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Finally, Some Good Fucking Food
17 Plays10 days ago
Queer truth is on back on the menu, just as we were starting to get FAMISHED. Ben, NiNi and Shan talk Marahuyo Project and No One Cares For An Old Man's Underwear.
Episode transcript available here.
00:00 Welcome
01:15 Introduction
08:40 Marahuyo Project: A Queer Activist's Story
20:24 Marahuyo Project: On Queerness
30:16 Marahuyo Project: Our Characters
42:09 Marahuyo Project: The Christina Story
48:52 Marahuyo Project: Parents and Children
54:54 Marahuyo Project: Final Thoughts and Ratings
59:48 Ossan no Pants
01:05:18 Ossan no Pants: Our Characters
01:26:30 Ossan no Pants: Key Character Arcs
01:36:49 Ossan no Pants: Furuike and That Fucking Guy
01:45:25 Ossan no Pants: Final Thoughts and Ratings
01:51:18 Importance of Variety in Media Consumption
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Transcript
Introduction to Drunk Liquor Podcast
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation about BL, aka the Drunk Liquor Podcast. And there it is. I'm Ben. I'm Nini. We're your drunk, rippling, and unclean auntie. We're sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.
00:00:36
Speaker
Four times a year we pop
Quarterly BL World Review
00:00:38
Speaker
in and talk about what's going on in the BL world. We shoot the shit about stories, all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens. I review from a romance and drama lens. So she like cracked out takes and really intense emotional analysis.
00:00:56
Speaker
If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the
00:01:16
Speaker
And we're back.
Impact of Standout Shows Pre-Award Season
00:01:19
Speaker
This week, we're going to be taking a little bit of a break from BL and doing a special class pre-award season discussion of two shows we loved so much that it restored my faith in television as a genre. We're going to be discussing Marahuyo Project from Anima Studios.
00:01:39
Speaker
and we're going to be discussing Don't Care for an Old Man's Underwear. The Japanese name is... ah sana panska nandate e janaka Before we get into this, we're going to do a little bit of a breakdown on our special class awards and why we often will pull them aside from our BL discussion. Nini, would you like to offer
Guest Shan's Insights on Queer Narratives
00:02:01
Speaker
some insight for us?
00:02:03
Speaker
Sure, Ben. But first, we've got a guest. Say hi, Shan. Ben just forgot that I'm a guest at this point. That's true. Shan's still here. She has not left the booth. I just stay here permanently now. I have squatted in the booth. Hi, people. It's Shan. Always good to have your own, Shan. So we are talking a little bit outside of the BL genre this week. We are talking about our special class type programs.
00:02:32
Speaker
We have several categories of special class in our vibe awards, but the one that we're talking about here is standout queer narrative. Those queer stories that are not technically romances, or at least go beyond the romance genre, to reveal and get into some kind of queer truth that maybe romance is not best placed to delve into.
00:02:58
Speaker
Since Shan is here and she has watched so many dramas, Shan why don't you walk us through some of the things that distinguish broader sort of family and community oriented dramas versus like rom-coms and romantic dramas.
00:03:15
Speaker
I think what makes a show a family drama versus a romance drama that has family elements is really what drives the story, what the focus and locus of the story is. In a romance, in a BL or a GL, a QL in general, the primary driver of the plot is a romantic relationship.
00:03:42
Speaker
In a family drama, what drives the plot is more about the relationships of a family unit. Or in a drama that's more about community, like something like A Moonlight Chicken, you get the community and the relationships between different community members, friendships and neighbors and things like that being the driving force of the plot. So when
Role of Side Characters in Dramas
00:04:03
Speaker
you're talking about categorization,
00:04:05
Speaker
That's really the difference. It's not that a family drama or a community-based drama cannot include romances. They very often or even usually do. It's just about really what drives the story. And in both of the dramas that we're talking about today, what drives the story is relationships that are more familial in nature or more friendship-oriented or more about how a community of people comes together.
00:04:32
Speaker
Something else that I think is notable in different styles of drama is what role the supporting cast has. Nina, you've been probably the biggest fan of side characters and their roles in all the various QL we've watched. I'd like you to maybe talk a little bit about the role you feel for ps side characters in romance versus ps side characters in dramas.
00:04:57
Speaker
when it comes to side characters in a romance. These people are usually the friends and family of the main couple and they're usually deeply integrated into how these two people are coming together. Sometimes they have their own stories happening alongside that are sort of echoing the themes or maybe even opposing the themes in some really interesting ways. and That's what I'm looking for when I'm thinking about side characters in a romance story. When you're going outward to like family or a community and talking about those stories, what you're looking for, for me anyway, is an expansion of the world.
00:05:35
Speaker
I want to know everything about this universe when I'm getting into a family drama, community drama, workplace drama. I want to expand. but I am a romance girl, so I like when a romantic drama focuses on the couple. And yes, you get some expansion of the world in that.
00:05:54
Speaker
and an understanding of the world around them, but the couple's really the focus. I think in these wider dramas, I like understanding how these people's world operates and how they're all connected to each other inside of that world. I like the way you broke that down. In BL in particular,
00:06:15
Speaker
the friends are always built around their support for the core couple. Even in our award season, we award a best boy and best girl award each year. And that usually goes to one of the standout friends that supported our romantic leads. But in a drama
Themes in Marahuyo Project and Opon
00:06:32
Speaker
like this, I'm interested, like she said, in expanding the world, like what perils and challenges are the side characters facing that help add flavor to the core themes that we're exploring here. So what the two shows are going to be talking about today, Marahuyo Project is about a young man who's a very out queer activist in his school in Manila. And after being expelled from the school is sent to a very rural town and there decides to create an LGBT club.
00:07:11
Speaker
Sorry, he uses the full acronym LGBTQIA plus community while we're while he's there. In our other show, Opon for short, we're dealing with a middle-aged man who's kind of a Grognard stuck in his way, who after a surprise encounter with a young gay man decides it's time for him to update himself and rebuild his relationship with his family and his co-workers. And it's a show fundamentally about personal growth. So those themes don't necessarily prioritize romance in them. And we'll get into that more
00:07:56
Speaker
As we focus on those shows, the last thing I want to highlight before we talk about these shows, we've been talking about it a lot, particularly with last season's complex disappointments for us. Neither of these shows is in the bubble. ah These shows exist in a world very reminiscent of our own and homophobia and the expectations of society at large and how queer people should conform are very much present themes in these stories.
00:08:25
Speaker
And with that, Nini, take us in. Why is Nini always taking us in? Nini never knows what's happening here.
00:08:40
Speaker
So first up, we're going to talk about the Marahuyo Project from the Philippines. Ben, what is the Marahuyo Project about? about how that, thankfully, Anima Studios is not dead, and Gaya Sakpalakula is not the last thing we're gonna see from them. JP Havoc is still out there, friends, and he's still making stuff.
00:09:01
Speaker
Marahuyo Project is a kind of like a romance drama sorta about a young man named King. He is a queer activist at his school in Manila and he does not like the dean of his school. He ends up fussing with her and to piss her off he ends up making out with his friend in front of her. She tries to separate them and he throws her to the ground accidentally.
00:09:31
Speaker
gets expelled for laying hands on her, and so he is sent away. to the town of Marahuyo, a town very far from Manila. And he has to figure out how to exist in this community that doesn't have very much of an out queer our queer network here. He decides to build an LGBTQIA plus organization on campus. And as with everything with these sort of stories, as soon as one person starts coming out,
00:10:06
Speaker
other people start coming out quite loudly in response. Or not so loudly in other ways. This show is really fascinating because they insisted on using the entire LGBTQIA plus acronym and they were intentional about it.
00:10:24
Speaker
Adrian Lindyag played king in this and he was also in The Boy Foretold by the Stars, which I forced Shan to watch.
00:10:35
Speaker
You sure did. Force is the right word. And she did not like it. I did not like it. But I love Adrian. I was so excited to see him get another show and a frankly much better written show.
00:10:50
Speaker
And his friend who he kisses in the first episode is played by Tommy Alejandro, who was the lead in The Day I Loved You, a show that I really loved. And I thought it was really special and kind of interesting that this show led in its very first episode with a kiss between two boys whose actors had played kind of femmy characters before this that felt really intentional. I actually want to start with you Nini because you grew up in an island community. I actually want your perspective on King being moved from the Metro of Manila to an island that doesn't really have a stable power grid for all day power.
00:11:36
Speaker
And how you feel about him going from an urban center to a rural town. It's so funny. I grew up in Trinidad and Southern Caribbean. Trinidad is considered a quote unquote rich country. And I grew up in the city, but I have friends who grew up in the country. My own family is from the country. My aunt used to tell stories.
00:12:00
Speaker
leaving town and going down to the country to spend time with her father's family, with her grandmother, sometimes with her cousins. And my friends now tell stories about that kind of stuff as well. There's even a joke sometimes that if you got into trouble in town, they would send you down south, which is more rural.
00:12:21
Speaker
or they would send you to live with your grandmother in Manzanilla, which is another rural area. So there's some elements of that to the stories that I knew about the way that people grow up. And so there's a lot about Marahuyo that reminded me, not just of parts of Trinidad, but of other parts of the Caribbean that I'm familiar with and people that I know and that I'm friends with, I've grown up in.
00:12:48
Speaker
So the whole thing about getting sent to country, it was so familiar in a lot of ways. That whole thing about not having power or having these village politics kind of mentality about a lot of things and the ways that people can surprise you as well because you have certain expectations of people who come from those kinds of communities in that kind of background and those kinds of situations where, you know, oh you don't have lights, what do you know about anything? People make assumptions about people being backward or whatever and actually no, that's not how it is.
00:13:31
Speaker
So this had a hint of familiarity to it in terms of the story. and Also, I was glad to see it because so many Filipino stories are set in Metro Manila or are set in the pretty tourist parts, not places like Marahuyo. I really enjoyed seeing that aspect of life in the Philippines. It felt very homey.
