“Thank God we can’t tell the future. We’d never get out of bed,” is one of the most memorable lines in “August: Osage County.” That line played on a loop in my head while I watched Netflix’s “The Boyfriend,” the Japanese reality series about queer men looking for love and friendship that prioritizes tender drama over boozy machinations.
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Interspersed throughout the series are quick-cut flash-forwards to what will happen to the men we’re meeting. There are swoon-worthy moments, heartbroken moments, and everything in between. “The Boyfriend” is hardly the first series, reality or scripted, to shuffle the past, present, and future to underscore a point or to keep the audience watching. ( “The Bachelor” just did it to great effect in the Season 28 premiere.) But there’s something deeply moving in how “The Boyfriend” handles it.
Much of the charm and power of “The Boyfriend” lies in how ordinary the proceedings are. A group of men gather together in a house in a beachside town, and they are given a daily budget to split amongst themselves and a job running a coffee truck. In a scene early in the first episode, they have a group meeting and decide to name the coffee truck Brewtiful; the orderly and considerate way they discuss their new business shouldn’t just be a lesson for dating show contestants — it should be a lesson for anyone with an office job.
The men on “The Boyfriend” — among them Usaka, a well-known go-go boy, chef Kazuto, and model and barista Ryota — shine because of the mundanity of their days. They are sweetly tentative around one another even as they develop romantic attachments amidst the chores and work, and we watch genuine friendships blossom in the house. But always, those flash-forwards are lurking in our minds as we watch.
“August: Osage County” wasn’t the only play I thought a lot about while I binged the first eight episodes (the final two premiere July 30). I also thought about J.B. Priestly’s “Time and the Conways,” one of his so-called “Time Plays” that dramatizes J. W. Dunne’s Theory of Time. In brief: Dunne posited that all of time is happening simultaneously, but humans can only perceive time in a linear fashion.
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A heady concept for a Netflix reality show, but watching the men open up to one another amidst flashes of the past and future — all used sparingly, to even greater success — I thought about the choices we’d make if we knew how a relationship would end. What lines would we draw? Would knowing the ending always spoil the beginning? Would Ikuo ask Kazuto, “Do you mind if I fall in love?” if he knew in advance what reaction that would elicit?
Like so much of the series, the choice of what to reveal about the men’s futures (and at what point) is a thoughtful one that adds immensely to the show’s power. Here, as in other aspects of the series, the reality TV conventions are delicately tweaked. We’re not eagerly clicking “Next Episode” to see who just got a drink thrown in their face; we’re impatiently waiting to find out who was selected to work in a coffee truck. More importantly, the big moments of romance feel earned; never before has a first kiss seemed so sexy and cathartic.
Sometimes, just watching men allow themselves the space to be vulnerable with one makes for great TV — a lesson more reality series could take to heart. That this is a rare same-sex reality dating show is worth celebrating. But its commitment to kindness shouldn’t be ignored.
The first eight episodes of “The Boyfriend” are streaming on Netflix. The final two episodes premiere July 30.
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