I still don’t know why a guy named Chen with a Singaporean father and a Japanese mother looks like he wandered out of a cornfield in Nebraska. But be that as it may Kelvin Chen is back in the spotlight here and it would be pointless to dwell on it. I think the trend with Bartender so far is that I prefer the stories that don’t go too heavy on the conventional plot. As such, this one and the prior Chen episode were not among my favorites. And that’s ironic in that I’m a massive whisky otaku and the Yamazaki thing should have absolutely had me tied up and helpless (I mean, I’ve been on that tour myself).
The B-plot here is actually the first introduced. The Cardinal pair draft Sasakura-san to come up with a “welcome drink” for their bar menu. I kind of like the idea that the hotel bar is a really important place for an international traveler, often the firs they visit in a new country. I can’t help but wonder if they’re actually paying Sasakura for this service – they sure as hell should be, but there’s no mention of it. But he struggles to come up with an option, for a very interesting reason. His whole game is based on reading the room – he designs a drink by diagnosing the state of mind and body of the customer at his bar. How can he do that with customers who only exist theoretically in his head, and adopt a “one size fits all” approach at that? It’s antithetical to how Sasakura tends bar.
That’s only the sidelight, though. The main drama is Chen’s father (he’s played by a suddenly busy Hayami Show, by the way) is coming to town to take his son home. He already got him let go from K’s Bar, so Chen comes to Edenhall asking to be hired on there so he can convince him to let him become a bartender rather than inherit the hotel (which is a famous one). The backdrop here is that Kelvin’s older brother was supposed to inherit the family business but died, and so did Kelvin’s relationship with his father as a result.
The drink in spotlight is the Singapore Sling, which has the distinction of being one of the few gin drinks I can tolerate. Kelvin makes his dad a Sling Raffles Style (the fussier version, now mostly a curiosity) and an exhausted Pops is much unimpressed. Kelvin does much better the next time, preparing the simpler Savoy Style this time, but using Japanese Roku gin to change things up. I should note here that Roku is also a Suntory product, which makes me believe they’re a major backer of Bartender and possibly on the production committee.
This is all fine and good, but it’s pretty conventional stuff. Again, Bartender is working better for me when it’s quirky and geeky – the drama just doesn’t pack the same punch, and it highlights Sasakura’s hilariously operatic speech patterns a little too much. We are getting at least one more Chen episode (and the resolution to the welcome drink thing), but I’ll be happy when we get back to full-time nerding out about cocktail recipes and such.
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