Clover's Corner Recap: The Boyfriend, Episode 1
Clover's Corner Recap: The Boyfriend, Episode 1
It's Clover's Corner, and we're just living in it
Note from Julia: Thank you Clover for writing this long and hilarious recap!! The full post is for paid subscribers only, but I’m leaving the first third or so of it above the paywall so that everyone can get a taste. <3 As a reminder, proceeds from paid memberships are going toward our bar fund, for our lesbian bar that we are slowly but surely trying to open. Also, this post is TOO LONG FOR EMAIL, so to read it in full, open it in your browser. Okay, much love to you all!
Hello sluts and slores, and welcome to Clover’s Corner! This Clover’s Corner is going to be more of a Clover’s Column, because I have been greenlit to recap every episode of The Boyfriend, produced by Netflix and Dai Ota, of Terrace House. This is a special recap series because it’s an indulgence in a niche interest that I, Julia, and other lesbians I know share: gay men.
The Boyfriend is a reality dating television show involving a group of young single gay men in Japan, all living in a gorgeous house together just outside Tokyo. They are ever-so-gently nudged to find love amongst each other through small games centered around crush confessions as well as running a coffee truck together. All of this is further digested for the audience through a panel of tarento who respond to the drama as they watch the episode. For anyone who’s watched Terrace House, the last Japanese reality show to make it big in the states through a deal with Netflix, this format will be familiar, but it’s different enough in all the right ways to make everyone in our house scream and cry.
The biggest difference is honestly the boys. I am not trying to fall into a trap of infantilizing gay men or Japanese people, but this show is so fucking cute. These boys are so fucking cute. We would kill and die for some of these boys, and I think you would, too. There is something so very real and immediately vulnerable about the men who make up the cast of The Boyfriend that creates not only charming and funny moments, but truly heartfelt and even heartrending ones.
I was initially drawn to The Boyfriend for the same reason others were: it was Japan’s first gay reality dating program. Of course, in terms of this particular genre Japan is not very far behind the United States – pretty much every U.S. reality dating show that has featured an exclusively gay cast was made post-2020, with the exception of a Logo Bachelor clone I have not watched called Finding Prince Charming. But seeing the news did get me thinking about gay life in Japan, a place I’ve never been. What would it be like to watch this show, clearly made with an American audience in mind, without the same kind of intimate knowledge of the gay sensibility that I’m normally able to bring to viewings of such cherished items as All Aboard: Rosie’s Family Cruise?
To prepare, I did some mild research into the history of homosexuality in Japan, as well as some investigation into what day-to-day life may look like for modern Japanese gay men and queers. I’ve already taken up way too much space NOT recapping, so I won’t go into it all here, but suffice it to say: Japan is huge, and old, and while for the most part there are only so many ways to “be gay” in the cultural imaginary, in reality there is a multitude of things going on. Maybe some of that will come up in the recaps themselves. If you know more about being gay in Japan, please sound off in the comments.
Okay, so sorry about that, on to the actual recap!
Episode 1: That Summer, I Fell in Love With Him
The episode opens with a brief montage over music showing snapshots of emotional highs and lows that will occur over the season. The show also repeats this with each individual boy who enters the house, which I think is fun. The opening theme song rips, it’s called “Dazed and Confused” by a Korean band inexplicably named Glen Check, and we hear the high-powered pop beats over gorgeous shots of trains running through rural towns. We start seeing mere glimpses of the boys. They look fashionable. We also get an insane shot from under someone’s leg as they’re walking, like that Lorde album cover.
We then see the name of the house the boyfriends will be staying at: The Green Room.
Our boyfriends begin to arrive, one by one, to the house. We have Dai, 22, a university student, who says he’s been through so much he believes he will never find love, and also that he’s attracted to eccentric people. He’s the first to show up, and nervously holds a throw pillow to his body while he sits on the couch.
Then comes Taeheon, 34, and a designer. He is from South Korea, and has a prim little mustache. Dai immediately tells him he is good looking, albeit with the same candor you would use with someone who’s going to the same floor as you in an elevator. Still though, a little flirting! Dai’s flirty!
Then Ryota walks in, and as soon as he does I say, “He looks like a model”. He is a model. And a bisexual! He is 28, soft-spoken, intense, and emotional. Possibly a scorpio, or whatever blood type is akin to a scorpio in Japan.
After an awkward couple minutes where everyone just sits silently on the couch, Julia’s favorite boyfriend enters: Gensei, 34, a makeup artist, and arguably the most “flaming” member of the house. Julia finds him completely gorgeous, and I do not, but he is inarguably good looking, and is so very sweet and kind and you really do just want to provide something for him when you look at his eyes. He also has visible tattoos, which is interesting because he does not give off “bad boy” vibes. He also sits down politely.
