- Network: HULU
- Series Premiere Date: Nov 19, 2024
Critic Reviews
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What is lost in the act of reading the text in its original form is made up for in a deepening of its story, turning a treatise on the industry’s unfair treatment of Asian actors and characters into some genuinely cool television with a steadily ascending, almost video game-y composition. .... What is truly great about the show, aside from its creatively depicted structure and the ways the characters move alongside and against it, is the way it suggests that racism is a trap not only for its targets, but for everyone else who encounters it.
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"Interior Chinatown" is a visceral and biting satire of the minuscule and stereotypical roles Asian Americans had to play in American television while being an engaging neo-noir comedy. The bold liberties it takes fit the television medium pack a punch and only demonstrate Charles Yu's versatility as a creator. One of 2024's finest new shows.
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Only five episodes were screened for critics, but they ended up exactly where you’d want to be halfway through the season, with the storytelling growing more confident with every installment and the experiment atmosphere growing more immersive.
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There’s plenty to enjoy here even though the first five episodes are still fine-tuning the show’s voice and commentary. The heightened reality aspect is especially fun.
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We like Interior Chinatown enough to look past the “stuck in a cop show” conceit, but we just hope it doesn’t weigh the show down as the season continues.
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Its use of meta-elements could be smoother and more consistent (thereby amplifying the success of the storytelling overall), but Interior Chinatown remains a worthwhile watch with a strong mystery at its heart.
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“Interior Chinatown” has a lot of fun skewering TV tropes, including the stereotypical characters who topline “Black & White” (played by Lisa Gilroy and Sullivan Jones). .... But “Interior Chinatown” perhaps doesn’t dig past the tropes enough to reveal something more nuanced on the other side. At least, not in the first half of the season. Whether the show sticks the landing is a key question.
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It’s a provocative and at times genuinely entertaining exploration of how the stories we’ve been told shape how we think – the irony so well layered that, ironically, it gets in the way of itself.
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“Interior Chinatown” is never anything less than interesting, but it also never gives the sense that it has fully thought through the relationship between its formal/technical choices and content. Perhaps the back half of the miniseries will answer some of these questions. But, halfway through, it feels under-realized.
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If you must, watch for the little stuff: Some good performances (Chieng, Yang, Bennet), some funny lines, a clever kicker and that compelling premise. A shame all the rest is a mess.
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But by delaying the reveal, “Interior Chinatown” puts off some substance in favor of wheel-spinning that’s not as engaging in practice as an abstract idea. Stuck between fable and character drama, “Interior Chinatown” ends up in the same no-man’s-land as its protagonist.
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Moments of fleeting poignancy, as in a subplot involving the rocky but essentially caring relationship between Willis’ aging parents, Lily (Diana Lin) and Joe (Tzi Ma), are undermined by a script that’s far more interested in chasing down tropes to shatter than it is in exploring the unique topography of its characters’ souls.