Pop Culture Happy Hour - Interior Chinatown

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

The super-meta Hulu series Interior Chinatown mashes up a whole bunch of genres — including kung fu movies and police procedurals — to explore Asian-American identity in interesting ways. Jimmy O. Yang plays a waiter who dreams of a more exciting life outside his close-knit community. After witnessing a crime, he has a chance to help investigators solve the case — and he soon realizes he's more deeply connected to the mystery than he initially thought. The show was created by Charles Yu, who based it on his own novel.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The super meta series, Interior Chinatown, matches up a whole bunch of genres, including kung fu movies and police procedurals to explore Asian American identity in interesting ways. It's about a waiter who dreams of a more exciting life outside his close-knit community. And after witnessing a crime, he has a chance to help investigators solve the case. But as the details unravel, he realizes he's more deeply connected to the mystery than he initially thought. I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about the Hulu series, Interior. You're Chinatown on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Jeff Yang.

He's a cultural critic and author of The Golden Screen, the movies that made Asian America, a book I really enjoyed. It's great to have you here. Great to hear that, Aisha. And great to be back, both on the program and in conversation with you. Yes, same. I have so many questions, and I promise you do not have to represent all of Asian America when we talk about this.

I'm generic Asian critic. It's okay. Yes, this is going to be a fun conversation. But first, Interior Chinatown stars Jimmy O'Gang as Willis Wu, a restaurant worker in Chinatown who's bored with his life and tired of feeling invisible. His best friend and colleague is perpetual stoner, fatty, played by Ronnie Chang. I wish I could just be part of that action. I feel like I'm a background character in someone else's story.

I think that's called being a loser. One evening, Willis witnesses a woman being abducted and gets involved with the investigation. He teamed up with Lana Lee, a newbie detective played by Chloe Bennett. Now, here's where the premise starts to get pretty naughty and honestly kind of confusing sometimes. The lead detectives on the case are partners Sarah Green and Miles Turner. They're played by Lisa Gilroy and Sullivan Jones. They know basically nothing about the Chinatown community and they exist in their own world literally. Like, anytime they're on screen, it's as if we're dropped into a law and order type show where they're kind of like Benson and Stabler.

complete with the stylized network TV lighting, platonically intimate chemistry, and macabre bander. Lead violinists to the Chinatown Symphony, strangled with his own bow. Looks like someone couldn't face the music. Yeah, that's what we've got going on here. Now, in their world, Willis is just a background character. In fact, he doesn't even exist unless he's pretending to be some kind of Asian stereotype, like a Chinese food delivery person or the tech guy at their police precinct. Now, Willis soon learns that his family is somehow connected to the case,

which leads him down many rabbit holes to uncover the truth. Interior Chinatown was created by Charles Yu, and he based it on his own novel of the same name, and all 10 episodes are streaming on Hulu. So, Jeff, let's get right into it. Give me your first impressions before we dig deeper into all the naughtiness of this. Absolutely. And I have to first begin by,

saying that I really enjoyed it, but then again, I'm pretty much the nail on the head audience for this. I mean, it's a weird experimental action comedy exploration of Asian American identity and screen representation starring a guy named Yang, right? So it's like, how much more can you micro segment the demographic to target me? But at the same time, it was kind of a roller coaster ride. I mean, the show had me going, WTF, whoa, wow, why? And then back to the GF again and again and again. And honestly, I definitely question choices. I will say I was never not intrigued and engaged, even as there were, you know, points where I was skeptical maybe. Yeah. I have to say, I read the log line first that, like, Hulu had put out in the press, and I haven't read

the original book. And so I was coming to this very fresh. And the premise that they give does not align with the way the show actually kind of pans out. So, So I was very confused watching the first few episodes. I was like, wait, is this like Law and Order parody an actual show that these people are stars on and it's like all in his head? What is happening here? In the city of Port Harbor, the most unsolvable cases are tasked to an elite squad known as the Impossible Crimes Unit. So I also had sort of a roller coaster response where I was just like, what is going on here? And then it's not just the sort of police procedural.

it is also like lots of other genres. We've already mentioned kung fu, but there's also at one point the police procedural sort of turns into more of like a true detective police procedural. And then there's commercials that are happening that are just kind of blending in. I also enjoyed it overall. And I love the ambition of this.

