It’s midnight and I have been binging on Terrace House: Opening New Doors for the last four hours. My eyes are dry and my head feels dull, almost as if I’ve been staring at a TV screen for 240 minutes straight. The latest episode—in which Tsubasa, the ice hockey player, has just plotted a birthday surprise for Shion, the 6’2” half-Japanese model—has just ended. “Okay, um, it’s midnight!” I say. “Maybe time for bed?”

“No!” my mom commands. “One more episode!!!” She insists we find out what happens to Tsubasa and Shion’s budding relationship.

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While recently visiting home, I introduced my mom to Terrace House, thinking that she might be interested, but would likely get bored of a relatively drama-free reality TV show that just places six young people in a house together and films their lives. As You, one of the commentators who make up the heart of the show, puts the premise at the beginning of every episode: “All that we’ve prepared is a beautiful home and automobiles. There is no script at all.”

The Terrace House franchise was created by Fuji Television in 2012, and originally began airing in Japan. It slowly caught steam in the United States after Netflix picked up the show and began releasing new seasons in 2015. Part 3 of the latest series, "Opening New Doors"—set in the sleepy resort town of Karuizawa in the Nagano prefecture—was released to Netflix a few weeks ago.

Netflix

While no one ever says explicitly that the show is dating-focused, most of the characters unabashedly announce upon their arrival that they are looking for love. They go on dates and prepare meals together. Many of them have jobs and friendships outside the house—there’s a pro snowboarder who works at a yakitori restaurant, an aspiring chef, and a dizzyingly unrepresentative number of part-time models. But a unique aspect of the show for an American audience is that it intermittently cuts to a loveable panel of hosts, which includes comedians and television personalities like babbling Ryota Yamasato and quiet, but pointed Azusa Babazono, who watch the episodes alongside us and comment on what’s happening with a distinctly Japanese point-of-view.

But after three nights in a row watching the show together, I’ve come to realize that Terrace House—specifically the more charming and less dramatic “Opening New Doors” series, although any of them, such as “Boys and Girls in the City” (set in Tokyo) or “Aloha State” (set in Hawaii) will do—is actually the perfect show to watch with your (my) mom.

Terrace House’s polite tensions ultimately revolve around small differences in each character’s personality and morals—just the right level of drama to dissect with your mother after dinner.

The show has everything (my) moms freaking love! There’s one of the greatest romances of our time. There’s a chance to nag young people that are, for once, not you, her daughter, about their decisions in life. The people on the show have a completely PG approach to dating, so neither of us has to uncomfortably get up for a glass of water if we don’t want to watch any racy moments together. And there are plenty of handsome lifestyle scenes to drool over, including at least two-to-three beautifully prepared meals per episode, most likely consisting of some sort of jewel-toned raw fish that they apparently just sell at the supermarkets in Japan. Even one of the characters, 19-year-old Yuudai, is only on the show because his grandmother signed him up, leading the panelists to complain that they won’t be able to bad mouth him because they don’t want to make his grandmother sad. Very respectful!

Terrace House’s polite tensions ultimately revolve around small differences in each character’s personality and morals—just the right level of drama to dissect with your mother after dinner. There is no need to, say, pause the show and explain what The Situation and Pauly D mean when they call girls, “grenades.”

Netflix

Every episode kicks off with young and chic commentator Reina Treindl’s “konbanwa!” greeting and when we watch, my mom and I respond in kind. Perched together on the couch, we become a nosy panel of our own. Even at home at night, my mother is very elegantly dressed in her silk white and blue kimono pajamas—she somehow has both the wisdom of the older You, but the style sense of younger fashion icon Triendl. I, on the other hand, am in the clothes I plan to wear to sleep—a clashing brightly-colored t-shirt and exercise shorts—which are also the same ones that I wore that day, as well as to bed the night before. I have the fashion sense of ridiculously dressed 41-year-old male comedian Yamasato and the combined wisdom of the interchangeable cast of teenage boy princes. All in all, the two of us cover most of the bases.

Despite our difference in age, my mom and I generally agree on our assessments of the characters. Most of them are good-hearted (aside from Yuudai, who is a brat); Tsubasa and Shion are unimpeachable; and we agree that the model Mayu gets shafted by the panelists who spend an uncomfortable amount of time talking about her breasts. Seina, who has appeared on the show three different times in past series, is the most fun and we would enjoy hanging out with her in real life. The best character of course, is the house itself, with its hot spring bath and cavernous modern kitchen.

Netflix

Sometimes my mom will chime in with small unexpected pieces of wisdom, like commenting about the height of the hanging strawberry bushes growing indoors when Shohei and Seina go on a berry picking date. “The worst part of strawberry picking is having to crouch down all day,” my mom says. “So this is nice.” Other times, my mom makes absolutely no sense, like when she insists that Shono Hayama, the young boy panelist, is the older female panelist You’s son. I have no clue where she got this idea from.

My dad wanders in for part of an episode. We explain all the different characters and their backstories to him. He points to Mayu and asks who she is. It cuts to the next scene, still starring Mayu, and he asks again who she is. I start to get suspicious that he wouldn’t be able to pick me, his own daughter, out of a lineup if I were on the show. I have decided that Terrace House is not a good show to watch with your (my) dad.

In the last episode my mother and I see together before I leave home, Tsubasa and Shion decide to move out of the house together. All the soft and beautiful boys on the show cry their hearts out. “It’s more than sad,” Taka manages to say between heaving sobs. After 21 weeks—and a corresponding number of episodes—both they and us have become a family.

I ask my mom if she’s going to keep watching after I leave. Probably not, she tells me, because she just wanted to finish the Tsubasa-Shion storyline. But my guess is that we both feel that it is somewhat aimless to watch the show on your own. What’s the point of following the lives of the Terrace House family, after all, if you can’t gossip about it to your mom?

Clio Chang Clio Chang is a freelance writer based in New York.

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