00:13:56
Speaker
to me in a lot of ways, but this is one of the things that I enjoy about Filipino drama, and about Filipino BL. A lot of these BLs are coming from countries that do feel familiar to me, but Filipino BL in particular has that ring of familiarity to me in a way that some of these other places don't. Nina, I think what you said about the assumptions people have about people who live in these more isolated places in country or like on a small island. It's really such an important thing that informed this story because King stormed onto that island with his big city attitude. And he assumed
00:14:38
Speaker
that every single person he met was a hick who would never understand him. And I think one of the best parts of this story was seeing him have his eyes opened to the reality that there are queer people everywhere and there are people who can understand him everywhere and he has to be open to seeing them and connecting with them. I thought that was such an important piece of the journey that he went on as the main character of this story. I really loved the way the show peeled back those first assumptions that he had about a lot of the people he met in Marahuyo. It's very clear that King was sent to Marahuyo in the hopes that isolating him there digitally and physically
00:15:27
Speaker
would sort of like contain him and it didn't. He seemed to adapt to his circumstances fairly quickly, even as he demanded that those circumstances also adapt to him. I thought it was really interesting that they sent him to the mom who ah abandoned him essentially to hang out and live with his grandmother who's always had his back. That was probably one of the most unexpected dynamics in the whole show. I was not expecting that complex set of interactions, where the grandma was so on his side that she had he put a whole pride flag in his room. And we had dresses ready to help his friend, but the mom still sorting her shit out. I love the nuance of that because
00:16:16
Speaker
It can be complicated. We are shaped to some degree by our families and by the people who raised us, but we're also shaped by the world we live in. And I thought it was a cool choice to have King have an accepting and loving grandmother. His mother did not learn her fear and her bigotry from her own mother. I think that's an interesting choice that really reflects reality.
00:16:42
Speaker
I think what works well about having his grandma be so queer friendly is that when she tells him to give Maruhuyo a chance, the growth arc that you mentioned is possible because he's able to receive that message from someone he trusts and respects who he knows also trusts and respects him. I think that that sets him up to be open to learning things because he spends the beginning of almost every episode giving us a small lesson in Filipino queer history, particularly as it pertains to colonization. I was gonna go to Nini for that one and see if you had thoughts about that because you've spoken at length about the diasporic experience and living under extensive colonialism.
00:17:31
Speaker
I mean, how much time do we have to have this conversation? Probably five to eight minutes. um Your whole talk on colonialism in five minutes. meaning Oh my God. and Okay. No pressure. Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons that Filipino BL in particular does speak to me because of that colonized experience. The colonized experience is so specific and so similar all over the world no matter where you were colonized or who you were colonized by. You recognize it in people, you recognize it in the society, you recognize it in the environment. The way that the Philippines is so Catholic and Catholicism is all over this story. How Catholicism has harmed people, how people find shelter in it, how people find safety in it that's all over this. and
00:18:26
Speaker
One of the things about coming from a place that was colonized is that you have this sort of weird, love the-hate relationship with the people and with the places and the experiences of the colonizer.
00:18:44
Speaker
On the one hand, like revolution, resistance, that's part of it and that's part of what King is dealing with as well. Talking about the parts of history that get hidden by the coloniser because it's inconvenient to them or they want to bury some particular truth.
00:19:03
Speaker
That's the resistance part, but also the part where people are talking about things like tradition and gentility and all that stuff that did the various deans, because it's two deans, three deans, I think, in this story. And they're all talking about things like propriety and respectability. And those are things that you're fighting against every single day. Where those ideas even come from is a place in yourself that you so sort of recognize, but you fight against every day.
00:19:32
Speaker
The experience of being colonized has a number on your head. It does a number on your society. It is wild to experience. One of the things that I enjoyed about this is that it did give me that kind of feeling of wanting something out of the experience that you're not even sure what it is. Like you want revolution but you also want all the things that the colonizer told you to have. It's this bizarre feeling.
00:20:09
Speaker
ah mind Yeah, it is a mindfuck. And it's a hard thing to explain to anybody who hasn't had the experience.
00:20:24
Speaker
I want to start moving into our character-specific discussion. When King first gets to the island, he has a very weird meet-cute.
00:20:37
Speaker
where the island's favorite boy, who's the scion of their most beloved or most successful or whatever family, the Solomon family, where a like shit ton of fish gets thrown in the air. There's so many fish. He literally gets showered in fish. And I'm like, this is so clever. like As a joke, it was a very good joke.
00:21:03
Speaker
area It was a very effective joke. And as a metaphor, also extremely effective. It was so good. This is the kind of shit that J.P. Habak excels at. I knew you were going to love that. So right away, because King won't shut the fuck up about the fact that he's queer, he ends up finding a trans girl in his class almost immediately, who is also beefing with the local priest, who ends up going by the name of Venice.
00:21:34
Speaker
And the two of them team up and decide they're going to start their own LGBTQIA plus organization. And Venice was like, we added more letters? Wait, what? How do I say all of those? I love my naive girl. She doesn't know anything. She's so pretty.
00:21:54
Speaker
Also, a shout out to Venice for eating in like every scene for eight episodes. So much rambutan, I swear. always eating rambutan specifically, not just eating, eating the specific island fruit. She loves them. So Eno's family is very beloved on this island and Eno is the first obstacle that they think they have to get past to getting their organization approved. But very quickly we saw South that Eno is likely closeted.
00:22:31
Speaker
And then we confirmed that he's closeted in a really interesting bit we'll get into in a bit. I wanted while we're here talking about the Island Politics Nini to talk about the reveal we get later on that Nino's ancestor, who his family has all of this pride for exists because he outed a queer man and then robbed him.
00:22:59
Speaker
And then the island community built a whole tradition around the poetry that they stole from a queer man who they then basically drove to death. Yeah. This is a comedy, by the way.
00:23:15
Speaker
ah excuse
00:23:23
Speaker
but just
00:23:25
Speaker
i start the call stuff It sounds like such a heavy show, and it is kind of, but it doesn't feel heavy. It just deals with heavy things. The themes are actually heavy when you think about them, but because you've got really optimistic and energetic young people, it doesn't feel as heavy as it actually is.
00:23:45
Speaker
It really doesn't. But I mean, again, this is a story of colonization. Things get stolen all the time. Your own history gets stolen from you. And you have to go back into history and find your truths.
00:24:00
Speaker
So that work of uncovering and unearthing and archiving and storytelling and passing things down from generation to generation, that is real active work that takes place every single day in a colonized place. Unlearning a lot of what the colonizer tells you about yourself, all of that is part of the colonized experience. And that's what I was really gratified to see them tackling in this show, this idea that They hid the truth from you and now you have to not only go and learn the truth, but tell it to as many people as possible. Yeah. And I think it's really meaningful that they found out this truth via a story told to them by an elder on the island who they just kind of happened upon.
00:24:52
Speaker
But it happened because they were doing research. They were trying to justify their organization and it was recommended to them that they show that this organization would be good for Marahuyo as it currently is, not just because some kid from Manila says they need to have this. And so the trio that have formed at that point was doing real research into the history of the town itself. And that's what eventually led them to asking this woman about this history.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yeah, and to tie that into the romance, which you kind of alluded to Ben, but we haven't really talked about is King and you know, they start with a very antagonistic relationship. Over time, we figure out that This antagonism on Eno's side is because King is pulling things out of him that he's trying to suppress. He feels uncomfortable because he is a closeted queer kid and King is loudly and forcefully demanding that folks
00:25:56
Speaker
recognize his queerness and also the queerness within themselves. And so they have an uncomfortable dynamic that starts to smooth out over time as they get to know each other and understand each other better and as Eno decides to kind of push back his fear and start helping King try to make this club happen. So it's in that context that they're on this research trip And they go to this elder and she sits them down and she tells them this story. And that is how, you know, finds out that his whole family legacy is built on a lie and that his ancestor
00:26:32
Speaker
harmed somebody who's just like him, a gay man who did nothing wrong. All he did was profess his feelings for somebody who didn't return them. And he was destroyed over that. That is what Eno's family legacy was built on. Finding that out was just a huge moment of despair for him.
00:26:55
Speaker
and in some ways brought him and King closer together as they worked through that and in other ways made it even harder I think to imagine being able to be with someone like King who's so open and so free. It was a really beautiful moment and it was a really important moment both in the romance and in the broader story.
00:27:15
Speaker
There's two things that you said there, Sean, that I actually want to pull out. The part that you said about, you know, his ancestor having harmed somebody whose only sin was expressing feelings to somebody who didn't return them. I actually, I can't remember exactly, but wasn't the story that he did return the feelings and then panicked about them or something like that? I can't remember. I think we don't know. That part is unclear. The speculation.
00:27:44
Speaker
What we learned, based upon what is provable, that he had written poems about his unrequited love for the Solomon ancestor. And then the Solomon ancestor unintentionally or maybe intentionally discovered these poems. They had not been given them. I think that's a big part of this too, is that what's his name? Alan Dawson was outed. And yeah then the Solomon ancestor.
00:28:12
Speaker
turned on him in a vile way. right And that ended horribly. So we don't know if he turned on him because he was afraid, because he was suppressing his own queerness, or if he was just a garden variety, homophobic, heterosexual man. I think it also makes me particularly sad about that story. Ellen Dawson, the the person that they harmed in this had performed a role as a community and cultural leader.
00:28:38
Speaker
and had chosen to closet himself. He left descendants behind. He formed a marriage and had kids. This was just the part of his life that he was not able to express, so he expressed it in his poetry that he had kept private until it was made public. And that part is really sad too because Eno is closeted and knows it. A lot of times in BL, a lot of these guys are like untapped sexual beings who are activated by the power of VL and product placement. In this story, most of the characters are well aware of how they feel about who they are and what's going on with them. King who definitely knew who he was the whole time. His Lao Gea showed up with his mullet and was like, you can't tell me what to do.
00:29:31
Speaker
His rainbow mullet. Speaking of his mullet, I have to get this out on the podcast. I will never forgive his mother for cutting his hair while he was asleep. That was horrible and vile. And the only thing saving her from these knives is she's played by Sue Prado. No, but legit, the fact that the show lets this go.
