relationship with her son and her mother when she did come out. Oh my gosh, the scene with her mother. The they handled her finally saying to her mom what her mom clearly already knew.
00:20:22
Speaker
Very well I wept. It was beautiful, honestly. The show is just unfailingly kind and gentle. Like, there are so many points at which the show could have turned in a different direction and gotten more contentious. But instead, at every turn, it just chose to make everybody be trying to do the best that they absolutely could do in the moment that they were in And showing that the people that they were in the moment with understood that they were doing the best that they could do as well.
00:20:53
Speaker
ah Everybody's coming at each other in every moment with grace, with an allowance for who they're dealing with and the love that they feel for that person. It's not that people didn't necessarily get angry because I think Toki got angry maybe once or twice, but it's just that that anger is not really directed at his mother. It's more directed at the situation and why they're all in the situation that they're in.
00:21:20
Speaker
And so when he has to have that conversation, yeah, he needs some time and space away from his mom to figure out what it is he wants to say, which is why he goes to Anchan. But when his mom does find him and they have that talk, he is not angry with her in the least. It's just really this beautiful thing that I really, really enjoyed watching. It felt very soothing to watch this show.
Role of Chosen Family in Queer Narratives
00:21:50
Speaker
So who's everybody's favorite character and why is it Anchan? He really was the best. We haven't had ah gay uncle in this genre in so fucking long. And it was played by Takata Kohei, who everybody knows from Old Fashioned Cupcake.
00:22:03
Speaker
Love that man. He's so good. Just that close, long-standing friendship between a gay man and a lesbian woman is something that made the show feel more relatably queer than...
00:22:16
Speaker
a lot of QL does to me. People ask me, and I know they ask you, Ben, too, all the time, what makes something feel queer? Is it just that it's sad? like Sometimes, no, it's that we've got besties. A lot of the times in BL, the queer besties are just other people who also surprise our gang going through that realization at the same time.
00:22:34
Speaker
Anchan knew he was gay before he and Sakura started talking, and it was that mutual realization of, oh, we're family. that made them be friends in the first place and part of why they kept each other the company through all these years.
00:22:46
Speaker
That kind of knowing moment is the kind of thing that we don't often get in QL. What I think works so well for me about their friendship is that he's always holding her to account.
00:22:59
Speaker
He'll be as nice about it as he can, but he will not let her just spout bullshit around him. He's always telling her the uncomfortable things she needs to hear.
00:23:11
Speaker
it's the same with Toki when he shows up. It's like, you just scared the shit out of your mom, kid. Let's resolve that first. I just love that when Toki shows up, but I saw was the first thing he says to him is, how do you know where I live?
00:23:23
Speaker
He could have been entertaining. You're not supposed to show up unannounced, kid. ah It was delightful. He's clearly a big part of Toki and Sakura's lives. He's always in their space with them.
00:23:36
Speaker
But he was still shocked when Toki showed up at his house like, oh, you're not supposed to be It was It's so realistic and delightful. Somebody older whose friends have kids who are sort of in that space now, in that elder teenage space, sometimes they'll come to me and I'll be like, what are you doing here? Why am i the person that you're choosing to talk to about this?
00:24:00
Speaker
shouldn't you go talk to somebody else? And then you realize, oh no, I'm the auntie figure now. So I'm the person that they're going to come to when they don't want to talk to their mom. It was just very recognizable and relatable.
Beyond Romance: The Need for Broader Queer Narratives
00:24:21
Speaker
let's talk about the fact that this is not a queer romance and how people struggled with that as a concept. As usual. I bitch about this at least once a season.
00:24:33
Speaker
The importance of queer art that doesn't necessarily and in queer boinking. I have been feeling so many feelings this season in particular about how our stories are apparently only worth paying attention to if they're titillating to a straight audience. And fuck that.
00:24:56
Speaker
That's how I feel about that. Our stories are interesting. and worth telling, even if it's not actually about us fucking as the core. That doesn't make it any less queer.
00:25:11
Speaker
We have full lives that are about more than just having sex. Some of us don't even have sex at all. That doesn't make us any less queer. While it's sort of defined by who we want to fuck or fall in love with or spend time with, there are ripple effects in a lot of other aspects of our life.
