This Slept-On Hulu Series Has a Surprisingly Good Rotten Tomatoes Score

When it comes to film and television, I'm actually an anomaly in that I pretty much abstain. I have three genres that I'll make an effort to watch: Wes Anderson, Old Hollywood and...Despicable Me. (What can I say? I love Minions.) However, as the host of a classics book club in which many of our reads have made it into screen adaptations, it's been a fun activity to read, then watch and debate. (Fight me, I'll always swoon over Pride & Prejudice circa 2005.) This little book club habit has extended into my personal reading, so when I learned that Charles Yu's 2020 novel (and National Book Award winner) Interior Chinatown had hit Hulu, I was intrigued.

I ended up watching all ten Season 1 episodes within a week, which is a record because it took me a year to watch the 24-episode K-drama Mr. Sunshine. The Jimmy O. Yang-led dramedy has an 87 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and, in my opinion, has definitely been slept on.

While I'm normally pretty grouchy about artistic license when it comes to book adaptations, Interior Chinatown's liberties worked—and, honestly, were necessary. Both works follow protagonist Willis Wu, a waiter at his uncle's restaurant in Chinatown. (The book's setting is ambiguous, but in the series, Chinatown is located in the fictional city of Port Harbor.) Wu yearns deeply to be the main character of his own life—and in life, in general. However, he's resigned to being a background actor in the perpetually running police procedural, Black and White. This is where the works diverge. The book is innovative in its script-like structure but ultimately has little plot. Yu reworked his novel for the screen by honing in on the mystery of Wu's brother, Jonathan, who disappeared years ago. The series follows Wu as he begins to investigate Jonathan's disappearance, being helped (and hindered) by familiar book characters along the way.

Something that unexpectedly surprised me was the way Chinatown was so deftly and carefully rendered. I grew up going to church with my family in our local Northern California Chinatown, but as a third-generation Asian American, it felt as foreign to me as the mainland itself. However, Yu and co-executive producer Taika Waititi brought out all the best parts of it in the latter's signature quirky style. From the paper lanterns to the Chinatown gate and shabby laundromats, it kind of felt like home. And Golden Palace, the restaurant where Wu works, completely nailed a typical dining experience—plus, the comedic bits that take place once "outsiders" (read: non-Asians) discover the restaurant were too relatable and too funny.

Surface-level elements aside, Interior Chinatown made a serious case for the plight of Asians in America, who are often (golden) handcuffed by model minority myth. We're quite, polite and don't make trouble, not to mention how we all "look the same" and are basically invisible (a stereotype that the series comments on frequently and humorously). As Wu gets entangled in a police investigation after witnessing a kidnapping, he persistently pushes back against a system that, at times, literally refuses to see him for who he is.

Meanwhile, the show uses Wu's mother, Lily, to explore themes like immigration, identity and assimilation as she pursues a second act after retirement as a Chinatown realtor. Interior Chinatown nails that feeling of having given your whole life in the pursuit of your children's success, only to be left underestimated and empty, having sacrificed the best parts of yourself for kids who may never understand or see it. That broke my heart.

Interior Chinatown is billed as a dramedy, and that's exactly what I got in equal measure. Sure, my heart ached over Wu's deteriorating relationship with his mom and his desire to break out of the mold he'd been typecasted for. But I was also howling with laughter as his friend and coworker, Fatty Choi (Ronny Chieng), started bottling the restaurant's generic table sauce and selling it to outsiders as Chinese Suffering. Literally and figuratively, it was too much and I loved it.

Like the novel, the series gets pretty meta. Short of any spoilers, I will say it gave me The Truman Show vibes, but darker. And as for the plot, the series kept me guessing the whole way.

And now, my last tip: skip the Chinese Suffering. It's just chili sauce.