Interior Chinatown is about Willis Wu, a ordinary and boring waiter at a Chinatown restaurant. The show is framed in two ways. First, as a meta-narrative where the main character Willis Wu is stuck in a typical cable cop show the features two attractive leads who always steal the spotlight. The second narrative framework of the show follows Willis in a first person narrative where he narrates his own thoughts and feelings to the audience. Here, he tells the audience that he is convinced that he will never be like the leads in the cop show. He believes that he will never be in the spotlight because of his boring life and boring personality.
One reason that he believes he won’t enter the spotlight is because he wasn’t even the star of his own family. Willis’ parents, especially his father, praised and put their attention on Willis’ older brother who has now disappeared. The result is that their family is fractured. His parents live in separate rooms and Willis only sees them to celebrate his the missing brother’s birthday.
At this point, Willis is seriously fed up with his place in life. He cannot stand the fact that despite being the only son left that he is still treated as the forgotten child. He feels forgotten in the world as well, his life as a waiter of the Golden Palace Seafood Restaurant is wearing on him. It doesn’t help that his work friend Fatty seems perfectly content with his life. Willis sees Fatty enjoy alcohol, video games and weed, but he can’t enjoy that stuff.
He wants more.
Everything changes when Willis witnesses a nail salon worker getting kidnapped in the middle of the street, an act that appears to spark a gang war in his Chinatown. Now, Willis is a potential person of interest but, even when the two cops show up to his restaurant, they do not interview him. Willis tries to talk to them but is blocked by some mysterious force, that force is the narrative that is about to send him on a hero’s journey.
Along for the journey with Willis is Lana (Chloe Bennet), the third detective investigating the Chinatown gang war, I believe it. Lana needs Willis to solve this case. She is treated as the “DEI” mascot on this case. She wants to prove to the two lead detectives that she is a good detective and shouldn’t be treated as a diversity symbol. Willis is more than willing to help her. In fact, Willis is shown as someone who is desperate for someone to pay attention to him. He is in awe of Lana for her beauty and intelligence. However, the portrayal of Willis as a person who does not get attention is contrasted by the attention that he gets from multiple women. A lawyer in the Chinatown community named Alice tries to flirt with him at a party and a random woman stares at him as he walks through the club. These choices, while potentially holding narrative purpose, contradict his introduction as a “background” character. He is already getting attention, he just ignores it completely.
The show could have had shorter episodes. The pilot especially establishes a mostly frigid pace where its attempts to establish every person in Wilson’s life and establish the unique tone of the show which combines a meta-narrative, comedy, and kung fu action scenes makes it feel like show is trying to do too much. I would also be remiss to say that I do not find another show with Asian characters who do kung fu to be at best cliche and, at worst, a racial stereotype. This has become especially repetitive for projects under the Disney umbrella. I am not proposing any studio stop making Asian stories with Kung Fu involved. However, with a project that is framed as a meta-noir comedy, kung fu action scenes really feels like a pandering attempt to get more eyeballs on the project. Additionally, the action itself is mostly generic. I will shout out the creative use of a wired phone as a weapon in the first fight scene that takes place in the restaurant Wilson works at. However, the rest of the fighting isn’t consistently delivering these creative fighting methods, emphasizing how the kung fu feels like an unnecessary topping to the show’s substance.
I wish they committed more to the meta narrative in the show. It lingers and you are reminded of it every few scenes but often it seems to lack purpose. I see the attempt at commentary on how Asian people often remain the background characters or side characters in the majority of 20th Century American television and much of modern TV as well. However, this commentary often feels like it’s getting in the way of developing the characters with complex human characteristics. I do not see why Willis is different from a typical unlikely hero or why Lana is different from the generic TV cops.
I appreciated the attempt to create comedy with the meta narrative. They make one scene where Lana and Wilson need to be alone take place in a club. This club is the generic club that you imagine when there is a commercial promoting alcohol. In this case, Wilson and Lana find themselves in a commercial for hard seltzer. This fake hard seltzer brand shows up all over the club and a commercial narrator voice proclaims “This Hard Seltzer is for good times” or something like that. I appreciate these attempts at comedy but, personally, they only remind me of the commercial gags in Atlanta which I consider much funnier and consistent with the episodes they appear in. The gag is interesting but the overall meta-narrative approach of the show fails to be distinguish itself from other prestige television or make interesting contributions to old archetypes of meta-narratives.
The show does carry a more cinematic look which helps elevate Willis’ story as more sophisticated than the cop procedural. However, this more glossy look also makes the meta-narrative of the film harder to understand. There are dramatic lighting changes when the two cops walk into the room to signal us that we are now watching the Law and Order-type show that Willis is supposed to be stuck in. However, the visuals are still very similar to the crisp 4K digital look that is common in prestige TV and low budget films. This undercuts some of the jokes the show tries to make. When Willis is left in the background of the “Law and Order” he sticks out, even though he’s supposed to be part of the background due to the cinematography style remaining the same. The show takes other creative liberties that are inspired by cinematic classics. The introduction of Lana is captured with blurred motion reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai’s famous scenes in Chungking Express. These choices while creating visual variety in the show feel unearned, it seems added on simply for style sake. The music choices often seem the same way, the selections at least to me are very well known and the more you hear songs in the world or in media, the harder it is to make it feel natural.