And I think I understand what it's trying to accomplish thematically. But it did feel especially the back half, like it kind of felt like at some point it was just kind of spinning its wheels a bit more. And I am curious, I know, Jeff, you have read the book. So as someone who's read the book, like, how did this compare for you, you know, as I understand that the book is actually written like a script, right? Yes. Yeah. So how does that sort of translate for you from there to there? For me, the book was kind of a near perfect object. And I mean that both from the literary sense.

I mean, as soon as we began reading it, I did not put it down. And there were so many moments, pieces of writing there. You know how sometimes there are books that come along and you just hate yourself for not having written them? Yes. That happens to me often, actually. So this was one of those books. I was like reading it and thinking to myself, this has so many beats in it and asked so many questions and address them in such a perverse and original fashion. It's a very different creature, right? The book in many ways is very much more streamlined. I would argue that the central premise of the book is not dissimilar to the central premise of Pokemon. Okay, please say more.

Effectively, the idea is that the main character kind of levels up from a generic Asian man to various other schemas or archetypes of Asian screen guy, right? Right. And then at the end of the book, it kind of concludes in this courtroom drama where effectively the challenge is, has this guy who is given this opportunity to evolve himself, to get to the kind of platonic ideal of what it means to being Asian on screen, has that person derelicted his duties by not following through on the story that he was supposed to conclude, that he was supposed to bring to his denouement. And then it erupts into like wild kung fu violence because, you know, as one does, right?

Looking at the book, I always thought it was kind of unadaptable. And it is very clear that Charles, in the unique position of adapting his own book, had to also make certain allowances. for the fact that this is TV and this is TV that needs to appeal to a very broad range of people. I can totally see that. It's always interesting when you read a book and you're like, oh, this is great, but then trying to imagine it on screen and what that would look like. Let's talk a little bit about sort of the different themes, because, yes, we've got this sort of generic Asian man quality that Willis is filtering.

But then you have Ronnie Chang, who I think is kind of a secret sauce, as you will. Sauce is a big role in this show. I see what you did there, Aisha. Yes, yes, thank you. He was probably my favorite, one of my favorite aspects of this show. Ronnie Chang, he's done stand-up. He has showed up in a lot of really great stuff as sort of the side character. But it's great to see him kind of get a bigger, meteor role.

And his whole storyline is very interesting because he stays back while Willis is off trying to solve this investigation. He kind of takes over all of his duties and suddenly turns into, he like gets a shtick as like, the mean waiter at the restaurant, and people are just coming in droves now to see him perform. And it's this really interesting, I think, exploration of, like, performing not necessarily Asian identity in a way that at least I'm used to seeing of, like, the mean waiter. I don't, is that, is that a stereotype of, like, Asian? Because that didn't seem like something I was familiar with. Not really, right.

I mean, I think that there is a general stereotype of Asian people in the service industry being kind of curt. Ah, okay, yeah. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, kind of language issues and cultural expectations and the like. But I actually think in a lot of ways that this is more of a parody of Ronnie Chang, right? And that's why this role works so well. Like his embodiment of Fatty Choi as somebody who provides white audiences with sort of masochistic pleasure of being just crapped on. I guess we'll take the orange chicken. Orange chicken.

Orange chicken. Why? Sorry? Why come here if you're going to order something just covered in dipping sauce? Do you even like Chinese food? If you've ever seen Ronnie Chang's actual stand of comedy, that's not dissimilar to what he actually does on stage. There is an arc to the character, which is kind of rare to sidekicks in general. But it also is something where, if you're familiar with Ronnie himself, I think there's another layer of knowingness that comes out of this.

Those scenes were amongst the most just delightful additions to the story. line. A lot of the smaller roles really did a great job of fleshing out the world and kind of bringing things in different directions in ways that helped some of the unevenness that occurred to the top line feel a little bit less distracting. I love that observation about Ronnie Chang as fatty. And the other thing I think that his character serves as is a way to address this idea of Chinatown becoming more gentrified because as he becomes known for being the mean waiter, he also is bringing in all of these people who have never been to the restaurant before and who are not from the community. Oh my God. That guy is amazing. We have to tell Kylie and Karen about this place.

