Part II of a three-part series looking at the Hulu series Interior Chinatown in relation to the Asian American-themed media it references, satirizes, and interpolates. The meta-comedic film-set motif of the show pointedly focuses on the “Chinatown Episode” featured in numerous crime-procedural shows, in which the protagonists investigate a murder in Chinatown, which brings them into contact with Asian exotica, typically at the rate of 1.5 murders per season.

As a bonus, I will complain about Google A.I.

Content advisory: Some discussion of sex crimes and rape as related to fictional cop show.

Episode 5: “Chinatown Expert”

Season 2, Episode 3 of NYPD Blue is a classic “Chinatown Episode” titled “Cop Suey.” It was 1994. It is the second-to-last episode with David Caruso as Detective John Kelly, before he left the show and Jimmy Smits took over in the leading role. There is a murder in Chinatown, and Detective Kelly states plainly, “We’re gonna need a Chinese cop.” Enter Tzi Ma, who plays Joe Wu in Interior Chinatown, 30 years later. (Tzi Ma is one of the great treasures of the Asian American character actor firmament, and I just now learned that Tsai Chin is Chinese-British, which saves you, dear reader, from my attempt to make an umbrella statement about the other Asian Americans in that cohort, James Hong, anyway, moving on.) Ma plays recurring guest star Det. Harold Ng, who gives an outstanding performance in the several episodes where he’s enlisted to augment one of the 15th Squad’s East Asian-intensive investigations.

Approximately every police-related gag, bit or cited trope in Interior Chinatown is on full display in “Cop Suey.” In perhaps the most deftly-acted scene, Ng advocates for himself when Kelly questions whether the Chinatown Expert Cop might be withholding information from his colleagues on behalf of the Chinese mobsters suspected of the crime.

Detectives Green and Jones, the photogenic TV-star cops in Interior Chinatown, share a dialogue questioning whether Lana Lee might be a “spy”… for Internal Affairs, but it’s implied they also mean the Infernal Affairs sort of spy. Not to put too fine a point on it, being Asian American, particularly Chinese American, goes with people occasionally thinking you’re a foreign intelligence agent, especially nowadays.

In the wrap-up, Ma/Ng goes out for beers with the squad, assuring we the audience that he’s a homie, echoing the tequila-downing bender Lana Lee embarks on with Willis and Fatty. BTW, if you’re not familiar with Chinese nicknaming conventions, it’s worth knowing that “Fatty” or “Little Fatty” is a rough translation of something Chinese people often call a friend or friendly relative, it’s usually affectionate and not related to the person’s body type, although obviously it sounds a little insulting in English.

Episode 6: “Translator”

There’s an especially fascinating, weird, and ambitious episode in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 3 titled “Inheritance,” which aired about two months after the 9/11 attacks. In “Inheritance,” the serial rapist Darrell is played by Marcus Chong, who also played Tank in The Matrix, and is a mixed-racial person of African American and Chinese heritage. The story takes more than the standard number of twists and turns for a single SVU episode, at one point suggesting that Darrell’s brutal crimes are related to self-hatred enhanced by prejudice between Black and Asian communities, then expanding to question whether Darrell has a genetic predisposition for violence related to being a child born from a rape. It’s extremely intense material, and Chong’s performance is haunting.

I thought of this difficult episode of SVU in relation to Interior Chinatown‘s deconstruction of the Chinatown Episode. “Translator” is especially rife with SVU-style sordid grittiness, at times channeling The Wire. The SVU menace speaks native English, but there’s no translator for his experience. His existence is at odds with our profiling norms, as is the revelation that the Chinese guy was born here. Willis’s uncle nihilistically moans, “It doesn’t matter.” It is left unobserved, whether you are born here or FOB, third-generation or first. It’s always the same reaction, it’s always astounding how good you speak English.

In the novel, Interior Chinatown allows the narrator to address the notion that Asian Americans experience racism in scenarios that are less existentially severe, while also being very familiar to Black Americans and all peoples of color. The aggressions are less life-threatening, but equally ubiquitous, and rooted in similar deliberate ignorance.