00:29:55
Speaker
really upset me because it was such a violation. When it happened, I gasped and the show gave it a lot of grace and let it go. And that did not sit right with my spirit, I have to say. I agree.
00:30:16
Speaker
Eno is an interesting queer character in that when he sees King right away, he sees him almost as a threat because Eno is trying not to draw attention to his own queerness. Like, it's clear he maybe wants to leave at some point and then deal with his shit. And he can feel that he's not going to be able to get away with that around King. He's also drawn to King because, I mean, why wouldn't he be? He's tall. He's really pretty. He wears ridiculously gay shirts. Some of them show off his midriff.
00:30:52
Speaker
And he's brave. He's brave in a way that he was. That's the thing, right? There's so much about King and King and Venice in particular that had me thinking a lot about the importance of the people who can't hide and what they mean to the community and what it means for them to be out there at the vanguard, taking all the shit and how that's almost never recognized or rewarded or anything like that. But it's so important for the ones who are like Eno, the ones who are like Archie to see
00:31:29
Speaker
the Kings and the Venuses just loud and out in front and visible and unhydable and unapologetic and what that means and the show really made you feel that it made you feel not just that King and Venice were brave but also how important what they were trying to do was what the mission for them was it's also interesting too because their mission is not academic for them. King was dealing with homophobia even in Manila. Then he lands in Marahuyo and he's like, same shit, different day. That man got called a slur and was like, huh, uncreative.
00:32:17
Speaker
And I was like, wow, throwing slurs around in these shows again. Finally, mask off. And I was weirdly relieved that the show was mask off about its homophobia because it's very frustrating sometimes to talk about shows where the homophobia is kind of subtle. And you have to argue with people about your interpretation where they think you're being cruel to the show for recognizing what the show is doing. I like that that wasn't an issue here. Thank you, JB Abak.
00:32:45
Speaker
But in terms of what Venice is dealing with and what Archie and Eno are dealing with, queerness is also not academic for them either. King is not the first other homo they've ever encountered because we learn that Eno's father almost or temporarily left his family.
00:33:11
Speaker
for a love with another man and then chose to come back to his family and stay with their mom and his dad explains that he loves Eno's mom and wants to be her husband even if it means he cannot enjoy his attraction to men.
00:33:37
Speaker
So Eno is dealing with like a double closet in his life where the whole fucking town knows about his dad stepping out on his mom with a man. We learned that Venice and Archie lost their friend. Should we do Ben a rundown of the characters? Because we haven't really done that yet.
00:34:00
Speaker
We probably should. Let's go down the whole cast. We've got King, our favorite gay boy with a mullet that should not have been lost. We have Eno, who's our big man on campus who gets his shit rocked. We've got Venice, everyone's favorite local trans girl who eats rambutan all the time. She loves those fucking rambutons.
00:34:29
Speaker
ah Hanging around the local priest all the time is Archie, Venice's former friend, who has pulled back on his friendship with Venice because of the death of their friend, who he repeatedly dead names over the course of the show until he finally cracks through the core of his grief.
00:35:01
Speaker
Archie is a complex character to talk about because he is also queer in some way and suffering in his own closet. And he's choosing a path that leads him to the priesthood as a way to survive under the pressures of the homophobia he lives under. So many thoughts about that. Yeah. Let's not let's not lose sight of the girls. Let's not go down the Archie road yet. We also have... Lorena, AKA Lori.
00:35:30
Speaker
Lori is probably some kind of queer. Might be bi, might be a lesbian, might be asexual. It's very clear she's still figuring it out by the end of the show. We are not gonna label her here because she has not chosen one for herself. She is sorting through her own angst with men because of her own father's infidelity. And she's very close to her friend Lily who is eventually revealed to be probably intersex
00:36:02
Speaker
It's very clear that their friendship is extremely important to them in a way that feels romantic on Lily's end, but Lori is still sorting through. But the reveal from Lily to Lori about this truth about her is one of my favorite moments in the whole show.
00:36:23
Speaker
And then there's that asshole Marco who ruins it like five months later. Marco, our villain. He's really the most villainous character. I hate that boy so much. He's the worst. He's the fucking worst. I hate him. I hate him so much.
00:36:40
Speaker
This is a story that takes place on a small island, but also in a school. So there are school dynamics at play here with this group and how they come together. King and Venice connect pretty much right away when he gets there because they are both visibly queer and they latch onto each other. And King is very much, as Ben said earlier, an activist. He is loud and proud and he demands respect for his existence.
00:37:08
Speaker
And he also wants to create space for other people like him or somewhere on the queer spectrum to have pride and to be able to come out and have space too. Venice is a very classic sunshine character. like That girl is so pretty and so dumb. And she's just the nicest girl just ever.
00:37:32
Speaker
If she just doesn't really know much, she doesn't know much about queerness because she's been very isolated. And so King is teaching her about what it means to be a queer activist, what some of these terms mean, what it means to try to fight for your space. Because she has been in a space of insisting on living as herself, but also accepting that in some ways she would have to just be quiet and conform to get by in the school. And King doesn't find that acceptable. So they latch onto each other through that.
00:38:02
Speaker
And then Lori is the mayor's daughter. So she has a lot of status in the town, similar to Eno, who's part of this family that is the big legacy family. They both have a lot of positional power within the school and within the community, which they use over the course of the story to help with the club and with helping some of these other kids who are more like outcasts. Lily is friends with Lori and that's her social entree in the school. Archie is part of the local church and close with the priest, which gives him a kind of authority to he's seen on the island as almost like the deputy priest. I have to say it he has the authority given to an overseer. Exactly. That is definitely his role. He's kind of a cop. And Marco is just a little asshole. He's just a fucking asshole to everybody all the time. And they're all in school together. They're in this forced proximity. And King in his arrival to the island really awakens
00:39:00
Speaker
in a lot of these kids who are queer but have been suppressing it, who are closeted either knowing or not, he really awakens in them this kind of connection to their own queerness and they have varying responses to that. Some of them really joyfully wanting to come and be part of what he's building, some of them being really afraid of it. We see the whole spectrum of responses there I think what also really works for me in terms of how this felt particularly queer, there's two big things. First, spoiler alert, they do not get to have their club. They are not given official approval for their club, but then they go, fuck you, we don't need it anyway. And then they have their march regardless.
00:39:41
Speaker
I love that. The other part I like is that we have three characters who agree to out themselves in some way by trying to pursue the organization that they want to have. You get King, who's like, I'm gay. You can use whatever slurs you want. They apply. You got Venice, who's chosen to stay optimistic despite the death of Christina. And then you've got Laurie, who's like, you guys suck. I have way more fun with these guys.
00:40:11
Speaker
I'm going over there with them. And then each of them ends up holding the confidence of someone else who is closeted that they're close to. King is developing a romance with Eno.
00:40:30
Speaker
Venice is holding the confidence of Archie, who does not come out over the course of this show. He's still closeted in the end and cheering for them from the closet. something that I really appreciate the show doing. There are still people in our communities who do not feel safe enough to come out. And Lori is holding Lily's confidence about her truth about being intersex. And I like that those three did not betray that confidence to each other. I thought that was a really important thing that the show did, because when you are protecting someone who's closeted,
00:41:10
Speaker
The best way to do that is to shut the fuck up. You don't even tell people who could be trusted with that info because it's not your info to share. That's the big point about protecting closeted people is if they're going to come out, they need to feel like it's something that they have control over. What's so evil about Marco is he went out of his way to take that moment from Lily because she embarrassed him.
00:41:37
Speaker
because he wouldn't stop sexually harassing Laurie. Yeah, I do like that you get three different takes on that whole, I guess you could call it, endgame of the closet because you've got Archie who stays in, you've got Eno who comes out, and then you've got Lily who gets outed. And then you get to see how each of those things impact the characters. I found that to be really, really interesting to watch.
00:42:09
Speaker
We should talk more, we've been alluding to it, but we should like fully elaborate on the backstory with Archie and Venice because it is, I think, one of the most touching stories that this show told. So Archie and Venice and their friend Christina grew up together. They have been best friends since childhood. We don't get every detail, but what we do learn over time is that Christina, like Venice, was trans and somewhere in her transition and in her coming out, something went very badly for her and she ended up presumably ending her own life. This created very different responses in Archie and in Venice. Venice kind of
00:43:08
Speaker
carried on. She's a very optimistic person at heart and she carried on that way, kept Christina's memory close and continued to live in her truth as a trans woman and carry that forward. Archie became so deeply afraid of queerness and the way that it could damage somebody's life that he locked up tight. And as a result of that,
00:43:36
Speaker
rejected Venice and her transition. When the story begins, he seems like on the surface, just this hateful bigot. He's constantly dead naming Venice and Christina. He is disapproving of Venice. He doesn't support her. And then you find out more about this history that they share together. And you find out more about what motivates him and how ultimately at the root of it,
00:44:04
Speaker
He really is just so terrified for Venice that she will end up like Christina. And he thinks wrongly, of course, that preventing her from transitioning is going to save her life. And that is what is driving his behavior. What a nuanced story to tell about what is normally reduced to something so simple and hateful.
00:44:27
Speaker
The emotions between Archie and Venice are so complex. And Venice, because she's a very kind and generous person, she has a lot of space for Archie. She understands why he's behaving the way he is, and she gives him a lot of grace around it.
00:44:45
Speaker
and she really tries to support him. like He is so afraid and doing so much to suppress his own queerness that it's manifesting physically for him. We see throughout the show that he's got this anxiety habit of scratching at his neck. It gets gross like to the point where he's he's basically scratching. It was gross. you know If you have any phobias or squicks around,
00:45:10
Speaker
people self-harming because they've been scratching at themselves too much, you're going to want to maybe be ready to look away when they show the back of Archie's neck because he's legit tearing his own body apart. They manifest how deeply he's tearing himself apart and the way he's scratching up his neck. It's really uncomfortable to watch.