00:25:31
Speaker
Those parts of our lives are also interesting and worth telling. We are full human beings. guess sometimes it feels like QL forgets that. So when people want to throw out a story because it's not about falling in love or having sex, I...
00:25:49
Speaker
feel like I need to remind people that we're human beings who do more than that and that the other things we do are also important. We still need queer media about people in their 30s and older sorting their feelings out about shit that happened to them in their teens.
00:26:07
Speaker
That is still important and significant. My uncle has has always said to me that queerness isn't just romance. It's not just sex. It's societal.
00:26:20
Speaker
And one of the things that I enjoy about both of the shows that we're talking about tonight is how societal it felt. Like the romances or the feelings or the whatever are in there.
00:26:34
Speaker
But it's not necessarily about that. It's about everything around it. It's about every way it impacts people's lives. I truly appreciated that about these two shows.
00:26:45
Speaker
Are you here for a ship or a story? These two shows are definitely a story. It's about this entire little society of people, this little microcosm, this family that is just figuring out some things that go along with queerness.
Show Ratings and Ending Frustrations
00:27:03
Speaker
Okay, so, ratings! but like Ooh, I gave it a 10 and an award, Twig T? I feel like I gave it a 9.5.
00:27:15
Speaker
Where did the.5 come off of? The ambiguous ending. Yeah. Even though it was satisfying, I'd be able to ask, like, what exactly was that? Just a smidge off. But honestly, it was such a wonderful watch experience.
00:27:27
Speaker
Like, the watch experience itself was a 10. I also gave it a 9.5 i was a little bit miffed by the ambiguous ending.
00:27:38
Speaker
Like, I didn't mind Monet and Sakura needing more time to sort that out. I didn't mind them wanting their kids to complete their arc before they decided to tackle theirs.
00:27:50
Speaker
But I found myself a little frustrated at the end that Sakura still feels like her lesbian... existence defined by her feelings so that's the reason i gave it a nine five i think a little incomplete for me so i think we can give it a nine five from the conversation i mean we give it an award people you know we like it we really want you all to watch it we say this all the time if you only watch bl it rot your fucking brain and you just really cannot watch the genre properly
00:28:23
Speaker
Because you're not always engaged with stories and themes that are being told. You got to diversify your motherfucking bonds. ah You got to watch other shit. If you're a queer person who only wants to watch queer media, fine. I respect that. I'm all about it. I'm one of them people too.
00:28:37
Speaker
You should watch something like this. That's not just about whether or not queer people are going to boink each other. This is a compelling narrative about a collection of queer people and how their own queer histories complicate and influence the lives of their children.
00:28:52
Speaker
This is an excellent show and a fairly short watch at that too. It's only six 20-minute episodes. You owe it to yourself to watch this.
'Fragrance of the First Flower': Viewing Experiences
00:29:07
Speaker
Okay, so now we are going to talk about Fragrance of the First Flower. I recently watched this, finally caught up and watched both seasons. But ah think Ben and Twig, you guys watched the first season back when it aired originally and caught up with the second season and this year.
00:29:29
Speaker
So maybe we can talk a little bit about the differing experiences we had. You guys with watching it in two tranches and me with watching it as a binge. I have a weak memory of the first season, I'm realizing at this point.
00:29:43
Speaker
I remember the basics. So we've got two ladies. We've got Yi Ming and Zhong Ting Ting. And Zhong Ting Ting and Yi Ming were volleyball players together in high school.
00:29:54
Speaker
The gayest thing they could possibly be. I saw the volleyball and I was like, oh, this is why we're watching this. I'm always watching volleyball at some point somewhere. Actually, right now I'm watching tennis.
00:30:07
Speaker
I mean, it's just volleyball with rockets. Look, I'm all about sports with nets. So they were very close in high school. There was clearly a lot of gay things going on there. Zhang Ting Ting was way more into it than Yi Ming was.
00:30:21
Speaker
And Yi Ming is like, nah, I'm out of here. And then she goes on to get heterosexually married to a guy. They have a child together. does have special needs.