The fonts and title cards of Law & Order are replicated precisely in Interior Chinatown, so I’m confident that Episode 6 makes reference to Asian-themed L&O episodes far outside my knowledge base. I’ve only seen maybe 70 Law & Order episodes in my lifetime, and I’m pretty sure if you include every variant and spinoff there’s over two billion of them. If you estimate one occurrence per 22-episode pre-streaming-era network TV season, that’d be over 90 million Chinatown Episodes. However, that figure is based entirely on exaggerated hyperbole, much like the ten million Chinatown Episodes not covered in this article.

Episode 7: “Detective”

So, NYPD Blue Season 7, a.k.a. the peak Danny Sorenson era, features one of my favorite Chinatown Episodes, “Goodbye Charlie.” In this case the Chinese People Predicament is the B-Plot, falling in the lap of Detective Greg Medavoy, played by Gordon Clapp with perennial affable competence. Keone Young plays Charlie, an old friend of Greg’s who needs his off-the-books help to investigate “dopey Joe Chang,” who is living high in a penthouse suite with a bevy of sex providers, presumably off the money of a deceased association gangster guy. Charlie is trying to leave New York to pursue a leisurely life at the pai gow table, which, as far as fictional Chinese American gangster motivations go, is straight gangster.

Sometimes Interior Chinatown points out that the requisite Chinatown Episode is an insulting stereotype-fest, and often it is, but there are joyous and gratifying examples of the form, especially in cases when you get to see dedicated Asian American actor folks in meaningful roles that they’re historically less likely to get. To me, NYPD Blue‘s “Goodbye Charlie” was that, even though it’s a bit gratuitous and titillating toward the end.

Episode 7 of Interior Chinatown is also a faithful sendup of HBO’s True Detective, complete with moody-stylish opening title sequence. It’s very entertaining to watch Jimmy O. Yang inhabit arguably the most sexy-intense of all sexy-intense cop show archetypes. In this case, the race-bending is the point, and ripe opportunity to use the critical thinking skills. Does it seem weird that Willis is the macho aggressor, inhabiting Woody Harrelson’s Detective Hart? Why would it seem weird? Is it “believable?”

NYPD Blue was pretty consistent in having at least one Asian-centric A- or B-plot per season, and hey, they’re all binge-able on Hulu! There was “Sorry, Wong Suspect” in Season 3, also guest-starring Tzi Ma. There was the the one in Season 9 guest-starring NOC colleague Erin Quill, I was pretty sure she did it in that one, but it turned out she was just being cagey in the interrogation room. What with the inscrutable faces of those Asian known associates, it’s amazing a TV murder ever gets solved.

Dear Detective Miles Turner: I Wish I’d Just Found Out That You Are My Favorite Player On The Indiana Pacers

REDACTED-ISH: I was going to share this whole side-story about looking up biography information on Sullivan Jones, who who plays the hunky Detective Miles Turner on Interior Chinatown‘s TV-infused task force, but it’s sensitive and a little upsetting, so just social media msg me if you’re curious and want a good reason to complain about A.I. today. Suffice to say, Google A.I., you are struggling. Don’t pay attention to the Google A.I.-assisted top search result for anything related to race or ethnic background, please.

But I mention it because it was one of those meta-media experience that informs the watching of Interior Chinatown in a way that is very apt, if totally discouraging. Asian Americans in particular know all about being mis-identified on the Internet, even the famous Asian Americans!

One of the reasons the police procedural is an apt vehicle for Interior Chinatown is the metaphor for futility. Even though we have a pretty good understanding of human behavior as it relates to perpetuating Asian stereotypes and committing irrational crimes, and despite the fact that most motivations for murder are predictable clichés, none of it prevents people from doing murders.

Random Interior Chinatown-Related Closing Thought: Is it East Asian American canon that there is always a woman named Audrey Chan/Chang? There is a character named Audrey Chan (played by Annie Chang, familiar to DC nerds as maverick detective Sophie Song in Peacemaker), who seems to be just waiting for Willis to get half a clue. There was an Audrey Chang in my kindergarten class, various summer school sessions, and high school, and in several cases they were not the same person. There was that magazine, Audrey. I suspect, and have anecdotal confirmation, that it’s related to Audrey Hepburn. But I don’t know.

In the next exciting blog-isode of Interior Chinatown vs. the Asian American Canon, I’ll look at episodes 8-10 of the series and dive into Beef, Big Trouble in Little China, and Everything Everywhere All At Once, i.e. the modern classics plus one ’80s cult-classic of onscreen Asian American stuff.