Discover more from One Thing
🟧 Netflix’s charmingly polite new dating show
“The Boyfriend” is an antidote to messy reality slop
Chris Erik Thomas: Sometimes, a piece of media is released that is so specifically tailored to your interests that it feels fabricated. It’s as if it has been created in some anonymous room by media executives, their business suits covered by sterile lab coats as they pour liquified records of your viewing history into test tubes to build an Überprogramm. That piece of media, for me, is The Boyfriend, a new reality show on Netflix. I discovered the show through genuine word-of-mouth via a Chinese friend's IG story. He had posted a photo of a cast member, the beautiful model and barista Ryota (my personal favorite), slurping noodles in what could’ve passed for a scene from the legendary, defunct Japanese reality show Terrace House. A few DMs later, I was introduced to The Boyfriend and immediately devoured the first batch of three episodes.
The series boldly answers the question: "What if Terrace House and Love Island were smashed together in a seaside home in Japan, and everyone was (naturally) beautiful, (extremely) well-mannered, and, most importantly, gay (or bi)?” While I don’t personally watch Love Island, MILF Island, or any related archipelago-based shows in the “love, sex, and alcohol poisoning” genre of summer TV, I was a major fan of Terrace House before its abrupt, tragic ending in 2020. I bring up this series because, well, Terrace House lazily strolled so The Boyfriend could… walk slightly faster (and be gay). Both shows feel like the reality TV equivalent of taking an Ambien and cocooning yourself under a weighted blanket.
Terrace House, a Japanese franchise that aired from 2012 to 2020, was about six strangers living together in a house while pursuing career goals, forging friendships, and sometimes falling in love. Between scenes, the action cut to a selection of professional comedians and TV personalities in a plush studio who watched the action as it happened, providing live commentary as they analyzed dialogue and body language. The meta-commentary was like listening to a podcast about a TV show while you’re watching it. In The Boyfriend, six strangers live together in a beachside house in Tateyama, Chiba Prefecture, as they forge friendships and look for love. Between scenes, the action cuts to a selection of professional comedians and TV personalities in a plush studio who provide the same kind of commentary. Even some on- and off-screen talent from Terrace House is back; producer Dai Ota is now executive producer, and core panelist Yoshimi Tokui has returned. Terrace House hive, we are eating.
Of course, there are some major differences. The drag queen Durian Lollobrigida joined the panelists to literally act as a cultural liaison for the heterosexuals, telling the New York Times: "I thought it wouldn't be good if heterosexual people who are in the majority were just watching gay men mingle. So I thought it was necessary for someone to be there to act as a translator." The show is also genuinely historic; Japan is the only G7 nation that has not legalized same-sex marriage. In episode two, 27-year-old chef Kazuto sits with Ryota overlooking the sea as wistful music plays. He talks about growing up the eldest son of small-town rice farmers, and the difficulty of dating. “I wondered what was the point of dating if you can’t get married,” he says, adding: “Everyone would wonder why they were born this way, if they lived in our world, wouldn’t they?” For the 34-year-old South Korean designer Taeheon, part of the reason for joining the show was to “openly express who he is,” explaining in an early episode that he’s still closeted to his family despite being out amongst his friends.
The casting also breaks the mold for a major Japanese show, pushing back against the nationalist (and racist) idea of “Nihonjinron,” which sees Japan as a completely homogeneous country. The contestants include 29-year-old Alan, an IT worker who is part Brazilian, Italian, and Japanese, and 34-year-old Gensei, a Taiwanese hair and makeup artist. There’s also the 36-year-old Usak, one of Japan’s most famous go-go dancers (and, controversially, a daily drinker of boiled chicken smoothies), who joins the show at the end of episode one after the cast makes an outing to a gay club.
Some of the usual trappings of dating shows are there. We have the producer manipulation via forcing the contestants to choose who they want to pick for a date, fierce but respectful love triangles, and the classic “surprise new cast member arrives who has slept with a current cast member,” but The Boyfriend has its own unique flavor. One of the show's funniest quirks is that all the guys aren’t just there to flirt and find love; they’re also literally put to work running a mobile coffee shop out of a cute blue van that they name “Brewtiful U” with the assistance of — and this is not a joke — ChatGPT. Each day, one of the men is chosen to work the van and gets to pick one other guy to help, thus providing a steady stream of one-on-one dates punctuated by the aroma of fresh coffee. They also have a weekly food budget, which causes a major clash over chicken breast prices that is so ridiculous I feel like I made it up just typing it and prompts one panelist to say, “The problem is the chicken, not you.”
As Tokui says in the fourth episode, “When you look at it, love is kind of like fermented food.” The same could be said about digital streaming release strategies. Instead of dumping the entire season onto their cluttered library like a body in a ditch, Netflix has gone slow drip like a pour-over coffee served from the Brewtiful U van, allowing the drama to unfold in two- to three-episode batches every Tuesday in July. The strategy is paying off, with searches for “ボーイ フレンド netflix,” “the boyfriend netflix cast,” and “the boyfriend netflix” rocketing up the Google Trends charts 850%, 750%, and 650%, respectively, since the first three episodes dropped on July 8. The early writeups in The Independent, Digital Spy, TODAY, The Guardian, and even GQ (they, unsurprisingly, went for the menswear angle) have also helped to propel the show to virality, and we’re all better off for it. Nobody needs a reminder of just how cooked (literally and figuratively) the world is right now. With four episodes left of The Boyfriend, what better way to mentally escape the chaos than by sitting down, relaxing, and watching a group of handsome men politely and quietly compete for love?
Chris Erik Thomas is a Berlin-based writer and editor whose work spotlights trends and talent in the realms of fashion, art, and culture. They've previously worked as the digital editor for Art Düsseldorf, and their words have appeared in Highsnobiety, ARTnews, The Face, BBC, Out Magazine, Paper, and more.
Best of One Thing
If you’re a new subscriber, look back through the archives for our greatest hits. We send out short newsletters on taste, authenticity, and recommendation culture every Tuesday and Thursday.
Summer linen report A brand-by-brand review of airy summer shirts, IRL vetted only.
Voice, trust, taste, scarcity An essay on the importance of unique perspectives in the digital media industry.
Mocktail summer What makes a good NA drink? Nate investigates spritzes and sharbats.
“Cutre” On the special Spanish word for tacky roughness that can also be desirable, like a dive bar or a grumpy waiter.
The disappearing Insta grid We’re tired of posting; the new cool thing is to have an empty account.
Subscribe to One Thing
A catalogue of authenticity