00:45:31
Speaker
it is. And so Venice sees that and she has a lot of sympathy for him. She understands why he's behaving in this way. And she doesn't tell anybody else. That's their private personal history. And she doesn't think it's hers to tell. It's just a really nuanced look at how these fears and anxieties and how suppression of your own queerness can manifest in these different forms of self harm and harm to others. I just I found it to be such a beautiful and touching story that didn't get all the way resolved by the end of the show because you don't just fix something this deep overnight. I think that the colonized thing adds another layer to this as well because what the the place that
00:46:16
Speaker
Archie is running towards running away from himself is the church. That's the colonial ramification. That's the idea that respectability will save you. That comes from the colonizer. All of that stuff is on top of all this other stuff that's happening with Archie. It's something that I recognize from people that I know, people that I grew up with, people who grew up in the Catholic church, definitely.
00:46:40
Speaker
but also in other traditions that are imported traditions, that are colonizer traditions, this idea that if you are part of the establishment,
00:46:53
Speaker
If you are part of what they value, if you are somehow involved in that stuff, then you're safe. These ideas are not uncommon to even un-colonize societies, but there's a whole different layer and level of it that you get in colonized societies or societies that were colonized. I don't even know if I can accurately describe how it works, but just know that there's layers to this shit.
00:47:20
Speaker
and one of those layers is Archie trying to disappear into the Catholic Church. My favorite thing about Archie too was despite how awful he seemed at first. They gave us signs early on that there was more going on here. There was the way that Venice didn't sneer at Archie. She mostly looked ah annoyed and disappointed. Like it was clear that they had a relationship. And there was a moment when an adult stormed in on their party and Venice was in a dress. Archie, from the shadows,
00:47:55
Speaker
reaches out to her back and tries to pull her back from being seen because he's worried that something might happen to her. And I'm like, nevermind, I know where this story is going. And I was way less worried about Archie. By the time we get the reveal about what happened to k Christina, Archie is the one who is seemingly the most visibly devastated by this loss. So All of his cruelty towards them was given context for me that doesn't make it okay, but humanizes it. This is not the best way to cope with this because shoving your other friend into a closet is not going to help her either. But I understand that this is how you're trying to cope. It's not helping you either. But I understand you.
00:48:55
Speaker
So, on a lighter note, we've talked about a lot of sad things here. Here we go. This is a comedy. Let's remember. On a lighter note, one of the most absolutely fantastic things about this show was the way that they had Adrian constantly breaking the fourth wall to look at us and Kiki with us as the audience. When everything would look at us, I would get so thrilled.
00:49:23
Speaker
And he was always pulling the best faces. Adrian is really funny. Adrian, I don't think I know if you'll ever hear us because we're a tiny little podcast. But we loved your work, sir. I loved your work and all three things I've seen you do. It was great. We love you. Thank you for the gift of King and the gift of Dominic. Do you have a favorite fourth wall break? Mine was when?
00:49:47
Speaker
You looked at the camera when Eno was talking to him by the water and was like, oh my God, he loves me. Yeah, that was the one.
00:49:57
Speaker
but Thank you so much. I liked the little march they did at the end. I don't think the mom deserved to be there and I don't know about Eno's dad deciding to be there. But Grandma deserved to be there and I'm glad she was there. I liked seeing them all walk together because it's a cool visual even if I think it's not wholly earned by some of the time that they had available. Let's talk about Eno's parents. Eno's mom clocks very quickly once she starts seeing him hang around King that clearly he's gay too.
00:50:32
Speaker
And she's like, what the fuck? What are you going to do to our family? And he pushes back on that because he was ready for that particular fight. I was really proud that for a kid who they've been grooming to speak in front of crowds and talk about stuff, he was able to hold his ground against his mom. And I was really frustrated with his dad. I did not think his dad gave him any useful perspective or advice at all. And that was a real failure.
00:51:02
Speaker
That man was useless. I actually found the dad to be really sad. I think the dad was included almost as a cautionary tale because the dad just seemed so beaten down by his whole life, by everything that had happened to him.
00:51:18
Speaker
by all the choices that he had made. Yes, he's trying to make it so that his son doesn't have to make the same choices that he made once he realizes what's going on, because the other thing is that he definitely buries his head in sand a little bit about, you know, because of his own background and his own history. I think that's the only way to read him. I don't think we got really great answers about Judy King's mom either about why she left.
00:51:46
Speaker
That was one of the disappointments for me. I really loved the show. I didn't think it was perfect. It had a ah couple areas where I think it could have been stronger and one of the primary ones was on Judy. I really wanted to understand her better because we know her mother. We know that she wasn't raised to be this way. So bigoted, so afraid. and I don't really feel like we ended the show understanding better why she left King, why she treated him the way that she did. I just, I wanted to get a little bit deeper down into what was going on with her and I just don't think he ever got there. Well, maybe the show didn't get there, but I got it. I know so many duties. She left the country, went to the big city, fell in love with this man.
00:52:37
Speaker
I don't know what happened with her and the husband, but whatever it is plus the whole thing with King, she didn't know how to deal with it. She ran straight home.
00:52:49
Speaker
to the arms of something simpler and more familiar. It has nothing to do with the way that she was raised. It has everything to do with that like colonized mentality. Her life went to shit and it was because she didn't do the things that in her mind she was supposed to. Because I guarantee that she rebelled against her own mother.
00:53:11
Speaker
not just in running away to Manila but also I am sure her mother's such a free spirit she's definitely straight laced I'm telling you it's a story that I've seen so many times eat I agree that it wasn't on screen but for me it was a shortcut like I saw Judy I saw the grandmother I was like immediately I got it Yeah, I appreciate that. I definitely needed the show to actually go there. Especially because like, this is a woman who abandoned her child. And I wanted to understand why. And I wanted to understand the way that she chose to interact with him even after he came to live with her. And they just never dug into it. That was a bit of a disappointment for me. Big fan of this show never showing us King's dad. Fuck that dude. Yeah, we didn't need to see him. I don't care about that.
00:54:00
Speaker
I also want to talk about, one of my favorite things was despite having limited connectivity on the island, King did not lose touch with his bestie and Manila, who called that man out on his ship every single time he got her on the phone. It's very important when you're gay and extra that you have somebody who tells you when you're doing too much. You do need a get a grip friend. And she was definitely the get a grip friend.
00:54:28
Speaker
It's one of the things that GP Havac likes to do because he did the same thing with Vlad and his friend Sue in GSP. She was not there, but she was his get-a-grip friend. She's the one who called him out on like sad dancing to the 1975. I love a get-a-grip friend, my favorite type of character.
00:54:57
Speaker
My last positive comment about this show, I'm lying, I probably have hundreds more, is this show wore its politics on its sleeves, but in a way that didn't feel preachy. There's a really great moment where King is pushing back on a lesson they're having about fucking Machiavelli's The Prince, oh my, whew, I went to an all-male Catholic school, I have strong thoughts about Machiavelli.
00:55:24
Speaker
I love King reminding people in that whole stupid argument that no social progress has ever been made by people being very polite to the powers that be. Every form of welfare and the social safety net that we all expect and rely upon, people fought and bled for.
00:55:49
Speaker
And I liked that there was not really a response to that. Are there any social services that you rely upon and expect? People died for that. So shut the fuck up. Great work. A+. plus There's some little things that I want to really pick up the show on. The whole Balatasan tradition, the debate in verse, it was so beautiful. I really enjoyed listening to the debates on a musical level almost. And while we're talking about music, again, this is from the people who did Kaesopilikla. So of course the music was going to be banging. Sound trend. This soundtrack fucks. We actually get the name of the song because holy shit.
00:56:32
Speaker
One of my favorite songs that I've ever heard in a drama. Let me pull it up. Which one are we talking about? D. Inacala or Magpactiloy? My favorite song in this drama, so beautiful, it's called D. Inacala by Paul Pablo. Gorgeous. It really is. It was used in a romance arc. It's fabulous. What was the one you really liked, Deanie?
00:56:58
Speaker
I like, there's a song called Magpatiloy by Mijon and that song, I listen to it literally every day now, every single day. One of the things I always love about this team, about JP Habak, and he works with music supervisor Patricia Lasatán, they always pull out Filipino artists and songs in Filipino language front and center when they're doing music for their shows and I love it. I've learned about so many great artists and gotten into so much great music because of this team. Oh man, we're gonna have to move on because now I'm going to start talking about the consent part of their first kiss and how great that was. The show's great. Please go watch it. Let's finally rate this show. Let's go around the board. Shan rating!
00:57:45
Speaker
I gave this show a nine. I loved it. I think it's beautiful. I think it is required viewing for anybody who cares about queer drama, good community drama, good Filipino drama. There's just so many reasons to watch it. It has a bit of rough edges around some of the storytelling decisions. I don't think it's a perfect show, but it is beautiful and I intend to rewatch it and I hope everybody listening to this will watch it if you haven't already.
00:58:15
Speaker
Nini! Rating! I also gave this a 9, because I do agree that the things around King's mom sort of hung there. I don't think they necessarily had to be resolved, but they weren't really even addressed very much. So that would be why I dinged it, but it is a fantastic show.
00:58:34
Speaker
My public rating for this show is a 10. I do think it's one of those shows that anybody should watch. And if you are one of the listeners who likes what I have to say about things and is curious about how I think about stuff, it's one of those shows that I beg people to watch. It's one of those shows that you show people. There's a short list of shows to watch to understand that me as a person. I think everybody should watch it.
00:58:59
Speaker
I agree with you both. Not a perfect show. Has some rough edges, but in terms of me recommending it to people, give it at a 10. Top of the list, go watch this. Right now. So two nines and a 10. Okay, I'm not masking today. We're going to give it a 9.5 from the conversation. I think a 9.5 from us is correct. It is an incredibly good show with a couple of quibbles we have about most of the way they handle some of the adult storylines.
00:59:28
Speaker
But I think the youth storylines are crystal clear and really well executed. And we get to see a side of queerness that we very rarely see. It's a beautiful show. Please watch it.