00:30:34
Speaker
She runs into... Ting Ting, again, according to the blurb at a wedding, I do not remember this. And they rekindle some of their relationship in the first season. But once again, Ming is not ready for this and calls things off with Ting Ting.
00:30:52
Speaker
So that happens in 2021. And Twig and I are scratching our heads watching this like, well, that was mostly pretty solid, but kind of abrupt and weirdly unsatisfying.
00:31:04
Speaker
And so we just put it on the shelf for about four years. And then they're like, we're coming back. And we were like, oh, sure, i guess. So the show comes back. Yiming did divorce her husband, who is now realizing that being a sort of absent partner is...
00:31:23
Speaker
is not conducive to a sustainable long-term marriage in the modern era and is trying now to work through things. He kind of thinks his ex-wife is going through a phase, but he grows.
00:31:37
Speaker
Ming eventually tries to rekindle her relationship with Ting Ting, and we watch these two try and sort out what being a couple in their now is supposed to look like.
00:31:48
Speaker
And it's kind of a mess, and it's not a smooth ride for any of them. Aviat's twig and needy? One of the things that made the first season a bit of a struggle, especially at the end, was the revelation that Ting Ting also was in a relationship with a man at the time that she was pursuing Yumin, even knowing that Yumin was married with a child. Wait, she was?
00:32:10
Speaker
Holy shit. And that's the thing that makes Yumin go, you know what? I can't handle this shit. I don't believe that you are ready to be with me as I blow my life apart because you're dating someone else. And Ting Ting's like, well, you told me to.
00:32:24
Speaker
And she's like, yeah, but still. The ending was just so unsatisfying. and left us in such a frustrating place with the characters. You've set up that these characters have failed each other massively in this moment and then just left us.
00:32:36
Speaker
So I was so happy we got the second season. And for me, it actually did manage to bring it all back in and successfully and satisfactorily conclude.
Exploring Yiming and Ting's Relationship
00:32:47
Speaker
I am curious to hear your thoughts, Nini, because I'm wondering how much the multiple years of sitting with what happened in season one helped me reconcile and be prepared for forgiving the characters through season two.
00:33:00
Speaker
Because I watched it all as a whole, I didn't experience that feeling of the satisfaction that you guys did. like just went straight into season two. So I didn't have to sit with that unfinished feeling. I was just able to go through the entire story and it lines up pretty well.
00:33:20
Speaker
Yiming and Ting Ting, they run into each other at this wedding. And then we get more or less a series of flashbacks to their high school days when they were clearly into each other and sort of developing this relationship. And then they get caught being affectionate in the street outside of school. They've built up this thing where after volleyball practice, Ting Ting rides Yiming home on her bike.
00:33:46
Speaker
And the got a little bit saucy for being outdoors and they were seen and it became a whole thing. And Yiming freaked out and sort of separated herself from Ting Ting.
00:34:02
Speaker
And Yiming was older anyway. So she left, she graduated, she moved on to college, she met this guy, she ended up marrying this guy. And Ting Ting just ended up floating a little bit.
00:34:14
Speaker
She didn't quite get herself together. Yiming has a job. She has a family. She has all this stuff. And Ting Ting is in her 30s now in the second season, trying to make a career out of music.
00:34:29
Speaker
She's in this band. This band is not doing great. She works part-time at a cafe. She doesn't really have a life path. In the way that Yiming had. Yiming has now left her husband. And she's like okay I'm ready to be with you.
00:34:45
Speaker
But is she? And the whole second season is really dealing with that. ah Idea of Yiming. Thinking that she's ready to be with Ting Ting. But not actually being ready to be with Ting Ting.
00:34:58
Speaker
And Ting Ting struggling with that. Because in her head. She's been there all along. And she doesn't understand. Yiming is struggling with this so much. And it's not just the part where they are two women together. It's also just struggling with who Ting Ting is.
00:35:16
Speaker
The scene that I can't forget is when Ting Ting moves in with Yi Ming and starts unpacking her stuff. As Ting Ting unpacks something, Yiming packs it back away because Ting Ting has all this boho, like really colorful kind of cluttery stuff.