Shun, 23, has a beautiful All-American Quarterback vibe to him, with lazily coiffed straight hair and a round, strong jaw. He has a face a plastic surgeon would use to advertise. He says “I want to have a same-sex marriage” and to adopt kids, and he has trouble looking the interviewer in the eye. He seems extremely downbeat.
The host is an iPad, which Taeheon picks up, and it welcomes the boyfriends to the Green Room, where they will be staying for a month. It tells them that “green room” is a surfing term for “the sacred space inside the barrel of a wave”. Okay? This show is not about surfing even in the slightest bit, but I guess I can see the metaphor?
Host iPad also informs the boyfriends that they will be running a coffee truck, and then we go to meet our panel! I’ll run through these guys a little quicker because it’s less important. There’s Megumi, who has a deep voice that makes me obsessed with her; Thelma, who is a part Afro-Trinidadian R&B singer who dresses in a kind of kawaii Harajuku-lite style; Chiaki, a mysterious woman who usually dresses in one color and occasionally does a single hard blink that I love; Tokui, of Tutorial and Terrace House fame, who does his normal comedian schtick; and finally Durian Lollobrigida, a drag queen who, at least right now, is not actually in drag. He has come to offer the gay perspective to the affairs of the hour. Tokui comments that right now, the boyfriends are like “flowers in the bud stage. They are trembling buds,” and he is absolutely right. They are all trembling.
Now the boys get to work naming their new coffee truck that they will steward around Tokyo Bay for the next month. They have a big chalkboard with some katakana and some English up there, words like “Beans” and “truck” – it’s a blue sky phase. Taeheon, the group daddy, is leading the sesh, and suggests maybe a play on “boys”, since it’s all boys in the business, but then checks himself: “Is there anyone here who uses pronouns other than ‘he/him’?” he asks. I don’t know Japanese well enough to understand how this concept translates, but I was charmed either way. Anyway, everyone uses “he/him”, but at least one boyfriend is bisexual.
The brainstorm is interrupted by a new boy arriving! Kazuto, 27, is a chef who manages a restaurant, and his look is extremely boy-next-door handsome. Shun notes the bounce in his step and says, “He must have led an entirely different life from mine.” The panelists find this incredibly presumptuous on Shun’s part.
Kazuto, for his part, says in his interview he just wants to live a comfy life with a caring partner. He wants to sleep together at night after work. I want this for him too.
As if attempting to speedrun getting a husband, Kazuto gets to work that evening filleting a three-foot long fish to make carpaccio for everyone?? He does it so casual and gives everyone, including us, huge boners.
And yet, when the boyfriends learn, over carpaccio by the pool, that there is a sauna on the property, it’s intriguing to see how unhorny they are about it. Contestants on an American gay dating show would obviously hoot and holler in a kind of performative (pejorative, not Butlerian) way upon learning of a sauna, but the boyfriends are just like, “Oh neat, that will be nice after work.” Ryota says to the camera, “I’ve realized that I’ve never faced romance head-on.” These boys are so lonesome I could cry.
But with the help of Host iPad, they will not be lonesome for long, as they are all instructed to write secret letters to one another in the night and leave them in each other’s little door mailboxes to check in the morning! I really like the difference between a small activity like this and the more contrived “challenges” we see in something like Are You The One. It’s also sort of a classic manga trope that lends an adolescent air to everyone’s romantic inclinations. “What if I don’t get a letter?” says Gensei, making Julia gasp, appalled to imagine such a world. “I think I won’t get one,” says Shun, even though everyone seems completely obsessed with him. What happened to you, Shun?
In the morning all the boys wake up and look at their letters, one by one. Taeheon wrote to Kazuto, but got no letters himself, even though I think he’s hot as hell. He was probably too quiet! Ryota also got no letter. You’re a slow burn, Ryota, don’t sweat it! Gensei gets a short letter saying “I don’t know anything about you yet, so I’d like to know more :)” Thank God he got a letter! I do not want his little flower petal heart to break.
Shun also gets a letter. “He must be so happy” a panelist says over a shot of Shun looking completely vacant. His letter is from Dai, who is so animalistically attracted to him it seems impossible, especially given the general climate of lust on this show. Dai, to his credit, gets THREE letters, to which Durian the Drag Queen says, “Being carefree reigns supreme.” This is a real point of cultural clashing for me, because to my eyes Dai did not seem significantly more or less carefree than any of the other boys, but I suppose he was.
Dai really hopes one of his three letters is from Shun, but none are. His letters are from Gensei, Kazuto, and Ryota, all talking about how easy he was to talk to and how they want to hang with him more. So who did Shun write to?
