I’m starting this thread to serve as a general Netflix viewing thread. Major Nefilix series like Luke Cage and the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt are popular and watched enough to sustain their own threads, but most of them generate threads with the lifespan of trout mayflies, and are long vanished by the time I get to them in my queue.
The first series I would like to bring up is a relatively new (to Netflix) Japanese import called Samurai Gourmet (“Oniboshi no Gurume”). I put in my my queue primarily because it was Japanese, but I didn’t have high expectations. The copy made it sound like a fictionalized version of Tony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmer having exotic food adventures, but the actual show turned out to be quite different.
Our main character, Takeshi Kasumi, is a recently retired salaryman (The first episode opens with him waking up in a panic, thinking he has overslept for work.) who was a workaholic who ate “Set Lunch A” in the company cafeteria every day. Retirement has left him at loose ends, as his wife has a busy social schedule and life of her own (She is always running off to yoga class or choir practice or an alumni meeting.), so he takes to wandering around town and learning to enjoy life at a slower pace.
A lot of that enjoyment comes in the form of eating out. The promo pic on Netflix shows Takeshi in a natty suit slurping noodles in an immaculate restaurant. The show is more along the lines of: Takeshi dressed like an old-retired guy goes to the equivalent of Mel’s Diner. It doesn’t deal with exotic or luxurious dishes, or trendy neighborhoods. Some of the dishes Takeshi eats might be unknown to American viewers, but that’s because they are more on the home-cooking end of Japanese cuisine and won’t often be found in stateside Japanese restaurants.
A show centered one one character like Samurai Gourmet, especially since a good chunk of screen time featuresTakeshi’s internal monologue, needs strong lead performance, and it gets on here. The actor conveys both Takeshi’s love of and his somewhat nebbishy anxiety about social conventions ("Will these people look at me like an old drunk if I order a beer with my lunch?"or “Should I say something to these loud, obnoxious jerks at the next table who are ruining this quiet coffeeshop?” ). It’s a very low-key, slice-of-life show that’s basically one old man wondering where he is going to eat lunch, but I find it utterly charming.
There is an actual samurai. When Takeshi has one of his anxiety moments, he “sees” the scene time-shift to the samurai era. There, the main character is a scruffy ronin, who doesn’t care about social conventions and is determined to enjoy life’s simple pleasures. When Takeshi “returns” to the present, the ronin’s example helps him be a little more assertive and enjoy himself without fretting about what others think.