00:35:34
Speaker
And Yiming's space is very neutral and regimented. And it almost feels like she can't make room for Ting Ting in her space at all, even as much as she wants her there.
00:35:46
Speaker
It was really interesting scene that stuck with me all this time. Yeah, I love that scene too. one of the things that I really loved ah about this series, both seasons, is how both of these characters, they feel fully developed.
00:35:59
Speaker
We know who both of them are. Even as they're figuring themselves out, both of them have very clear and satisfying arcs. It's not just about them coming to terms with being in Savik relationship. They also have to navigate their personalities and the situation, like what Ting Ting's role is in Yemin's child's life, for example.
00:36:22
Speaker
It wasn't done when they both were ready to be queer together. One of them is a very uptight person and the other person is very laid back. How do we make that work?
00:36:34
Speaker
They're in different points in their careers. How do we make that work? if We have different life goals and how do we make that work? Things that they were struggling with were varied and all felt like parts of the larger whole of these characters.
00:36:47
Speaker
I always love when characters in a relationship or getting into a relationship have sex and it doesn't fix anything. Even as they're physically connected, Yiming is clearly struggling both with the being openly queer aspect of things and just being with Teng Teng, who is so different from her. Teng Teng
00:37:14
Speaker
You see her navigating the struggles through the character of her boss and her boss's wife, watching their relationship and trying to figure out how to be in a relationship with a woman from watching her boss's life.
00:37:28
Speaker
I did not like that boss. Why didn't you like the boss? Because she was an astrology bitch? Yeah, she was so serious about it. Every time she showed I remember messaging Twig. like, oh, Lord, here she come again. Can she have one conversation? She don't bring it up.
00:37:43
Speaker
Oh, we made it out of this conversation. Nope. There it is. Every motherfucking time. God damn. This is why i always keep my own personal astrology bitchness away from Beth.
00:37:56
Speaker
I liked the boss. The boss was a wife girl and open about it. At first it shocked Yi Ming, but she was also really curious about it Signaling to Yi Ming that she's also a lesbian by constantly talking about astrology.
Workplace Dynamics and Personal Growth
00:38:15
Speaker
And the baby she's trying to get pregnant with. I just loved that whole storyline. Just watching Yi Ming look at the boss and the wife as a way to navigate things with Ting Ting and then realizing, okay, yes, they are also gay, but their relationship is not our relationship.
00:38:32
Speaker
That was incredibly satisfying to me. Heeming was not ready at the end of season one. And so she's broken up with her husband. She's gotten in her own place. She's returned to the workforce.
00:38:45
Speaker
And now she feels like she can maybe try do things with Ting Ting. There's a lot of gays like that. Jiro is one of those gays who had to get his whole life in order before he could possibly start doing things with other people.
00:38:58
Speaker
He needed the sense of security about his ability to take care of his own life. And I really liked the drama with Ting Ting working service jobs because in her heart, she really wants to be a successful musician.
00:39:14
Speaker
I like that that was something that she was struggling with trying to hold on to. At one point, she takes a reliable job and this ends being a huge tension point with her relationship with her band.
00:39:25
Speaker
One of the things I really love about Eamon working on those parts of herself before she's ready to have a relationship with Ting Ting and then she looks up Ting Ting on social media and she basically creates a moment for them to start again. like she sort of manufactures a moment, then she chickens out a little bit. like One of Eamon's main arcs that she needed to work on was that relationships are two people. She can't control it all herself.
00:39:50
Speaker
And so i loved that that didn't work. That Eamon working on getting herself to an established place was not good enough to make the relationship work. And Ting Ting trying to change herself into who she thought Eamon wanted her to be so that they could work also didn't work.
00:40:08
Speaker
Both of them were sort of doing their own thing in their own corners to make this relationship work and it wasn't working and they were both so frustrated and got really angry with each other about how neither of them seemed to be recognizing the effort they were both putting into this relationship because neither of them were talking about it or realizing that the effort they were putting in was not actually the effort either of them wanted from each other.