“I didn’t write to anyone,” Shun says. “None of them were my type.” He looks completely despondent saying this, like these boys were his final chance for love. The panelists gasp.
Dai finds himself in a tricky situation here because he’s sort of being everyone’s friend. But is he anyone’s boyfriend? The panelists discuss this: Going too hard into friendship can close off romance, but the line can be tricky to walk when meeting new people. What intentions do you go in with? What do you let blossom, and what do you prune? The panel is surprisingly insightful! There is a lot of “Hmmm”ing in agreement.
Meanwhile, it is a new day and it is finally time to name the coffee truck. The chalkboard currently has “Coffee Ur Day” written on it, but I guess the boyfriends think that’s not good enough, because they decide to ask an AI for a name. “Considering the times,” one of them explains, before giving the prompt. “It is a truck run by 5 or 6 men which departs from a house called the ‘Green Room’”, they tell the AI, which to me is not the right information to give to come up with a themed name. Nevertheless, the AI spits at them the name “Brewtiful”, which someone writes on the chalkboard. Then they add a “U” to create “Brewtiful U”, and everyone claps politely and gives a deadened “Yaaaay”. Absolutely dogshit name, terrible job boys.
Here’s a little aside while the boys are learning how to brew good coffee from some experts: SO much is conveyed in this show through little looks and semi-aborted arm motions. Dai partners with Shun to learn coffee making, and at the end, when leaving, places a quick hand on his back, to which Shun raises a limp hand to his backpack and lets it flutter down the side like a falling leaf. The panelists applaud Dai’s boldness.
We see more of Dai’s boldness in a scene where he leaves the house to hang out in a random cavernous beige living room with some of his glammed-up girlies who are apparently his besties. Everyone is housing pizza and talking about how much they love it, but Dai is also talking about how much he loves Shun and how horny he makes him. His girls are like, “Go get him girl!!!” Dai says, “I’m a little dancing puppet for this beautiful boy.” In a show that is, whether it likes it or not, acting as a sort of ambassador for Japanese gay sexuality to some other countries, it is refreshing to start seeing one of the boys acting a little different from the rest. Dai clearly has some sort of gay life outside of this show – it makes sense that he might be nervous in this novel situation, but it’s clear that he’s outgoing, friendly, almost puppyish; he has a gaggle of fruit flies that he drips gossip with, and he seems to fuck. I’m hoping that as this show goes on, we get a little more of the backstory of everyone revealed, and we start to see that they really do come from different walks of life, instead of building an image of a monolithic gay Japan.
Anyway, Shun is holding his own court with his own girlies, aka the boyfriends, who are all mildly obsessed with him for no reason but his enthralling helpless porcelain boy beauty. He tells the boys what he’s into: someone youthful, earnest, and beautiful. Kind of like Ganymede or something. Earlier in the episode, Shun mentioned bishounen manga, which is a style of homoerotic manga mainly dealing with lithe, elfen beautiful boys. This manga was originally marketed toward heterosexual women and girls, and is mostly made by them, but clearly it’s found a market in gay men as well. I wonder how much that colors Shun’s sense of attraction!
In the next scene where everyone goes to the beach (the house is right on Tokyo Bay), there is a requisite minute where everyone comments on each other’s bods to the camera. Dai notes that Taeheon, the father figure of the group, is ripped. Shun notices that Dai is ripped. They talk about bodies in a very specific way, saying things like, “Clearly he works on his chest.” Kazuto, the chef, says he doesn’t care for such a toned body, and would be happy with someone with more of a belly. The panelists for some reason take this as an opportunity to voice their suspicions of Kazuto – that he’s being too neutral and reserved, and putting up a barrier around himself. I disagree! I think he’s just being sweet and naturally relaxed! I love Kazuto and I think he’s a nice boy.
Over dinner, the boyfriends sit around the living room and ask who all’s bisexual. Dai pipes up first, saying he mostly dates men, but likes women too. He says with men it starts with sexual attraction, but with women he falls emotionally. Ryota follows suit, raising his hand to announce his bisexuality, which we already knew but the boyfriends did not. It’s also very lowkey, but in a confessional, Gensei mentions that a bisexual lover makes for a lot of competition. Shun thinks the same, saying dispiritedly, “I don’t think I could win.” It’s a sad little stereotyped moment for our bisexual kings! But for the rest of the episode it doesn’t really come up, so maybe no one actually cares very much. In some American and British queer tv I’ve seen, the second someone comes out as bi it’s treated like the monster from The Thing is on set, so this is chiller than that.