00:59:48
Speaker
Let's move on now to the next show that we're going to talk about. And it is called, let me see if I can get this correct. ahen no panu gun and that's a e janai car I totally butchered that. English title is Don't Care for an Old Man's Underwear. I just started watching this today so I'm very excited to discuss what of it I have seen and I am just prepared for the spoilers that are going to come. So Ben, what is open about?
01:00:23
Speaker
about how if we give Japan 50 minutes to tell a story, they're going to use that time well. So well. Opon is about this man named Okito Makoto, who is a kind of upper middle manager of a printer sales company. He is very much a salary man type.
01:00:49
Speaker
who is upholding a lot of casual misogyny because this is what he is taught to do and he believes he's filling in the role that's expected of him. He goes to work every day, he works really hard, he sacrifices everything of importance that matters to him to be present for the work, and he leaves the household matters to his wife.
01:01:10
Speaker
and it's not going that great. He finds himself feeling distant from his wife, distant from his daughter who doesn't seem to like him and their family is dealing with the crisis because for whatever reason his son who he's never been able to feel close to refuses to go to school and doesn't leave his room. One day while walking to work he almost falls down the stairs because he lives in a walkable community and is saved by a young gay man who catches him. The two of them have a little bit of bonding that comes from this. A friendship begins to grow between them and over the course of this friendship, Makoto decides that he needs to change with the times and update himself because he recognizes that he wants to better connect to people.
01:02:05
Speaker
And what he's currently doing is not working. The rest of the show is about Makoto learning how to be a good friend to this young gay man who's near to graduating from veterinary school, his wife, his two children who are an adult and approaching adulthood, and his coworkers.
01:02:27
Speaker
This is one of the kindest shows I've ever watched. When I tell you that a show about a misogynist was one of the most empathetic things I've watched this year, I am not being funny or being ironic. This show understands how everybody responds to societal misogyny, how it shapes them.
01:02:56
Speaker
hurts them, but doesn't have to be the end of their story. This was an absolutely delightful experience. I loved every single moment I spent with this show. Holy shit. Nini, before we get into Shan's impressions, because I have much I want to ask Shan about, you were three episodes in.
01:03:21
Speaker
Just give us some of your like initial impressions and thoughts on and how you're feeling about the characters and some of the stories you've encountered so far. The only reason that this show works is because Okita loves his family. He really, truly loves his family, and he doesn't want to lose them. And he knows that they're slipping away from him. And there are so many ways that that kind of story turns negative.
01:03:50
Speaker
In this instance, the show uses that love and that fear of losing his family and turns it in a positive direction. He turns it in on himself and says to himself, what can I do?
01:04:06
Speaker
to not let this happen. How can I bring them back to me? What have I been doing wrong and what can I now start to try to do right? And that's really what stuck with me. We don't talk about this a lot in the world. I know, this is a weird segue. Life is extremely hard on middle aged men in the modern age because they were told a certain way to be that has just to their minds vanished. They were told they were the main character and that everybody was around them to make sure that they succeeded. And that's gone. And they don't know how to deal with that. Watching a middle-aged man deal with that in a healthy way, in a way that looks at himself and says, I have to do better.
01:04:57
Speaker
but I find that incredibly satisfying, that spirit of, I need to look at my life, look at my choices, basically, and I need to fix the relationships in my life because I have broken them.
01:05:18
Speaker
I think we need to start with a little character cheat sheet. Let's first name the Okito family members. Makoto is our patriarch. As Nini just so eloquently said, it's the heart of this show, his journey. We have in his family, his wife, Mika, his daughter, Moe, and his son, Kakaru.
01:05:37
Speaker
That's our core family that we will keep coming back to. Our other main character is Igarashi Daichi and he is the young gay man who lives in the neighborhood who meets Makoto and kind of starts the journey that he's on.
01:05:51
Speaker
Daiichi also has parents who are relevant to the story. Mihoko is his mother and his dad we will just be referring to as that asshole. Fuck that dude. oh and We don't need to give him a name. Daiichi also has a boyfriend who in what I considered a bit of a revelation for the show actually matters and has a story. Madoka is his name. He's very important. We'll talk about him.
01:06:19
Speaker
We also have a broad constellation of side characters in this show. I will not name them all because there are far too many, but a few that I think are really important to know because they have important plot lines or are part of important plot lines for our family are Hasegawa, who is a schoolmate of Kakaruz, who is on the baseball team, and Shizuka, who is a schoolmate of Kakaruz, who bonds with him over a shared interest.
01:06:47
Speaker
And then we have Feroike, who is Makoto's senior at work. Those folks all have pretty important actual arcs in the show. There are also other side characters who are Makoto's coworkers, Kakaru's schoolmates, and Moe's friends, but they're not as present in the narrative. Good luck to our translator for having to do all those names.
01:07:10
Speaker
me Why am I making myself look? Okay. It's a big cast. This is an ensemble show. It's a family drama. It is rooted within a family as the central unit of the story. And then we follow each of these family members on their own individual storylines that intersect with some of the other characters that we talked about. Like in terms of my overall feeling about this show,
01:07:33
Speaker
I just fucking love it. It is one of the best family dramas I've ever seen. It is one of the most thoughtful and smart shows that I have seen in the way that it takes the themes that it wants to explore and it really digs deep into them in a way that still feels really natural. Like this show is absolutely intended to be educational television for a broad audience.
01:08:00
Speaker
And it also is just a really good drama that does not feel usually like an after-school special. It feels like a very organic and natural story of a family and the people around them, rather than a show that's just sitting you down and preaching at you all the time, despite the fact that it is literally preaching at you a lot through the story and through its themes. You know, I think Nini's summary of ah kind of the core plot of the story and the the purpose of the story was spot on. This is really rooted in Makoto's journey to do better, to recognize that he has damaged his own relationships with his inability to change and evolve with the times that he is the one who needs to do some thinking and some learning. And I think what's so beautiful about this show is that he is able to do that through the kindness and the compassion of a stranger
01:08:56
Speaker
who sees potential in him, who sees an opportunity to engage him and to help him learn rather than just dismissing him. You really need both sides of that equation to make this work. You need somebody who is willing to admit that they're wrong and be open to learning, and you need someone who is willing to have patience for them and to see the good intentions behind some of their mistakes and that's what you really get in Makoto and Daichi. They are the unconventional friendship that really powers this show, that gives Makoto the energy he needs and the knowledge he needs to do better by his family. and then in turn gives Daichi the support he needs when his life starts getting a little bit messier. One of my favorite things about this show is that when it starts, you kind of get a little niggling in the back of your head. You're a little worried. You're like, is Daichi a manic pixie dream gay? Is he just here to be this fairy who
01:10:00
Speaker
Blesses Makoto and helps him be better and is used as this font of wisdom. Or is he going to be a full human and a real person? And it's definitely the latter. As the story goes on, we get his life filled in too. We learn about his struggles. We learn about his relationship. We learn about his family. We see him make mistakes and we see him need to draw on strength from Makoto. This friendship becomes very mutual.
01:10:28
Speaker
And they, they change each other's lives. This is an all time great drama. I love it. Everyone needs to watch it. I mean, I want to check them with you about Daichi at episode three, because you just got through the sequence where they went to the public bath together and Makoto was trying to show Daichi some appreciation and it was well-intentioned, but kind of annoying. And Daichi got legitimately irritated in that moment.
01:10:58
Speaker
and very politely told Makoto to step back. in I want to know how you feel about Daichi coming out of the sequences that happened in the public bath. um I think the timing and pacing of that is actually perfect because I was just getting to the point in the story having watched two and a half episodes of Daichi having what seemed like unending patience from Makoto and his foibles and his crass sometimes crude expressions and the way that he is often unthinking before he says something. I was just getting to the point of being, does this kid not have any feelings or does he just exist to be Makoto's conscience and sounding board? And then that moment in the tub happened and I was like,
01:11:48
Speaker
Okay, so he does get pissed off, and he does get annoyed, and he does get exhausted, and he does get tired of having to deal with this shit. teaching joins a very short list of characters who are now my all-time favorites. He and Shiro are going to live in my psyche for the rest of my life. Daiichi is so fascinating because he's a well-read, self-actualized queer character who has the full support of his mother, who has clearly dealt with a lot of homophobia. And we we learned that he suffered in high school when he was outed, but he has chosen
01:12:28
Speaker
to proceed through the world with kindness and not assume the worst from people because it burns you out. We get to experience Daichi's complicated romance with his closeted boyfriend and then the relationship he forms with Kakaru. Daichi is helping Kakaru because Kakaru might be going through some sort of queer awakening.
01:12:52
Speaker
He wants to have control over his gender presentation and he likes to be cute. He wants to be pretty. He wants to use feminine styling and cutesy girly things because they make him happy. But he is not certain yet where he sits on the spectrum of sexuality. The big thing he hates the most is people projecting and presuming about him.
01:13:21
Speaker
They really made a contrast here because Moe, Kakaru's sister, she is so schlubby. She's like hair tossed up in a headband, unshowered, wearing like shapeless sweats, just like looking like you know she didn't even bother with anything in the morning besides rolling out of bed. But then when she has to go out in the world and she does her hair and puts on makeup, she looks like a different person. The first time they showed Moe outside of the house, all done up, I was literally like, who is that? Who the fuck is this girl? Why are we following her? It really took me a second to click in and realize that was Moe. What I liked about the contrast there is that Kakaru
01:14:05
Speaker
For him, being pretty, you know, coming on with these feminine styles, doing his makeup every day, that is what actually makes him happy. So he looks that way even when he's sitting in his own home. For Moe, that's not part of her self-identity so much as part of the armor that she puts on in the world. They didn't comment on it at all in the show, but the visual contrast was there the whole time between these two siblings.
