by Darian Davis, Staff Writer

Interior Chinatown
Created by Charles Yu
Starring Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Chloe Bennet, Lisa Gilroy
Episodes 1-5
All episodes streaming November 19 on Hulu

I’ve been a fan of Charles Yu’s work for a few years now. What I appreciate most about Yu’s style is that he’s not afraid to incorporate his nerd love of pop culture and science fiction into his writing. Doing so makes for an accessible read, and yet he’s still exceptional at conveying thoughtful and profound social commentary on a variety of topics like race, class, technology, and very often all three at once (I recommend his short story Standard Loneliness Package as a place to start). His novel Interior Chinatown is no exception. The entire book is written in the format of a screenplay with Courier font type, character directions, and everything. It’s an extension of Shakespeare’s “All the world’s a stage” conceit—the idea that the novel’s character’s lives exist in one grand script that has pre-determined the roles they play, going so far as to label them “Tech Guy” or “Kung-Fu Guy” to draw a line under biased cliches. The book’s main character, Willis Wu, begins as “Generic Asian Man,” but Yu gives Willis just enough agency to wonder if there’s more out there than feeling like the background character in his own life. As creator and showrunner, Yu takes the best ideas from his book and expands on them, making Interior Chinatown an engaging, satirical send up of network cop shows while offering some thoughtful commentary on those marginalized by society, further bolstered by strong performances from its ensemble.

After a typewriter stamps out the show’s title, Jimmy O. Yang enters, hauling trash to the dumpster as Willis Wu. Yang plays his part as the generic everyman perfectly and evolves his character with increasing emotion that belies his best-known deadpan performance as Jian Yang in HBO’s Silicon Valley. Willis’s very first lines to his best friend Fatty (Ronny Chieng) question his lowly state as a waiter at his uncle’s Chinese restaurant, the Golden Palace. Yu wastes no time getting us going in this contrived world. Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh, himself a staple of 90s jingles and theme songs, sets the tone with a slap bass and saxophone medley. The show’s “main characters” appear, and the lighting and camera work shifts to that of a mid-90s police procedural starring Turner (Sullivan Jones) and Green (Lisa Gilroy) called “Black & White.” This visual treatment for switching between the “normal” world of the background characters and the “superficial” world of the TV production is done with great precision and flair, no doubt a result of Taika Waititi’s creative involvement as producer and director of the show’s pilot. Turner, a tall, handsome Black guy, and Green, a rugged, brooding blonde, are the stereotypical hot cops, and they jump into action like Benson and Stabler when their new assignment is hollered across the precinct. Gilroy and Jones both chew the scenery, preening in their perfect TV world.

The duo arrives in Chinatown to investigate a murder, and Willis can help them as the last person to witness the victim alive. In order to interact with the “main characters,” Willis interfaces with the force’s young upstart “Chinatown expert,” a mixed-race female detective named Lana Lee, played with perfect tenacity and allure by Chloe Bennet. Detective Lee can switch between both the TV and background worlds, which creates another pointed observation from Yu around the mixed-race experience within marginalized communities and creates the perfect set up of inevitable tension and conflict down the show’s stretch. Willis’s and Lana’s newfound connection is transactional: Detective Lee gets to look like the Chinatown expert as Willis feeds her information, while Willis seizes his chance not only to run away with the girl of his dreams and “get out of Chinatown,” but to finally get closer to resources that can help him find his brother, Kung-Fu Guy, who’s been missing for some time. Bennet and Yang have great chemistry and build the right sort of tension that keeps you guessing if Lee and Willis really are good for each other, or simply brought together through mutual circumstances.

So far in this series, every character interaction by their nature becomes another treatise on society and how we see one another through flawed, prejudiced lenses. Lee can move between worlds, but she can only be a supporting player in the “show.” To gain capital among her peers, Lee uses Willis to glean from a culture she’s been removed from. Even though Turner is a main character in the “show,” his Blackness always leads him to question if he’s living a life of his own making, or one put upon him to appear more palatable to his partner and the viewers on the other side of the “TV screen.” Willis’s friend Fatty has no interest in leaving his Chinatown bubble, but the outside world intrudes in the form of meme-ification when white folks stomp through the restaurant as cultural tourists with little reverence or respect. Willis’s mother Lily (Diana Lin) aspires to become a real estate agent for Jade Properties, but faces a wall when her Chinese peers insist she take on a certain level of “whiteness” to appeal to prospective buyers. Not all of these storylines are pulled directly from Yu’s novel, but the themes are heavily adapted.

I also love that Yu chooses to explore these themes with levity, a tricky tightrope that is well-executed. The show is damn funny, and especially plays to Yang’s and Chieng’s strengths as accomplished comedians.

As Willis digs deeper into his brother’s disappearance, he takes on various tropes to get closer to information. He plays “Delivery Guy” to get his foot in the door of the precinct that otherwise locks him out like an NPC in a video game. He assumes the identity of “Tech Guy” which lands him a supporting role on the “show” and access to computer files (which appear blurry to him until he humorously dons the typical Tech Guy glasses). Each step brings Willis to a realization of his own. What actually happened to his brother? Does he really want to be like Kung-Fu Guy? Is that the only way to find success and happiness outside of Chinatown? It all mounts to a revelation that sets the show up for binge-worthy intrigue.

Interior Chinatown hits the ground running with a gripping mystery, strong performances, and a “Truman-esque” life-is-a-TV-show concept that expands on creator Charles Yu’s source material. Just like his novel, Yu leans into TV tropes as allegories to note the extent to which Asians and minorities are treated as society’s “extras,” milling about in the background to fill the scenes of the privileged top-billed few.