Durian, the drag queen, pipes up to say most bisexual men in gay circles would not be so open about their bisexuality, precisely because it can be treated so weird, so it’s nice to see them come out like that. All the panelists nod in appreciation. I really love all these panelists being so earnest about this low key gay drama, especially Tokui, who’s like a 50-year old straight comedian. It would be like having Norm MacDonald comment on a gay reality show and being really truly invested in the hearts of the boys and calling them “trembling buds”.
In the last few minutes of the episode, Host iPad sends the boys a curveball: There will be a NEW member to the house tonight, and they’re all going to the club to meet him! The club they go to is Camelot Club in Shibuya, which is not a gay club, but on this night is hosting an all-male go-go dancer revue, with four muscley men in speedos gyrating in a line on a low stage in front of the boyfriends. It is a notable uptick in visible sexuality on the show, and the boys immediately start getting LOOSE. They are drunk and start playing schoolyard games where losers have to say the name of their crush to someone else at the table. This is also what I would do in this situation – anyone who knows me knows I am always trying to get a game of spin the bottle going. Even Shun is into it, he’s smiling! Aw look at him smile!
Dai and Gensei are the losers of the game, and have to show Shun who they’re crushing on. Dai writes it into his phone and shows Shun: it says Shun on the phone!!! The panelists are both impressed and appalled by his forwardness, sort of the way wizards in Harry Potter talk about Voldemort. “He’s a love monster!” they say. Shun, for his part, seems quite happy, so chalk one up for Dai! Gensei wrote Kazuto, which was not explored further in this scene, but would be a cute connection.
As the boys turn to focus on the go-go dancers, the camera lingers on one at the end of the line, and the boys wonder if he might be the new cast member. He is! Apparently, he is one of the most famous male go-go dancers in Japan, which I didn’t even know was a distinction you could reach. As the boys all gape up at him, drooling, one of them says, “He’s unreachable”.
This is a long recap, but I’m still going to take an aside to talk about how the boys are relating to these dancers. As I said at the top, I did some MINIMAL research prior to watching this show, mostly in the form of podcasts and interviews while I was working. One interview with Dr. Thomas Baudinette discusses his book “Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo”, and he talks about how while conducting research in Ni-chōme, Tokyo’s big gay ward, he started to understand how trapped so many men were by restrictive masculine ideals, specifically ideals of size, muscle, and power. He makes it out to be like that’s what being gay in Tokyo is – just wandering around Shinjuku drinking and idolizing big strong men while wishing you were bigger and stronger and hating yourself, and I think his perspective is a little skewed (if you judge any gay scene by the most regular regulars at the bar, you’ll probably walk away with a very specific and sad conclusion), but the general shape of his analysis is worth comparing to The Boyfriend.
Notably, none of the boyfriends on the show are particularly big or masculine. Taeheon is maybe the closest, and he really just looks like a sweet, fit dad. A lot of them are pretty visibly feminine in appearance and gait, and no one, including the panelists, have brought it up yet. If you were just watching this show knowing nothing about gay life in Japan, you would assume this is the only way gay people there are. But now here they are in front of these dancers who are, quite literally, twice their size, and they are salivating! Even when they’ve all been quietly crushing on each other, being at the club it’s like they’ve all been given permission to be horny, and whether it’s sincere or not, they are all at least acting like these huge men are the ideal of sex. It’s a loaded scene!
But then the dancers finish their dance and I shit you not, they all line up, hold hands, and bow like a chorus line. It completely defuses any sexual friction built by the performance. Then Usak, 36, the biggest and buffest of the dancers with the largest lower jaw, joins the boyfriends at a private lounge area to introduce himself as the newest member of the house. Again, he is introduced as one of the most popular and famous go-go boys in Japan, leading me to wonder what he’s doing on this show. The boyfriends are like “this is untenable”, they are freaking out so much. The idolatry is real, they can barely talk to him. Usak has a really sweet friendly smile on, but the question remains: can this enormous, famous sex boy fit in with the quiet normies of the Green Room?!? Find out on episode TWO of The Boyfriend!
That’s all for this recap, if you liked what I’m doing here with the extreme length and little dips of analysis please let me know in the comments, and thank you for supporting Clover’s Column. Every comment gets me one pat on the head from Julia.
It’s Clover’s Corner we’re just livin in it! As someone who’s not known for their reading skills, this honestly didn’t feel long cause it was just a fun read, can’t wait for the next installment!
EDIT: I called the boy's love genre "bishounen" and I am mixing it up with "yaoi". Bishounen, "beautiful boy", is an archetype present in many genres but yaoi is specifically the genre of male gay romance, usually between younger males. Any online gay nerd would know this.