Keep it low key; shoes off in the house

Hello fellow quarantinees,

I’m currently at Day 17 of not leaving my house/neighborhood due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The world is pretty f*cking scary right now and I’d much prefer to be in a different timeline, but here we are, so all we can do is get through this together…well not together in the literal sense because y’all better stay 6-feet away from me ya hear!

For this week’s post, I wanted to do a little write up for two shows that I think you’d all enjoy as an escape from our present circumstances. Both are reality shows but take place in a much better reality than now, both have a low key aesthetic and theme, both require reading subtitles (think of this as a way to force you to stop reading the news on your phone), and both showcase good domestic hygiene by showing a clear delineation between outside clothes and shoes and inside clothes and slippers. TAKE NOTE ALL YOU NON ASIANS

I’ve written briefly about these shows before, but they deserve a much deeper dive. So without further ado, two shows you should be hunkering down with are Terrace House and Hyori’s Bed and Breakfast

Terrace House

Any season, but don’t start with Aloha State

For a show about six Gen-Z/Millennials living together trying to find love and personal development, it’s one of the most low-drama reality shows out there. If Real World is like an Instant Pot loaded with 5-alarm chili, Terrace House is more like a gently simmering clay pot of sukiyaki. It’ll leave you perplexed about how Japanese dating culture works. This show is kind of like the opposite of the Love Is Blind beginning because people live together for months and then abruptly enter into a committed relationship and then finally hold hands (told you, Japanese dating culture is…different).

A couple major things that sets this show apart from other reality shows is 1) the A+ commentary by the panel throughout the show and 2) the fact the show airs with only a few weeks delay from when it was filmed and there is no sort of social media ban on the housemates. This means the show is incredibly meta as the housemates are aware of their own celebrity and public reception while living in the house and also sometimes watch episodes together in the house revealing side conversations and secret crushes. Spicy!

Once you get obsessed with this show, you’ll discover the original series Terrace House: Boys x Girls Next Door ran for 98 episodes (that’s literally 98 weeks, almost 2 years) with many housemate changes and an actual house change too! Oh ya, that’s the other thing about the show, people don’t have to stay on it. So if someone accomplishes their goals, or feels like they’ve outgrown the house then they leave and they’re replaced with someone of the same gender. These shakeups can drastically change the dynamic in the house depending on how old the new people are, whether they’re outgoing, whether they drink alcohol, and whether they’re looking for love.

There’s several different “series” of Terrace House available on Netflix, but unfortunately I can’t find any legit streaming sites with the original series (that being said, I’ve managed to watch 84 of the 98 episodes). I’d recommend watching any of them (Boys x Girls In the City, Opening New Doors, Tokyo 2019-2020 - which is waiting to restart airing with part 3), but encourage you to not watch Aloha State first. Aloha State takes place in Oahu and has a bigger mix of Asian Americans and overseas Japanese so that makes for an interesting dynamic, but to get the pure Terrace House experience you should start with the other series that take place in Japan.

HOLY SHIT, I literally just realized as I was writing this that the series currently filming, Tokyo 2019-2020, is literally happening in real time, which means that we will get to see how the house is impacted by COVID-19. Hope they’re all healthy, it helps they don’t wear shoes in the house ;)

WATCH THIS SHOW. You’ll have lots of opinions about the housemates so I look forward to hearing who are your favorites and least favorites.

Hyori’s Bed and Breakfast

I feel like this show is a bit of a sleeper. It’s super well known in Korea and Asia in general, but definitely never reached the cult following in the US like Terrace House. Each episode is 1-1.5 hours, but there is only two seasons of the show and no expectation of a third season because they kept getting stalkers trying to break into the house as a result of the fame brought by the show, so that might be part of why it hasn’t caught on yet in the US. Let’s change that now, folks!

I mentioned this show in a previous post:

I "stumbled upon" this show because because Netflix kept trying to incept me to watch it since I liked Terrace House so much. It's a Korean reality TV show that's filmed Terrace House/Big Brother style and it's about Hyori Lee (who is a former, mega K-Pop star) and her husband Sang-Soon (also a famous Korean musician) and them opening their home on the picturesque Jeju Island as a....you guessed it...bed and breakfast. For the non K-Pop fans reading, think if Britney Spears opened her house up as a BNB and you showed up and Ariana Grande was the staff member doing the dishes and making you coffee

After watching more of the show and learning more about Hyori, I think it’s actually more like if Madonna opened her house up as a BNB because Hyori was, is a huge musical icon. Not that you’d be able to tell just how famous she is though by the charming and nurturing way she and her husband treat their guests and staff. You’ll be really surprised at how hardworking and diligent these very famous K-Pop artists are given they could just hire assistants to do everything, but if you watch the episode of Explained about K-Pop it makes more sense. Being a K-Pop star is like going through Making The Band/the Army in terms of discipline and rigor.

Season 1 takes place during the summer and season 2 takes place in the winter so you get to see the island and the BNB in two vastly different settings. In either season, the scenery of Jeju island is dreamy and the quiet little sanctuary Hyori, Sang-Soon, and their staff create for their guests is something that’ll maybe make you embrace this Stay-At-Home order.

Stay safe, and stay tuned my friends, love you…