Karen will flip. I mean, she can't eat anything on this menu, but like she needs to come here. But then that storyline also kind of overlaps with Lily Wu, Willis's mother, who's played by Diana Lynn. And she kind of has her own journey, wanting to suddenly, become a real estate agent and trying to do that while also wrestling with this like guilt of quote unquote selling out or like selling her people away with the people who have lived there for years and the way we think of gentrification is kind of manifested in that way. And I I really liked seeing kind of two different sides of the gentrification angle through two different characters. I really agree. I thought Dinah Lin was just amazing in that particular role as Lily Wu,

as well as mom, who wants to rise up out of this lifetime she's spent, basically living for her husband and for her kids, and to do something for herself. I don't want to live in the past anymore. I want to have reason to get up in the morning again, and I want to. A dream. To get rich. What she chooses, like so many other Asian American moms across the map, is to embrace real estate. There's this really interesting dovetailing of gentrification and assimilation.

Right? That is explored through both of these. It's not so much just that they are importing people from the outside. They also have to change themselves. Both Thaddy and Lily have to embrace new outfits, new ways of presenting themselves to the world, new hairstyles. Right. There's this whole thing where in order to actually be this bridge for people to step over to enter into this world of Chinatown, you have to accommodate their expectations. You have to be that interface.

And I've seen that. I mean, my mom also kind of levered her way out of momhood through real estate. Oh, interesting. I absolutely recognize that particular journey. I also am curious to hear what you think about Lana, who's played by Chloe Bennett, because her and Willis go on this journey together. You're not going to go chase down to criminals? It's not my job to chase them.

It's my job to support Turner and Green so they can chase them. You know, I said in our intro that you have, like, Green and Turner, who are like the glam squad, as they're called. They are the ones who are in the police procedural very obviously. But then Lana comes in as this outsider. She's supposedly like the resident Chinatown expert and that's why she's joined them. But the interesting choice is that like she can see Willis and interacts with Willis, but the other two, Green and Turner, can't.

What do you think of her in relationship to Willis but also just like her coming in as like, I'm the resident Chinatown expert, but like maybe she's not. Not really? Honestly, I look at the Lana Lee character, and even though I'm not a biracial woman, that particular role of being kind of the interpreter and translator and cultural expert is something which I look in the mirror at and I sometimes say, hey, are you really the guy, right? Are you really the person who's supposed to be actually saying this is what's going on in the world of my people or something, right?

Yeah, yeah. There's that real question of whether Lana Lee is qualified for the role. But we also see that she does speak some Chinese. She is aware of how the world works. She ultimately actually becomes a part of that storyline when she starts working for the Golden Palace, right? Right. There's a sense in which I think she's lifted up as a potential code switching character. Yeah.

The challenge is that they don't dwell in that very long. They kind of have to get her inserted and have her journey and her journey alongside that of Willis's go pretty fast. I think that episode one, which had to do a lot, I absolutely acknowledge, might be the most fragile of the episodes because it did have to tee up so much. It had to introduce characters. It had to introduce the conceits that allow us to understand what's going on in the world, hopefully, right? Yeah. But I don't think that it fully succeeded, and it's too bad because I think the episodes that follow are much stronger and really get you going. I hope people don't watch that first episode, feel confused, and then kind of step back.

Yeah. I do think there is a hump you have to get over. And you do have to sort of pick up, okay, oh, now I'm noticing that every time Green and Turner are on screen, it suddenly looks like a network law and order. I think some of the genre bending isn't quite as consistent. And like you're kind of suggesting is that the rules of the world are not laid out in a way that ultimately made sense for me either. I mean, we can talk about the ending this show by the time this airs will have been out for a little while. We won't get into deep spoilers, but I am curious about how you feel about the way this wraps up. Here's a thing, right?