01:14:32
Speaker
I love so much that Daichi was able to help Kakaru get himself out of that room by never telling him what to do. By always focusing on asking Kakaru questions to help Kakaru find the answer in himself. They often did the same with Makoto as well. He very gently corrected presumptions. Like, he, like, Makoto asked a reasonable question. My son likes to dress up like a girl. Is he trans? And what do I do about that? And Daichi is like, well, he hasn't said he's trans, so.
01:15:09
Speaker
Let's not presume there, but let's think about trans people for a ah moment. And I really love the way that that was handled because Kakaru tells us plainly that he does like being a boy, but he wants to be pretty.
01:15:27
Speaker
There's a bit where Pakaru's leaving and he thinks his dad for he did and he his dad desperate to try and say something that helps his son. It's like, you survived being my son for 17 years. You can handle anything. And I was like, oh, buddy, hold on. Man, I'm getting lost in all the characters I want to talk about.
01:15:48
Speaker
Let's go back for a step and let's focus on Daichi. Daichi helps Kakaru by being gentle with him and letting him figure things out for himself and in giving him the encouragement and friendship when he needs it. And when we finally get to see Daichi's relationship with Madoka, it's complicated. He has an incredible Miku with the biggest man we've ever seen in a Japanese drama.
01:16:17
Speaker
I have seen me that man, he is large. large, medium, medium. Why did no one tell me there was a large man in this drama? Ben and Shonkin attest, literally I pause that I typed in the chat. So who is this big one? I was like, why is there a large man? And nobody told me there was a large man here.
01:16:37
Speaker
Shanna's like, I feel like we failed on our strategy with needing to get her to watch this. We should have told her there was a big man. I'm just like, see. But then she would have felt like we were baiting her and she would have taken even longer to start. It's better that you discovered the large man. You needed to discover the large man on your own as a, as a pleasant surprise. Listen, and it was very pleasant and very surprising because all of a sudden he was just there and he was large and I was like, can't miss him.
01:17:03
Speaker
These bitches didn't tell me that there was a large man here. i i'm I'm disappointed in you all. I will say that. Nope. We got exactly what we wanted because you kept watching. You're like, oh, there's a large man. Is he going to show up again? And then you kept watching.
01:17:22
Speaker
Let's tell let's the people more about what happened. so maica is from a smaller community and his family is anticipating his return home after completing his veterinary studies. He's going to take a position at a large clinic that's basically been prepared for him. He's expected to marry and this is a huge amount of pressure on him. He doesn't want to disappoint his family and let them down because he's not shared this truth with them because he's afraid of that disappointment. I think for a lot of us, that was my big thing that kept me in the closet.
01:17:58
Speaker
Because my family wasn't more homophobic than like a standard Southern cosmopolitan family. but they have these ideas about who you're gonna grow up to be and the life that you might be sharing with them as you get older. And when you tell them this about yourself, you are shattering whatever image of your life that they had growing up, particularly when you were able to hide what you were. Certain people cannot hide who they were. Daiichi is one of those characters who could not hide who he was. And his peers made him suffer for it. And his father. Fuck that man. Oh, fuck that man!
01:18:36
Speaker
Seriously, fuck that man. We have nothing nice to say about him. Nothing. But Daichi is being patient with Madoka too, because he's not going to demand that you have to come out so that we can be together. He's patient with him and lets him sort through that. And the show lets that be as difficult as it needs to be. When these two eventually decide to marry, they have a stellar sequence that I will never get out of my brain.
01:19:03
Speaker
I don't want to describe it further because you're going to watch this scene, Nini, but know that the proposal sent all of the clowns into the stratosphere. all of the clowns and all of the characters within the show as well. like People inside the show reacting to it happening were perfect mirrors of all of us at home reacting to it happening. It was so good. And like and that's a surprising thing in and of itself that in this family drama that was meant to be more mainstream. We actually saw two gay men decide to marry each other same sex marriage is still not legal in Japan.
01:19:41
Speaker
That doesn't mean that people don't want to commit to each other in a meaningful way. and I think it was really powerful to see these characters make that choice. As the show goes on, we learn more about Daichi's family and his horrible fucking father. Horrible man.
01:19:54
Speaker
a fucking horrible homophobe who has made Daichi feel so isolated and small in so many ways. And we see this dynamic s flip between him and Madoka where he's been the one who's been patient and been strong while Madoka had to work out talking to his family. And then his horrible father comes back into the picture And suddenly, Daichi's the one who's having a crisis of confidence. And he doesn't know if he can commit to this life that he knows he wants because of the way that it disappoints his father, who he still has this attachment to. To see them get the chance to support each other through those journeys and to come out the other side of it was just such a really meaningful part of this story. And the way that it tied back to the Okita family, because They come to love Daichi. They have their own relationships with him. He's so important to them in a number of different ways. And so they get very invested in his life. We talked earlier about how in these dramas, the side characters don't exist just to power a romance, right? These are not fajoshis. That's not what's going on here. Well, there is a fajoshi in the story. like
01:21:02
Speaker
so mo ah thats right and gay boys daca She does actually write Yaoi manga, but she's not like that about Daichi and Madako. They are real people to her. She's not looking at them as a fangirl. She's here for fictional romance only.
01:21:19
Speaker
but So the Okita family really cares about this couple and wants to see them happy and is so deeply emotionally invested in them that it becomes part of their family story too. It's just a really beautiful way in that Daiichi's family became very connected to the Okita family and that all of them became a bit of a surrogate family for Maka whose own family ah by the end of the story does know more about him and have accepted him, but are kind of far away. So he gets this familial support system through these other two families coming together and surrounding him and Daichi with love. Sean, you said something there about being surprised about how they got to the wedding. I'm actually not surprised because one of the things that Ben and I have been discussing about Japanese drama when we've been discussing it lately is how there seems to be a category of Japanese drama in like the last five to 10 years, I would say.
01:22:08
Speaker
which is what I've been personally calling normalization drama. Me and my husband are my husband's boyfriend. She loves to cook and she loves to eat. Koisinu Futari. like There's a list of these shows and this list is building up of shows that are looking at they would probably use the term alternative lifestyles. But what it's about is normalizing these things because so much of what I understand about Japanese culture is about not signing out, it's about conforming. And the reason, and Ben and I have talked about this, that a lot of homophobia and stuff that comes out in Japanese dramas is more about how people are rocking the boat than necessarily about the
01:22:54
Speaker
awareness in particular sometimes. One of the things that I have been looking at in these normalization dramas and in terms of what Japan tends to put in front of its audiences is about saying, look at these people. They're just like you. Isn't it lovely? Isn't it normal? These people are like us. So I'm not surprised that this is something that came out of Japan.
01:23:19
Speaker
I think that's a really accurate description of what this show is trying to do and why it does fit into that pattern. As we were watching live, it wasn't clear to us as we were going how much any of these side characters or storylines was going to get real attention. And so I think, honestly, I think we were all surprised that he was a real character that Madoka got his own storyline that he wasn't just there to be part of daichi's backstory that he wasn't just there to be a complication for daichi but that he became a character in his own right and got a whole story like this show really became
01:23:56
Speaker
a true ensemble piece. Makoto's at the center of it always. But this show really cared about every single character, even the side characters like the characters that like you would would normally expect to only kind of be in the backgrounds of scenes. Some of them really got to come to the fore for like limited periods of time and really shine. One of my favorite side characters was Hasagawa.
01:24:20
Speaker
who is a classmate of Kakarou's who was on the baseball team with Kakarou. One of my favorite little side stories in this show is that Hasagawa, he actually is really curious about Kakarou and he cares about why he has disappeared from school and he wants to understand him and he really makes an effort to reach out to him. He goes to Kakarou to ask for help with skincare because he has acne And Cockaroo gives him an amazing routine, buys him a whole slew of products. And it starts working like right away. That man's skin cleared up in like a week. That man was amazing. His skin was cleared up within a week. He went to him for skincare help because he knew that that was a way to approach Cockaroo that would be acceptable to him. And then use that as an in to try to rekindle their friendship. And eventually, when Cockaroo was ready,
01:25:12
Speaker
and felt like he could trust him again, they did start having more mutual exchanges and and rebuilt their friendship. And I mean, listen, that I can't lie, we all know I was shipping it. I did not feel bad for Makoto when he was like, like, Kakura seems to be having some very nice interactions with the boy. I mean, know that's like if that's where it's gonna go, we got to make sure he knows. It's okay, son.
01:25:36
Speaker
And we kind of knew it wasn't going to go there because that's not the point of the show. This is not a romance drama. And they already had a romance storyline that they were dealing with, with Daichi and Madoka. But I was kind of shipping it because this boy was such a nice boy. I really liked the way that this show made room for that. One of the things that I think stands out the most about this show is how much empathy it has for all of its characters.
01:25:59
Speaker
Even the shitty dad, this show has some empathy for him. We don't like him, but the show has space to understand his perspective. All of these side characters, the show really cares about giving space to who they are and revealing through context that they also have the chance, if they're willing to take it, to learn more and open their mind and be kind to others.
01:26:32
Speaker
I'm going to blow through a lot of these characters to power through some of the arcs they went on. Nini, you watched episode two where Moade was determined to go to Kamaka to sell her manga to her readers, but the family was like, you're too sick. You cannot go to a public venue. And Makoto decides to step up and go sell.
01:26:57
Speaker
the books for her and brings Daichi along to help. That was a really interesting episode for us to see Makoto step into Moe's passion and Moe's world and see what the what she values. And it's the beginning of the rebuilding of their relationship.
01:27:13
Speaker
The show isn't just about Makoto's relationship with Kakaru, it's about his relationship with his entire family. Because you see how disconnected he is from his family. like Even the dog ignores him. like There's a whole side plot about the dog ignoring him. I have a lot of thoughts about men of a certain age.