00:40:27
Speaker
it was really well done. One of the other little signals that I really enjoyed was the whole runner about the bar stools. Yiming told Ting Ting back in high school she wanted to be the kind of woman who had bar stools in her house. And Ting Ting held on to that for all those years and made sure they had the bar stools. And then Yiming kept them covered in plastic.
00:40:49
Speaker
It was such an interesting little runner watching them sort of fight not fight about that.
Compromise and Understanding in Relationships
00:40:56
Speaker
The fact that Yi Meng had the same problems with Ting Ting that she had with her ex-husband really sort of drove home the point that it wasn't just about finally coming out and being open and being herself. It was also about learning to be a person in a relationship with somebody else and let go of some things and learn to compromise on things and learn to recognize when somebody else needs space inside the relationship.
00:41:23
Speaker
I'm still laughing at the whole, well, we agreed that we wouldn't do things we don't like anymore. So I'm not going to wash the dishes.
00:41:35
Speaker
I was a big fan of that moment. I can still hear her screaming John Ting Ting after her.
00:41:45
Speaker
I want Twig for you to talk a little bit about our romantic rival. This is honestly the part of the show that I really wanted to get queer woman's commentary on because this feels like the kind of moment that does not work as well in male-male romance.
00:42:02
Speaker
First of all, Shining was so hot.
00:42:08
Speaker
She came in swaggering with her guitar and her beautiful voice and her appreciation for Ting Ting's music. And she's so hot. Sorry. The what? Words?
00:42:22
Speaker
I can't be ah rational about this. She was she was incredibly hot. Speak your truth, Twig. Speak your truth. I think it was important for the narrative that we be shown that Ting Ting had viable other choices because at that point in the story it really kind of felt like Ting Ting was clinging to ah version of Yee Min that she had in her head from when they were in high school even even though they'd already come together and come apart once before in their 20s and Ting Ting was wrestling with that question too was like do I still actually want to be with this person and so Jenning coming in and representing who Ting Ting on paper might think she wanted was critical for Ting Ting realizing that
00:43:01
Speaker
I don't want the extremely hot lesbian who will go on the road with me and make music with me and have jam sessions and make eyes across the guitars.
00:43:12
Speaker
She plays me the song that she wrote about me. My God.
00:43:18
Speaker
Focus, Twig, focus. ah What was I saying? Oh, yeah. And yeah, I mean, like, honestly, Janning, I'll get on your motorcycle and you can sing to me whenever you want. But Ting Ting needed to have that experience to realize that what she had with Yemin was actually worth fighting for. and thought it was a really effective use of arrival.
00:43:38
Speaker
I'm really no questioning why Ting Ting went back to Yemin. The answer is always in the food. Yes, that's right. That is correct.
00:43:49
Speaker
When Ting Ting was going through a difficult place and they needed to bring food for support, Yiming was able to make food. Xiaoning was only able to buy it. ah That's it.
00:44:00
Speaker
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why he is the expert. But it's great because Xiaoning has like a stern confrontation with both of them. She's trying to smash and both of these lesbians are getting her fucking nurse.
00:44:14
Speaker
I'm always compelled by stories where people who are filling each other's weak spots and make each other better people, find a way to get over the things that make it hard for them to be together and build something real, as opposed to the people who are very similar coming together.
00:44:30
Speaker
So I didn't have the problem that I know some people in the audience might have had where Jennings seemed like the better choice, because Ting Ting wasn't driven in the same way by that relationship that she was with Yemin.
00:44:41
Speaker
It was a way to stagnate. And also, two artists getting together, that's nice. Oh my god, if there's no way would end well, the sex would be great and then everyone would fall apart. I agree with that part. While she and Yi Ming were not together, and especially when they were fighting, they definitely should have fucked at least twice. Yes.
00:44:58
Speaker
I wasn't entirely certain that they didn't. They didn't. Ting Ting is way too loyal to the version of herself she's trying to be for Yi Ming.
00:45:09
Speaker
As a kid she's trying to be dedicated to, she ain't fucking other women right now. Sorry. That's okay, that's what AO3 is for.
Co-Parenting and Personal Harmony
00:45:23
Speaker
Let's talk about the ex-husband. They did a lot of work in the last episode to show that this guy had done some growing on his own. And I actually really respected the way they wrote his coming around to the situation.
