It's been four years since the cancellation of Terrace House, a Japanese reality show that felt like the realest thing on TV until...it turned out it was anything but. Between the reckoning over those revelations and the absence of the program itself, it's been a long, cold four years for fans of the series.
I'm one of those fans, and I'll be honest with you up top here: despite everything we learned in the wake of the show's cancellation, from the manipulation of the "plot" to the conditions its stars were forced to live under--which culminated in the death of a participant, Hana Kimura--a part of me (a very small, selfish part) still missed the show and wanted it back. I didn't want it to come back in the same broken ways of course, changes would have to be made, but I loved the core premise of Terrace House so much that I figured it was only a matter of time until it found a way to retool itself and return to the airwaves.
As the years went by, though, and it became clear Terrace House's multiple failures and their tragic consequences had made the brand radioactive, regardless of anything it ever did right, I think most fans--myself included--had made peace with the fact the show had existed, run its course, fucked things up and was now part of TV history. Until, out of nowhere, along came The Boyfriend.
This show's marketing has been very careful with how it pitches the program. It has rightly been hailed as a triumph of inclusivity in its native Japan, as it's the first ever gay dating show to air in the country, and the way it's able to depict same-sex relationships as something totally normal and not some exotic spectacle is a triumph of both its setup and its production. The Boyfriend has been sold as a pioneering dating show, which in one way is exactly what it is, and has been a huge success as a result.
But let's be real: as you could probably tell just by watching the trailer above, this is Terrace House rebranded. This is the successor show fans have been waiting years for. Just like Terrace House, The Boyfriend is about a group of singles tossed into a fancy AirBnB, where they have to juggle work and play, form friendships, find love and be on camera the whole time they're doing it. The events are even narrated by a studio panel, which--in case you were still on the fence after everything I just described--includes Terrace House veteran Yoshimi Tokui.
Yet for all its similarities, The Boyfriend also has some key differences that were surely implemented to avoid the show repeating Terrace House's mistakes. Its stars were only thrown into a house for a month, not months. There were less people in the house, everybody was given their own private bedroom, drinking appeared to be far less common and most plotlines seemed to be driven out in the open instead of behind the scenes, since stars were repeatedly sent out on work assignments (basically day-long dates) together, and were filmed the entire time.
These changes had an effect on what we saw and enjoyed as voyeurs, of course. Everything in The Boyfriend feels tamer and more reserved than Terrace House; the show lacks any real scandal, its smaller cast means there are fewer plotlines to follow and its brevity means there's only a limited rotation of participants. The whole show feels like a shareware version of Terrace House, a replica scale model, ostensibly the same thing, but also greatly reduced.
And that's great? Because let's get a grip, for everything fans loved about Terrace House, a lot of that drama came from a very fucked up place, and it led to some very real and tragic consequences. If what people enjoyed about Terrace House was how real it felt, how chill and relatable everyone's interactions appeared to be compared to the bombast and psycho-competitiveness of Western reality shows, then surely you'll enjoy it even more if those interactions are...more real?
I'm not saying this show has improved the Terrace House formula in a way that can shield it from future controversy, nor can I be some kind of guarantor that every single thing you see in the series is free from the manipulation of producers and camera operators. This is, after all, a reality TV show designed for entertainment, not a documentary. But huge stretches of The Boyfriend take place in a kind of haze, where everyone just hangs out and not much happens, relationships spark then fizzle, and while this initially feels like a disappointment as a viewer, that's also just how life is. It's boring, and awkward, and if the appeal of Terrace House was seeing that kind of stuff play out on your TV screen, please know that The Boyfriend does much the same thing.
Just this time around, it's (hopefully) doing it in a safer way.