01:27:36
Speaker
We are feminists on this show, and as feminists, we actually do love men and want better for them. One of the this show is watching a man also want better for himself. Beautiful. Anyway, he's become so disconnected from his family because he doesn't have any kind of interiors. He has no inner life. He has no conception of self beyond what society has given him he has no hobbies he has no things that are interesting for him on a day when he's at home and all the rest of his family is out or doing something that means something to them he's sitting at home because he doesn't have anything to do and then he eventually ends up going out and getting drunk in the park because what else does he have to do because he has no other interest because he's never been allowed to have this internal life
01:28:30
Speaker
And part of the show is about him actually doing that. And part of that story is him understanding his daughter's internal life, because he's been so dismissive of what she does. She's a mangaka, but she works on the what we in fandom call the transformative works space. She's a doujin artist writing.
01:28:54
Speaker
Think about her favorite characters. Oh, I love her so much. She's fantastic. This is not something, yes, she makes money on it occasionally, but she does this for the love. This is a hobby for her. And he doesn't understand being so involved in something that you are not a professional, that you are an amateur in that sense of the word. But it's important to you. And what you do is important to people.
01:29:21
Speaker
It made me feel a lot of feelings about this podcast. I gotta be real with you. But anyway. Aww, bestie! It really did. So him sort of stepping into her world and understanding that about her, to my mind, the way that I saw it, it made him also feel a little bit sad.
01:29:41
Speaker
that he doesn't have anything. like like I saw a little bit of sadness that even as he feels the joy of stepping into her world and starting to understand his daughter a little more and having them getting that little bit closer off of this interaction and it opening a little bit of a door for their relationship to start being repaired, I could see it raised a little bit of sadness in him as well.
01:30:03
Speaker
And I'm curious to follow that thread and see where it goes. One thing that I've been really interested in, I realized that Mika, the mom, actually does have a job outside of the home. When she first called for work, in my head, I'm like, did we know she had a job?
01:30:21
Speaker
And the fact that when she gets home, she's always got food prepared on the table for him. He never asks about it. He never says thank you about it. It's expected that it's going to be there. And he comes in at the end of the day. He never asks her about her day.
01:30:37
Speaker
He doesn't seem to have any interest and I am waiting for him to realize. I'm ready and excited um to see how he starts repairing his relationships with each of these people in his family. Like he even has to repair his relationship with the dog at this point. That's how bad it's gotten.
01:30:56
Speaker
I'm watching this show Nini. I do want to give Mika her due because she is the overlooked member of this family. She is doing so so much of the invisible and emotional labor for the family and the show does give her her due and you'll get to see all of that.
01:31:14
Speaker
It kind of builds on what you were saying about Moe and how she feels about the fandom stuff that she does. Like, this show really understands fandom and what it means to people. Mika, she is a mother. She does have a job that you'll learn more about. And she's also a fan. She is a fan of a K-pop group called Random.
01:31:34
Speaker
That actually ends up being a really important part of who she is and a part of her story with Makoto and his journey to understand her. They really take that seriously and they really help you understand and they motivate her obsession with this K-pop group and really root you in what following them as a fan has done for her in her life.
01:31:58
Speaker
and allow Makoto to understand that too. And when he gets there, when he finally fully clicks in to what he owes to this group of K-pop idols who have given his wife something to feel joyful about, it's one of my favorite moments in the show.
01:32:18
Speaker
So Mika tells us about how she's given up a lot in her life to be the mom figure of this family. She was spiraling in a depressive state when Moe was having problems, Kakaru wouldn't leave his room.
01:32:35
Speaker
And Makoto didn't even want to talk to her about any of these big family problems. And she felt like if it had been someone else, they would have solved it already, that she had failed as a mom. In this moment of despair, she saw an interview with the leader of Random and was really touched by the way he talked about dealing with the challenges in his life.
Makoto's Personal Growth Journey
01:32:55
Speaker
That gave her a light out. And caring about Random and the goings-on of that band gave her a little light that she was able to hold on to, to hold fast as her family dealt with these big problems that she was trying to just tackle for them. Once she reveals all of this, as they're on the way to a concert together, by the way. Hell yeah. Lakuto says, ah, then random is the Okuto family's benefactor. I just love that man so much because that is the right response. What a good attitude, sir. You're doing amazing.
01:33:32
Speaker
What you've just said just leads me to think about the scene that gives the show its name, about the old man's underwear thing. Makoto has ways of expressing yes, but also of conceiving the world through a lens that he can comprehend, the things that are incomprehensible to him.
01:33:54
Speaker
finding a way to reframe it to himself that's comprehensible. Sometimes that's serendipitous, like the thing with the underwear, and sometimes that's considered. But him saying something like random is the Okita family's benefactor, that's him reframing this thing into a thing that makes sense to him, that he can then use that as a way of understanding the idea that he's grappling with or that he's struggling with, and I really like that. Absolutely. You're going to love that moment when you get there, Nina, because you just came through the Comica stuff where Makoto, like you mentioned, has his own way of contextualizing well how he appreciates what people are doing. He went through the whole Comica experience and he appreciated how passionate everybody was and how diligent and organized they were. And how efficient they were. That was the thing he took away.
01:34:48
Speaker
He saw them through a workplace lens because that's what he knows, you know? And it's this great moment when they come out of the random concert. He lets Mika go and hang out with her other friends because Mika ends up hanging out with Daichi's mom and another older female fan.
01:35:02
Speaker
who were having fun talking about their favorite boy group. He ends up reading about random. And when he's still hanging around, Mika wasn't expecting him to wait around for her. They're walking home together. They're talking about the band. He's like, he's read some articles. He's read about them. He's talking about the band. He's selected a bias. He's picked the bias. He's like, I completely understand why you like Seijin. I found that article you mentioned where he told that story. It's a beautiful, touching story. But we were watching them on the stage. Did you notice that the other member noticed when the other guy tripped and he helped cover for him?
01:35:32
Speaker
I really appreciate the teamwork and determination he showed in that moment. He really touched me in that moment and he had his own bias coming out of the concert.
01:35:45
Speaker
i can't wait for you to get to that episode it's so great because Like, Daichi says it early, and it kind of throws Makuto off. He's like, I don't have any hobbies. He's like, your family is your hobby. like Everything you do is for the benefit of your family. That's what you're most passionate about. And so we get through this whole thing where we learn that Moa is passionate about manga. It's what she loves. It's what gets her up every day. Mika is passionate about random. It's what helps motivate her day in and day out.
01:36:12
Speaker
she gets this really great moment where she gets mad at her family for not appreciating the food she's doing because she wanted to share a recipe that had won a contest with them nobody checked the fucking group chat and everybody was upping their asses about their own shit that night nobody congratulated her and said anything nice about her food and she went the fuck off on them and they all deserved that ass whoopin we go on this long journey with these characters of understanding who they are and rebuilding their relationships with each other in a way that is so beautiful.
01:36:51
Speaker
There's even a whole moment in the show where an older version of Makoto shows up, like one of Makoto's seniors who has been displaced from one team because of being rude and sexually harassing women there. I don't think he was touching them inappropriately per se, but just his general demeanor was deeply offensive. And so he gets reassigned to their team. Makoto is able to reach through to him in a really great moment.
01:37:19
Speaker
where they go and solve a major work problem together, the way guys like them used to solve problems. And it's a way in for him to talk about, that's not how the young people operate now.
Critique of Bigotry in Family Dynamics
01:37:30
Speaker
And your information and the way you operate is good and we should teach them, but also we got to open up to them too. What's so great is like Makoto is kind of an idiot. He's not mean-spirited, but he's doing irritating and annoying and harmful things to the people he cares about.
01:37:50
Speaker
Daichi's dad is the worst kind of bigot because he is well read. He has heard all of the arguments. He does understand that his son is suffering. and is willfully choosing to exacerbate that dynamic because he thinks he knows what's best for his son, but it's not really for the benefit of his son, it's about power and control. One of the things that often frustrates us when we talk about these shows, particularly Shan, hello Shan, is these shows often like to rush reconciliations and apologies so that we end with a moment where the whole family's come back together
01:38:27
Speaker
through the power of love and teamwork or whatever. And Daichi's dad does not get to have that moment. He is excluded from the final triumphant moment of the series because he is too bigoted to let go of his own ego. It was a thing of beauty to see a parent who did not deserve to be forgiven. Unforgiven. An excuse from the table.
01:38:57
Speaker
It is everything that I have ever wanted from a drama. I was so fucking happy because most of the time in these shows, they just insist on pushing toward this unearned redemption that is so unsatisfying. And this show just said no, because you know what? This show has a really clear thesis.
01:39:18
Speaker
And it came through, I think, in a final speech from, of all people, for Ruike, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to know everything. But you do have to care about hurting people. And you do have to try to do better. And you do have to be willing to learn and to update yourself. And what he says in this final speech in the workplace is, I'm older than all of you. And I have learned that going through life and all of it's good and bad,
01:39:48
Speaker
can really desensitize you to the things happening around you, to the experiences of others. And if you let yourself become desensitized, you will hurt other people. And if you can just try really hard to not get used to yourself and to keep learning and to keep trying, you will do better and you will enjoy life more. And that is really this show's thesis.
01:40:18
Speaker
And Daichi's father doesn't do that. He's not open to learning. He doesn't care ultimately that he's harming other people because he thinks he's right and that's all that matters to him. And so he doesn't get forgiven and he doesn't get to sit at the fucking family table at the end of the show and play happy families with everybody. He's not invited to the wedding.
01:40:40
Speaker
If he wants back in, he's going to have to try and he's going to have to care. And he is going to have to put in the effort to update his thinking and make amends with his son and with the people his son loves. Until he does that, he is not welcome and he is not part of the family. And I just love that the show was so firm on this. There is room for redemption for everyone. Everyone deserves the chance to do better. But if you don't put in that work, you don't get to sit with us. Period.
01:41:10
Speaker
yeah
01:41:40
Speaker
Period. I'm so mad at y'all for a Care Bears stare. I haven't thought about the Care Bears in at least, at least two decades. I can't stand y'all eyes. I can't stand y'all eyes.
01:41:56
Speaker
Cockaroo's like, yes, I'm wearing women's clothes. And then Moe was like, and I love to draw Fugeo art. Fuck you. And Mika's like, I'm almost back. She's got a t-shirt. I'm old and I get to like idols too.
