New battle as a show
The novel “Interior Chinatown” is formatted as a script and takes its title from the screenwriting convention of opening scenes by indicating whether they take place indoors or outdoors. The author, Charles Yu, works regularly in television, with credits on shows like “Westworld” and “Legion.” (Yu’s brother, Kelvin, created the Disney+ series “American Born Chinese.”) And the book is primarily a commentary on film and TV tropes in relation to Asian-American stereotypes, a project that could well be furthered by taking a leap into the future. screen.
But despite a backdrop that seems so ripe for adaptation, “Interior Chinatown” struggles as a real show. Yu himself created the 10-episode Hulu series, working with executive producer and pilot director Taika Waititi to bring the surreal, allegorical world of the novel to life. Compared to the hermetically sealed environment of a book, television demands a multitude of perspectives and the forward momentum of the plot, especially when stretched—as Yu has chosen—into 45-minute episodes. These necessary elements will ultimately dilute rather than enhance the novel’s original insights, turning a quaint, dense fable into a mediocre mystery.
“Silicon Valley” star Jimmy O. Yang leads the cast of “Interior Chinatown” as Willis Wu, a waiter at his uncle’s Golden Palace restaurant who occasionally finds himself in the background of a police procedural called “Black & White.” ” When Willis crosses paths with star detectives Turner (Sullivan Jones) and Green (Lisa Gilroy) – yes, the title of the show-within-a-show is a reference to their races – the whole atmosphere changes. The light turns an antiseptic blue; the focus shifts from Willis to the oblivious agents who never acknowledge his existence. The visual gimmick is reminiscent of the short-lived AMC drama “Kevin Can F*** Himself,” which switched perspectives between a housewife’s bleak existence and the bright multi-camera sitcom her husband lives in.
As with “Kevin,” this storytelling device helps “Interior Chinatown” make an immediate impact but quickly runs out of steam. The visual element allows the show to expertly mimic the rhythms and mock the clichés of a “Law & Order”-like franchise; Gilroy in particular excels at delivering absurd dialogue that pushes jokes to the limit. But because viewers are forced to rely on contextual clues rather than written exposition, “Interior Chinatown” struggles to communicate the rules of its fantasy world and overlapping realities.
Located in the fictional town of Port Harbor, Willis’s home is a Chinatown in the “forget it, Jake” sense – in the public imagination it is a den of iniquity where crimes take place, not a place where people live. To leave the neighborhood, residents must pass through a single tunnel laden with symbolic imports. (Los Angeles residents will recognize it as the 2nd Street thoroughfare.) But the sense of Port Harbor as a surreal place governed by Hollywood logic is undermined by more grounded subplots, such as Willis’ mother Lily (Diana Lin) getting her real estate license gets. The point, of course, is that the residents of Chinatown are more than just the roles they’re assigned, some of which—like “Generic Asian Man” and “Tech Guy”—determine the title of each episode. But in the world of ‘Interior Chinatown’ everyone is a concept before they are a person, making such storylines less effective at subversion than if they are muddled in tone.
The central mystery of “Interior Chinatown” concerns the disappearance of Willis’ older brother (Chris Pang), a kung fu master trained by their father (Tzi Ma). Willis teams up with Lana Lee (Chloe Bennet), a mixed-race detective assigned to Green and Turner’s team for “cultural” reasons, to find out what really happened to his sibling. However, it’s difficult to place much stock in their investigative work, as Chinatown doesn’t operate according to the laws of physics, such as fundamental cause and effect, that pound rewards to the curb. At one point, a bomb targeting the local police station magically defuses itself, establishing a baseline that lowers the stakes of Willis and Lana’s efforts.
These efforts nevertheless take up many hours of screen time, and are padded out by even thinner material, such as Willis’ friend Fatty (Ronny Chieng) accidentally drawing crowds to Golden Palace by being overly rude to white patrons—a one-note joke that is maintained for too long. many successes. Willis’ brother was tokenized and demeaned by an earlier generation of TV detectives, during one show Willis and Lana watch episodes of rather than “evidence tapes.” Its fate is inevitably tied to what “Interior Chinatown” wants to say about representation and the, well, interiority of those it represents. But by delaying its unveiling, “Interior Chinatown” postpones a content in favor of spinning its wheels that, in practice, isn’t as appealing as an abstract idea. Stuck between fable and character drama, “Interior Chinatown” ends up in the same no man’s land as the main character.
All ten episodes of ‘Interior Chinatown’ are now streaming on Hulu.