00:45:37
Speaker
but It wasn't perfect, but it was believable in a way that you could relax little. The way that it all comes together was really satisfying for me because the work that Yumin does on her relationship with Ting Ting is what makes her able to have a better relationship with Renju.
00:45:51
Speaker
I thought that the show did a really good job of making that all work together, that Yumin realizing the way she needs to approach relationships was what allowed her and her ex-husband Renju to come to a place where you could imagine them having an amicable co-parenting future together.
00:46:10
Speaker
in a way that didn't seem possible a few episodes into the second season. Obviously, Renju also had to meet her halfway on that, and the show did a good job of making it believable that he was able to get to that place.
00:46:22
Speaker
They were able to start to build something with Renju and Ting Ting. They were bonding a little over putting up a tent together. it was really sweet, actually. They're never going to be besties, but they were able to share a beer, and that felt right.
00:46:37
Speaker
I also found it was funny that Renju tells Ting Ting he's also a guitarist so i'm like oh Yiming has a type.
00:46:47
Speaker
It was fun and interesting and I like that Yiming had to get rid of all these compartments that she'd put up in her life because her life is so compartmentalized. She's so busy trying to keep all the different parts of her life separate.
00:46:59
Speaker
And it's only breaking down those compartments and opening up her life to the people in it, like all the parts of her life, that allows her to unclench, basically, and start to pull her life together into some kind of harmony.
00:47:13
Speaker
That's the part about this series that I like the most. This is a show about two... Kind of mediocre people trying to make a relationship work between them. Like both of them are dissatisfied with the state of their lives.
00:47:27
Speaker
Ting Ting wants to be a more successful musician than she is. Yi Ming wants to be more than the housewife she's settled for being. And it's interesting watching these two's lives evolve over the pursuit of the things that are important to them and each other.
00:47:43
Speaker
Yiming takes a job, gets clocked by her boss, who decides that this little budding lesbian needs a friend. I'm going to force her to be my friend through the power of astrology.
00:47:55
Speaker
I really liked the building complexity of creating a friend relationship with her boss, having to let Renshu know that she was actually serious about Ting Ting. This is going to be a thing.
00:48:09
Speaker
Not sacrificing her role as a parent, but also making it clear that she is not the sole parent for their son anymore. That's what I want out of my dramas. I want the drama to come from the people and the pursuit of the things that are important to them and be able to understand why these things are important to them.
00:48:28
Speaker
Like Ting Ting being a musician is not just set dressing. It's a part of who she is. It's part of her struggle and the realities of being a struggling musician inform and affect her relationship.
00:48:39
Speaker
Exactly. And also affect her proposal. i My favorite. I just love that this show also features a double proposal.
00:48:51
Speaker
Double proposal is my favorite thing. Oh my god, we want gays. I love the double proposal. The gayest of tropes, my favorite thing. Oh man, the fact that Ting Ting let the band talk her into doing this big, grand gesture version of it, and she's halfway through it and she's like, fuck no, not this. Report!
00:49:14
Speaker
She literally in the middle of singing midline, she's like, no, it was delightful. I loved it so much. But I like the way that it ended the double proposal back at their old high school. Just the two of them felt like them. Like she let go of the idea of what it should be, which was one of the things that she was struggling with the entire time in the relationship but and just allowed it to be what it was.
Praising Season Two's Storytelling
00:49:39
Speaker
Twig and I legit, we walked into this show back to back trying to cover each other over this one. We were not sure going into this one. And it was surprising how consistent the second season felt.
00:49:54
Speaker
They took 12, 25 minute episodes and it didn't feel like they were spinning in circles or wasting our time. Like I really felt like there were good ideas that the show really wanted to explore. and Even down to...
00:50:06
Speaker
Yiming failing to take Ting on a date she wanted to go on ruining it with the awkward energy around it. And they got to play volleyball again. We did get to see them play volleyball together again.
00:50:19
Speaker
I would just like to point out that the only reason Ting Ting started playing volleyball is that she saw Meng playing and she literally had ah complete lesbian breakdown and was absolutely like, I need to be where she is.