01:42:10
Speaker
And then he looks over at Moktor's like, at least you're the only normal one. He's like, no, I'm not. I'm the most fucking crazy person here. I love my family. I love all of these people. And I was asked to be here as the matchmaker for Daichi. And I'm going to tell you to your face, you are a bigot and an asshole. He asked that man, the most important question. You are correct that the world is harsh and that is not going to be nice to our kids.
01:42:37
Speaker
But it doesn't matter if they're queer, they're going to be made to feel awful and bad and weird and wrong for any number of reasons. Whether it be Moe loving to draw fujo art, Kakaru wanting to wear the clothes that make him feel better, or Paranishi wanting to wear his B-Skate gun to work but every day.
01:43:00
Speaker
Or... Any number of reasons these kids are gonna be made to feel wrong and unhappy. And that's one of the things this show makes clear. None of the older men in this show are happy at all. Not Makoto, not Daichi's divorced dad, not Furuike when he gets assigned to their team originally, and not multiple colleagues of theirs who get downsized over the course of the show.
01:43:25
Speaker
No one is happy. Everyone is being asked to present and conform for the sake of others in this society and everyone is miserable as a result. And the Okita family says, no, we're going to prioritize our happiness in this family. I'm doing these things as a parent because I love my family and I want them to be happy. I don't want them to suffer for other people and be miserable like you.
Rebuilding Trust and Joy in Family
01:43:51
Speaker
And he asked that man directly, if the whole world is lining up to be cruel to your son, why are you trying to cut to the front of the line to get the first lick in?
01:44:04
Speaker
And that man had no answer for that. Man, that was so infuriating. This was what was so challenging about fighting him why Makoto struggled a little bit and why Daiichi really struggled was that he wasn't an in your face loud screaming bigot. He would espouse his bigoted ideas in the most calm, rational matter of fact way. and it would make the other characters second-guess themselves. He wasn't talking as if he was being hateful. He was talking as if he was just being the rational one in the room and the rest of them needed to come back to reality. That can be very disarming trying to deal with somebody when they are just when they're presenting what they're saying to you as if they're just talking common sense and you're the one who's off base. I liked that representation of a kind of bigotry that can feel a lot more insidious
01:44:53
Speaker
than the more in-your-face stuff that we often see depicted in media. I was really happy with it because they showed through Makoto and Furoike that they aren't and trying to be mean-spirited when they interact with people these ways. They're just deeply out of touch and deeply misinformed and they were taught poorly. The worst thing about Daiichi's asshole of a father is he's the people who teaches people to be like that.
01:45:27
Speaker
What really works with this too is like Kakaru can be a real bitch over the course of the show when he gets pissed off of people expecting things from him. But I really like that for all that he doesn't share.
01:45:43
Speaker
interest with his father that much. In so many ways, he is a lot like his dad and how he handles interactions with people. That was a really well done arc. And he starts to recognize that too.
01:45:57
Speaker
yeah The final scenes of the show are so earned. Makoto is like, if the world is going to fight my kids, they're going to have to go through me. And he's flexing in the mirror. And the kids are coming through the door of the bathroom because it's the day of Daichi's wedding. Moe dunks at him right away. He's like, you're not going to get buff in three days, Dad. Move. We have things to do today.
01:46:23
Speaker
el that congress who like move he's like gotta to look at me like this like got of here yeah and he's like aass son your children are bullying me To see this family that in the beginning was so strained with each other, they would have never joked with him that way when the show started because they had no trust in him.
01:46:43
Speaker
And they were tense around him all the time. And to see them come all the way to the other side of getting back to a normal dynamic where they can just make fun of their dad for being a dork. That's such a beautiful way to show that he has rebuilt that trust with his kids. They feel comfortable now to make fun of him when he's standing in front of the mirror in his dorky underwear, making macho poses. We finally get to their wedding and Makuto is given this parental position as Daichi's stand-in father, and of course Makuto is a crying slobbery mess at this wedding. The way that he leaps over this relationship makes me laugh every single time. He's just so happy for them. He's so invested. The long and short of it is, this is a show that is super empathetic about the way
01:47:42
Speaker
internalized misogyny has done so much damage to all of us. And it wants to gently lead us down the path to learning to reconnect with the things we love and the people we love without feeling the need to enforce arbitrary norms that have only made everyone miserable. And it earns that repeatedly in every single moment for 11 fantastic episodes.
01:48:12
Speaker
Man, what a show. I look forward to watching the next eight. I'm so excited for you to finish it, Nini. You're going to love it. All right. Hot ratings. Nini, you can't rate it yet. Shannon rating.
01:48:24
Speaker
I gave the show a 9.5. I love it deeply. I think it is excellent. I think everyone should watch it. My ratings are about execution and I think there were a couple, not really wobbles in the show, but a couple little bits that could have been smoother. There were a couple scenes that didn't quite carry off the PSAs in a way that sounded like natural dialogue. You're going to have to let go of that moment at the end of episode five. I can't do it.
01:48:52
Speaker
kind
01:48:55
Speaker
a There's one scene in particular that felt deeply inauthentic in the way the character reacted to something. Instead of reacting in a way that felt authentic for his character, he gave a very after school special speech, which felt so wrong from a character perspective. It just sticks in my brain. And so it's not technically perfect, but it is spiritually perfect. It is emotionally perfect. I love this show so much. And I want everyone to watch it. I am in the process of bullying my own family into getting a plexiglass to watch it. I just, I think everybody should see this show. I'm giving this show an 11.
01:49:42
Speaker
But nice. He's just going to make sure the average.
01:49:49
Speaker
You see, me yeah whenever Ben does this and he calls producer privilege, I just sit here and I go, okay. Because he's always on me about it.
01:50:03
Speaker
like i how Okay, have your 11, sir. Have your 11. This is one of my favorite shows of all time. We've made a lot of memes on this podcast about my repeated mentioning of what did you eat yesterday, or random diatribes about how Nusa Wash could make good work if he wanted to make good work. But... Oh boy.
01:50:31
Speaker
This was probably one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with TV itself in a really long time. This was the kind of really homey and welcoming drama that I have really needed to believe in TV as a medium again. I loved watching the show and I loved talking about the show with our friends the whole way through. This is the kind of drama that I feel determined to show to people. So it gets a 10 from me from the conversation. I am desperately begging you to go watch it. And then tell us how you feel about it.
01:51:20
Speaker
So what are the connection points between these two shows, other than the frame, obviously, which is that these are queer narratives that go outside of and beyond romance? I don't want to be harsh to our listeners who enjoy BL when I say this.
01:51:42
Speaker
Watching both of these shows is a real relief for me because sometimes BL feels so detached from reality that it can feel kind of alien.
Importance of Diverse Storytelling
01:51:54
Speaker
I need to get a couple of queer dramas in me a year that are about the queer experience in a grounded way or else I go insane.
01:52:07
Speaker
I am really relieved that both of these shows came to us when they came to us because I need experiences like this to make BL worth it for me. These are the kinds of projects I only encounter because I'm in the BL space. I think what connects these shows for me is that they both really care.
01:52:34
Speaker
about all of the characters involved in the story. They try to tell really full stories about a community or a family that does not just narrow down to one point that's about one person or one relationship. They really try to take a holistic look at the full world around our characters and how all of them form relationships with each other and how the world around them informs those relationships and put stressors on them. It's just like a really complete immersion in both of these shows into a place and a way of living and a way of being that can sometimes feel missing in some of the other things that we watch and discuss on here.
01:53:28
Speaker
It's really refreshing to watch stuff like this sometimes. I think any healthy media diet requires some variety, requires stepping out of the same ah formula that you are used to in the media that you consume. What really matters to me about these shows in the context of this podcast where we discuss queer works is that it really takes queer reality very seriously. And it roots its story, both of these shows, in a very close to realistic version of what it would mean to hold these identities in the world that we actually live in. When we are often watching shows that are in a bubble that don't deal with those realities, it's important to dip into that every once in a while.
01:54:17
Speaker
And this is not a homework assignment, either of these shows. They're beautiful dramas. They are joyful. They are fun to watch. They are touching. Just because they have heavy themes and because you learn a lot doesn't mean that they're not also incredibly entertaining shows. For me, what I get out of being in this particular space and shows like these, I just calculate them today. I am actually in a relationship maybe about once a decade, but I am living in the world all the rest of the time. While romance for me is not exactly an escape, there are escapist elements to romance for me. I find a lot of fascination in different aspects of romance. I live in the world all of the time. And so
01:55:14
Speaker
getting into shows that are in the world, that are focused on things that I have much more of a day-to-day connection to than romance.
01:55:28
Speaker
Occasionally it's just, it's fun to sit there. It's good and enjoyable and it feels good inside to sit in that. You feel a little bit of coming home about it. And that's where I'm sitting with these two shows so far. Every so often I do need to watch something that isn't a romance and I like when it's good.
01:55:51
Speaker
These two are really good. I gotta to say that too, like, no disrespect to a lot of the work that we talk about on this podcast. We watch a lot of shows that are flawed in one way or another. And it's not for a lack of effort from the people making them. But every now and then, it's really helpful to watch a really, really good show or a really fucking good movie and be like, damn,
01:56:21
Speaker
That was something else. It can be really inspiring and it can help keep you grounded. You need to balance your media diet. You have got to not just watch romance. It will overly flavor your tastes and you're not going to notice when the creators are playing with things outside of romance. You've got to expand your horizons because the more types of stories you encounter, the more you'll be able to enjoy the stories that you love the most. It's good for you to watch something other than BL.
01:57:07
Speaker
And with that, that is going to wrap us up on episode one of our fall season. Wow. I'm really glad we're starting on a high note because boy was summer rough. I just want to point out we just at the end of the summer had our 50th episode. So this is our 51st and this is our eighth season.
01:57:35
Speaker
We are rounding it out into almost two years of doing this show. We're going to have some thoughts about that as we are as we wind down. With that, we out. Say bye to the people, Sean. Bye, people. Say bye to the people, Ben. Peace.