“The Brothers Sun” has all the makings of a breezy odd couple comedy. His titular siblings come from completely different worlds, one is a hardened gangster and the other is a medical student who prefers doing improvisational comedy. But in the streaming age, this simple premise is no longer enough. There must be secrets, hard-fought moves, and big reveals. There has to be drama, and there has to be enough drama to fill a season with hour-long episodes. And at this point, the simple premise is no longer so simple – rather than sticking to the inherent humor of its setup, The Brothers Sun overwhelms itself and finds itself ill-equipped for the weightier, more emotional territory it ventures into.
Created by Byron Wu and Brad Falchuk for Netflix, the series begins with Charles Sun (Justin Chien), the older brother who was raised by his father (Johnny Kou) in Taiwan and grew into a loyal enforcer of the Jade Dragons triad. After a passable fight scene that culminates in the shooting of the Sun patriarch, Charles leaves Taiwan to seek out his mother Eileen (Michelle Yeoh), who brought the younger Sun Bruce (Sam Song Li) to America and raised him unaware of the family business. After living apart for 15 years, the brothers don't get along, to say the least. It's a complicated setup, but the comedic potential begins to emerge once the exposition is behind it.
The Brothers Sun Gallery
The highlights can be found at the beginning, when “The Brothers Sun” still indulges in comic inconsistencies. In the second episode, Charles is sent to dispose of a body and drop Bruce off at college along the way. But in true sibling fashion, he decides it's not fair that Mom gave him all the chores and forces his little brother to help him. Their odyssey eventually leads them to a dinosaur-themed children's birthday party, culminating in one of the series' best gags when they are confronted by incognito assassins. As Bruce ducks, Charles stabs, shoots, and generally inflicts heavy damage on his opponents with the utmost seriousness, just as he does in all of the show's other elaborately choreographed fight scenes – but in inspired fashion, the attackers here all wear inflatable, floppy shoes. Dinosaur costumes with head.
It's a clever, clear juxtaposition of the way these two approach the world: Bruce's awkward insecurity and desire to please, versus Charles' tough-guy penchant for hitting first and questioning second place. And the episode that follows plays to similar strengths by swapping Bruce for Eileen. In this role, Michelle Yeoh adopts the stern motherly demeanor she has often adopted lately, as seen in Crazy Rich Asians and her Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once. In addition to being a weird, overbearing mother, she gathers information from a mahjong parlor full of older women and argues with Charles about using the car's air conditioning instead of breaking the windows. As the former brains behind the Jade Dragons, she is a planner and negotiator, often sending them off on their own subplots to pursue leads or make deals with shady characters. Yeoh is, after all, by far the biggest name in the cast, and her crushing earnestness is the series' greatest strength.
But “The Brothers Sun” falters every time it divides the family, and it divides them often in its eight-episode first season. Both Bruce and Eileen are captured separately, and Charles tends to break away from the group to engage in a fight sequence or attempt to run the show alone. The protagonists switch between supporting characters and love interests. Instead of building on the momentum of the early episodes, there is an increasing shift towards drama through triad politics.
As deaths are mourned, leads are pursued, and secrets are revealed, “The Brothers Sun” becomes a surprisingly plot-packed series that mistakes these plot devices as the main attraction rather than effective vehicles for character interaction. The series feels streaming in the worst possible way, unwilling to invest in small moments because it's more concerned with laying breadcrumbs for the next big reveal. Bruce and Charles, for example, are functional strangers – when they meet again for the first time, Charles has to explain who he is. But it's not until episode 6 that they even come up with the idea of raising the question of what it was like to grow up apart.
The Brothers Sun feels made for streaming in the worst possible way.
Likewise, there is no idea what life has been like for Eileen and Bruce in Los Angeles over the last decade or more. So much history is glossed over and ignored in favor of the current situation. It's the kind of show where Eileen is told that she coddles Bruce far more often than she's ever seen him do – clearly there's no time for that when there are secrets to uncover and plans to put into action. I would have liked to have watched something more in the style of the first few episodes with lower stakes, but this mode falls short in the rush to heady intrigue and the characters' relationships suffer across the board.
And without a strong foundation for the characters, the change in tone adds a layer of uncomfortable inauthenticity. As a comedy, The Brothers Sun's portrayal of the criminal underworld doesn't have to be particularly convincing. As a drama, however, it becomes a world full of cardboard gangster characters whose symbolism of power and decadence is often unconvincing. A character is described as a major player in the drug trade simply because his restaurant has a few security cameras and a side entrance – not even Yeoh can credibly sell such a ridiculous analysis.
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The attempt at dramatic drama brings with it a variety of themes and concepts, such as the appeal of crime, the toxic effects of organized crime's customs, and the question of whether people can really change. But none of these ideas take coherent shape when spread out over the tonal fluctuations of eight overstuffed episodes – “The Brothers Sun” is a far cry from something like Johnnie To's 2005 Hong Kong triad thriller “Election,” which shows , how easily gangsters' demands for politeness and ceremony grow can be torn apart with laser focus for 100 minutes.
Perhaps the only idea that is clearly expressed is one that is at the forefront of so many Asian American storytelling: the burden of familial expectations. It works here because the brothers portray different paths so succinctly, an idea that can be seen immediately and clearly and doesn't need to be put into action. Charles was the obedient son, but Bruce's interests lie outside of what his mother wants for him. But as the plot gets lost in gangster politics, even that conflict falls by the wayside and the brothers become a constant symbol of the series' wasted potential.