00:50:35
Speaker
The most realistic reason why anyone plays sports is that. As she should. Exactly. I know we talked about this as well when we talked about the eighth sense. of That little country twink was like, I'm going to go join the surfing club. Can I swim?
00:50:50
Speaker
No. I'm going to drown for some dick. I understand you, country twink. Man, I love that country twink. I hadn't thought about him all week.
00:50:59
Speaker
The beginning of all this is literally her staring open mouthed as Yiming played volleyball. love it Whomstamoncus must not Ending the show on The Proposal was such a great bookend for the start of the show. but The wedding that Yumin and Ting Ting meet again at is next to a lesbian wedding.
00:51:20
Speaker
It was a good moment for Yumin to see two women getting married as just a thing that's happening. ah sort of set her up to have her first reawakening in this third chance romance.
00:51:33
Speaker
I really liked that before we got to those proposals, we had them taking a walk in the park, having a frank conversation yeah about what marriage means to both of them. Like, Yi Ming does not have a high estimation of marriage after her whole experience with Renshu. So i really liked that we didn't go into a double proposal without them voicing, like,
00:51:57
Speaker
their doubts about it and also why it's important for them. Yiming seeing this lesbian wedding right next to the wedding she's at and it being normalized is part of what allows her to let herself get into something with Ting Ting.
Impact of Normalized Lesbian Relationships
00:52:11
Speaker
Sort of the catalyst for her reconnecting with Ting Ting and finally deciding to leave her husband and all of that. I think that if it hadn't been for this wedding and the fact that these two women were marrying each other to be seen as quote unquote normal, I don't know that Yiming would have gotten there otherwise.
00:52:34
Speaker
g Agreed. And that's why I love that the series ends with them getting married and presumably being that for some other closeted lesbian. We can keep the cycle going. Love it. Love it.
00:52:51
Speaker
All right, so anything else that we want to mention about this before get into the ratings? We did mention the band, right, and how incredible the Ting Ting friendship with them is.
00:53:02
Speaker
We didn't talk about it much, but they're fantastic. They're fantastic. They know her. They know her type. They know her business. Their entire relationship is utterly delightful.
00:53:16
Speaker
I don't know if we want to talk at all about the depiction of autism. and the son. I feel like what the show was trying to do there was make it explicable why Yiming was wound so tight about the son, why she was so protective of him, even to the point of maybe keeping him away from Ting Ting to an extent, because she doesn't know how Ting Ting is going to respond to her son, how her son is going to respond to Ting Ting.
00:53:49
Speaker
She's worried about how that's going to go. She doesn't see Ting Ting doing the work in the background. Ting Ting wants to figure this out together. And she's sort of holding it so closely to herself because of this additional consideration that she asked of me because of her son being on the spectrum.
00:54:07
Speaker
To me, that's what the show sort of used it for more than having the ESD discussion. It was the awareness of his need for schedule and like predictable patterns that would a realistic need that if she didn't meet, there would be consequences for him and in his behavior. So both he would be uncomfortable and he would make the rest them uncomfortable.
00:54:29
Speaker
It did have practical implications that she had to like seriously consider. My friend has a son who is autistic and nonverbal, and I've seen her go through this exact consideration of where am I allowed to be selfish and where is it just unfair of me to put myself first when that puts my child either at risk or makes things difficult for him. It's a struggle that all parents have, but when your kid is neurodivergent, adds a layer of where the responsibility lies they have to struggle with. and
00:55:01
Speaker
I appreciated that that was ah very real thing for her to grapple with. It wasn't just set dressing. like It was used intentionally in the story to add to what she had to wrestle with in terms of the decision she was making about her life.
00:55:18
Speaker
Okay, ratings. Let's start with you, Ben. How did you rate this one? Nine. It's a solid show. i think it's for most people. I don't think it's for everyone.
00:55:29
Speaker
Twig? Twig? Yeah, I give it an 8.5 for very similar reasons. It's not a perfect show, but it does so many things really well. There is definitely some hangover oh years of being like, man, and so I'm still not over that frustration.
