The Brothers Sun stays in Netflix’s top ten: A spectacular show worth the binge

Well-loved by its audience, it is no surprise that “The Brothers Sun” has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 84%, therefore certified fresh by the tomato meter, and an audience score of 93%, with one of the reviewers on the website stating they “Absolutely loved it!” adding that it was “Thrilling and funny and sweet at times.”

IMDb has rated this show a nice 7.7/10, but I believe it should have gotten an even higher rating.

“The Brothers Sun” is still in Netflix’s top ten TV shows, sitting pretty as the second most-watched show in the United States for two weeks now, since its release on Jan. 4. 

This action, comedy, and drama tells the brilliant story of Taipei gangster Charles Sun, who has a life set as a ruthless killer but must leave Taipei behind after his father has been shot by an unknown assassin, to travel to L.A. to protect his mother and younger brother.

This show features a perfect cast, with Charles Sun being played by Justin Chein, his younger brother, Bruce Sun, being played by Sam Li, and their mother, Mama Sun, being played by Michelle Yeoh, star of the critically acclaimed and widely loved film “Everything Everywhere All at Once”.

I watched this spectacular story unfold in eight episodes all in one sitting, and it was beyond worth it. This show is definitely meant to be binged. With the perfect sprinkle of suspense and an exciting plot executed ravishingly in every episode, it’s difficult to stop watching.

Here are my favorite moments from two of my favorite episodes, and if you haven’t watched the show yet, I highly recommend you do so before reading the rest of this article, as there will be spoilers to come.

Episode 1: Pilot

This episode is a delightful pretense to what the rest of this season will hold, and once I watched this episode, it glued my eyes to stay for the rest of the season.

I absolutely adored the juxtaposition of what started off with Charles Sun calmly baking and watching “The Great British Bake Off” in his luxury home in Taipei and turned into him ruthlessly murdering the assassins that come into his home, all with only a rolling pin. As this scene goes on, some parts of it intentionally sync with what’s happening in “The Great British Bake Off”. 

For example, at the end of the fight with the assassins, we see a man falling down onto a table, perfectly syncing with a contestant’s cake collapsing on his TV. After he’s killed every assassin, he smells his cake burning and rushes to the oven, sees that it’s burnt, and exclaims in anger.

Overall, this scene’s sheer exciting and humorous nature creates more than enough motivation in the audience to continue watching to figure out what that wild and chaotically interesting scene was actually about.

Episode 2: Favor for a Favor

The juxtaposition of loving baking and being a killer at the same time returns in the second episode, when Charles tries a churro for the first time.

The episode begins with Charles cutting up the dead body of the assassin who followed him to L.A. and putting the parts in a suitcase. Bruce then walks into the living room and Charles tells him to load the suitcase into the car, but an utterly appalled Bruce declines.

After the brothers talk for a bit, Bruce’s friend TK (played by Joon Lee) brings breakfast for them, and TK takes the suitcase to the car instead of Bruce in an attempt to impress Bruce’s cool new brother.

Charles looks into the bag of churros and asks Bruce what they are and Bruce tells him and explains that they are like cinnamon sugar youtiao, which we discover in a later episode is what the brothers have a memory of eating together before Bruce and their mother moved.

Charles takes a curious bite and the lighting in the scene changes to bright beams of sunlight and echoing sounds of epic music and a loud crunch to mirror Charles’s amazement at the taste of the churro, and maybe the sweet memory tied to it had something to do with Charles’s flabbergasted expression.

I particularly have a fondness for this scene because the change in the lighting, along with the drama added by the echoing, and Charles’s facial expressions make for a beautifully curated scene. We also see a hint of vulnerability in Charles’s eyes when he tastes the churro, which affirms the fact that this gangster’s weakness is indeed baking.

Why It’s Worth the Binge

Even the episodes that I didn’t mention in this article have lots of profound scenes that showcase the show’s themes of self vs the expectations of one’s family. The show balances silliness with seriousness superbly, making “The Brothers Sun” something worth cutting out the time in our busy lives to binge.