The actual ending, which I'm not going to spoil, is very open-ended. It's an ending that feels more like a beginning. In some ways, it's dissatisfying. But in other ways, I'm not sure they could have ended the story in any other way. To fulfill the promise of the series and it's sort of meta-narrative, which is about the idea that Asian-Americans and other people should be able to write their own stories should be able to be not to. is represented on screen, but have agency over how they tell their own narratives, you have to get to a point where the characters on screen who are representations, right, and not just characters, are in a place where that authoring can occur. If you try to close it up with too much of a

Hollywood loop, the expected ending for this kind of a show, well, not this kind of a show, but the show within the show, the romantic comedy in the show, or the police procedural in the show, or any of the shows that are inside the show, it would almost be breaking that vow that, no, what we're going to do is we're going to create these characters and set them free. I think it kind of leans into some of the challenges of doing this kind of show, this very meta-aware type of a show. Yeah. It's another one of those places where the world building and the care with which one decides to make and break rules is very, very tactile, right? And it's very hard to keep those balls in the air when you've created a very complicated set of rules for how the world operates.

That's what I'll say. Yeah. I do wonder. if this would have benefited from being maybe a couple of episodes shorter. And, you know, I think Green and Turner, the detectives, like the lead detectives, they shared more screen time toward the end than I anticipated. And they have their own journeys. And I both appreciated that they had that, but also sometimes felt as though their storylines didn't quite meld within the world that I think this story was trying to create. It kind of took the police procedural thing past, I think, where it had room to go, if that makes sense. I wonder if Charles, you and the other people who worked on this show, sort of like maybe painted themselves into a corner in a way. And it sounds like it's very different from the way the book ends.

It is very different. And I agree with you that this could have been several episodes shorter, but it also could have been multiple seasons longer. And each of these different worlds that are being addressed could have played out as. an entire season. The police procedural, the rom-com, the madman slash commercial world, those things could have gotten more space and more room to play. Yeah. Or just like maybe each episode is focused on one genre, like deconstructing that, taking that kind of approach could have been very, very interesting and maybe a little less, for me at least, confusing. There is no other era in history in which this show could have been

made. And this show could have been given the resources and had the time. talent and been provided with the platform and marketing that it's getting. Yeah. That is kind of magical. It's almost like the story that it's telling could only be told in a time when that story is beginning to change. Yes. Right.

One of the things which I frequently muse about is that we had this moment where we were seeing more Asian Americans on TV, but they were all like super hot and had six packs and kind of, they weren't the model minority. They were the super model minority, right? We're now in a moment where a normal guy, generic Asian man, by definition and by deliberate on-screen role, like Jimmy O'Yang, can be a romantic hero and can be an action hero and can be the above-the-line star of a big-budget major TV series. Ever since I was a boy, I've dreamt up being the hero to be in the spotlight. But that's hard if you look like me. People don't see you that way.

if they see you at all. That actually speaks to the fact that in some ways, the story that was being told both in the book and even in this series is different now, right? We're not as limited as suggested on screen. Right. Where I think the meeting comes out of this or the benefit of something like this

is not forgetting that we had to get to a certain point. And this show is sort of set. I don't think they ever specify when, but they have sort of timestamps set in the past that are in the 80s. So I think we're somewhere in the 90s or maybe the turn of the 21st century. But having it sort of set in that past, recent past, but still the past, I think really sort of highlights like it wasn't that long ago.

So it's great to have this like moment here between this and lots of other opportunities for Asian American actors and Asian performers on screen. It's just nice to see something like this exists. And with so much ambition and like even if it doesn't all work that drive. Like, it's there. Well, it really is actually a timely arrival just because I do think that that continuous reminder that progress is two steps forward, sometimes three steps back, sometimes four steps forward again, is a good one. And it helps that it's entertaining and the performances are fantastic. If there's roughness around the edges, if it feels like the story is still kind of being written as it's being told, maybe that's because that's true for all of us.

That's a great, great point. So it sounds like me and Jeff both absolutely recommend you check out Interior Chinatown. You know, get over that first episode and you have a lot to explore there. It's really fun, and there's some really great performances there. Let us know what you think about the show. You can find us at Facebook.com slash PCH. And that brings us to the end of our show. Jeff Yang, thank you so much for being here.

This was such a pleasure. It was all mine. The pleasure, that is. Thank you so much, Aija. This episode is produced by Hufsopathamah. edited by Mike Katziv. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. Hello, Khamin provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next week.