00:55:44
Speaker
There are moments where the show could be a little tighter, could be a little less cheesy. It's like mostly really great. It's not perfect, but it's so charming that in my heart, it's higher.
00:55:56
Speaker
I gave it a nine. i think it is a solid show, especially when it's feud all together without the split in the middle. I agree that there were a couple of little hanging chads, so to speak.
00:56:08
Speaker
But overall, it's a solid show. It's well done. It's well thought. So it's very intentional. So 8.599, that means it's going to be in nine from the conversation. Great little show.
00:56:23
Speaker
It's on Gaga Ulala. Go support Gaga and watch their goddamn shows. As usual, we have not been paid by Gaga. I mean, if you guys want to, but it we're always going to plug it.
00:56:36
Speaker
It's a great platform. Can I say one last thing about the show? I just, I feel like we didn't say the show is really pretty. It really is. I think we really undersold that component.
00:56:47
Speaker
It's genuinely ah very relaxing, very attractive show to watch. Yeah, I always feel I need to call it out. I appreciate it. Production values. Huzzah!
00:57:06
Speaker
Let's talk final commentary on lesbian life drama in the era of GL schlock. We're getting right now. Oh my god.
00:57:17
Speaker
Look, GL is kind of going through the doldrums. For you, who's like a longtime queer cinephile who's been on the front end of the genre since the 90s, where are you sitting with GL and lesbian life dramas right now?
Future Hopes for GL Content Production
00:57:33
Speaker
I'm never going to say that I'm unhappy that we have more content. My hope is that the fact that we're getting GL from more and larger production companies will make people realize that it exists.
00:57:46
Speaker
A lot of what's being made right now is falling into the same pattern. A few tried and tested authors getting adapted over and over. if you're not a fan of those tropes, then you're kind of a shit out luck.
00:58:02
Speaker
I think the genre is still trying to figure out how GL is going to make money because the fervor for the ships has a different flavor to it than the BL ships.
00:58:13
Speaker
The other thing is, honestly, it feels like people are still not really convinced that it's popular, even though every time one comes out, even if it's mediocre, it gets a million views. How big does the show need to get to prove that there's an audience there?
00:58:27
Speaker
The lesbian enjoyers are still out here. trying to shout whenever something comes because they're so afraid it's going to stop coming. So in that sense, it's kind of nice to have and enough being produced that it feels like we can be a little choosy as opposed to just be happy that we're getting anything at all.
00:58:43
Speaker
But it really does feel like most of what's being made is like, make it fast, make it cheap, hit the tropes that people seem to think is necessary for GL, but like really isn't. And I wish they'd stop.
00:58:56
Speaker
We don't need a big lie. We don't need amnesia in every show. We really don't. She went there. So I guess the long and short of it is more of this.
00:59:07
Speaker
We deserve better. We deserve way better. And so when there are good shows, I feel it really strongly about everyone going to watch The Police because we need to drown out the other stuff. need to show people that narrative and strong characterization and character-driven stories are also popular because I want more of them.
00:59:27
Speaker
More lesbian life drama, less Chaser Game w Yes, I went there. Oh, man. That's getting a second season. Or getting season two. Chaser Game W you already had a season two.
00:59:40
Speaker
Wait, did that already happen? Yes, it did. Oh my god, it did. And it was terrible, I heard. Because I did not watch it. Yeah, no, it was bad. I can't believe I said that, and I've seen the season.
00:59:51
Speaker
That tells you everything that you need to know. It really does. All we do is lose sometimes, I tell
01:00:00
Speaker
you. I'm still getting the old main season two, so, you know. I mean, sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. Any final words, Ben? I am glad that ah despite how dry...
01:00:15
Speaker
QL feels right now. We were able to have ah lovely discussion about two projects with one of our friends that focused on stories about women. Because as Twig pointed out, despite how many women are enjoying the genre, not a lot of stories about them. being made That is going to wrap us up on I'm calling it Scent of a Woman. Ben has told me that we are not calling it that. We sure aren't.
01:00:41
Speaker
We will see who wins. yeah We are home. Say bye to the people, Twig. Bye! Say bye to the people, Ben. Peace!