So the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once opened this past year to great critical and box office success, receiving rave reviews for its story, its visual design, and more importantly the acting performances. Of note Ke Huy Quan received plenty of praise for his multi-layered role as Waymond Wang, the beleaguered husband of Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn. It was a long road back for Quan, who was once upon a time a child star noted in films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and The Goonies (1985). He disappeared from film for well over 20 years in the mid-90s, transitioning more towards work behind the camera, serving as stunt coordinator and later assistant director. He gave several interviews about his circuitous back to acting, many of which referred to a 1993 Taiwan costume drama with the amusing title of The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter.
Now, my parents are from Taiwan, and throughout most of my childhood in the 1990s we received satellite television, and one of the staples of our television viewing are the TV dramas, self-contained series that can extend anywhere from 20 episodes all the way to over 60. I'd certainly remember a show with the title The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter, but I had no memory of it, and as it turns out neither did my parents. Perhaps it never did air in the United States. I decided to do a search on Google, and found some bare-bones information with its Chinese title 大太監與小木匠. More significantly, the series was uploaded in its entirety by the Taiwan TeleVision (TTV) official channel, along with several of their great television drama, such as my childhood favorite Heroic Youth. (英雄少年)
I pulled up the first episode, and it became evident pretty quickly why the series never made it to the United States. The show opens to a bunch of naked boys crowding a square. Yes, I suppose the boys were all eunuchs and since all eunuchs are by definition castrated they would have no external genitalia. Yet it's still a bunch of naked boys crowding a square. And because this is the first shot of the opening credits, every single episode opens with a shot of a bunch of naked boys crowding a square. And people thought the title was provocative. Yet this aired every weeknight at 8pm on TTV for 40 days from November 1993 to January 1994.
Nevertheless, I decided to watch the rest of the first episode. It's a fairly standard fare where it introduces the characters and the setting, but nothing really stood out for me. I watched about two more episodes and didn't really care for it so I shelved the show for a time. However, as Quan began capturing one critics awards after another, his chances of Oscar glory rose. (And in fact he did wind up with not only an Oscar nomination but also the Oscar victory). And since I can't think of any other Oscar nominated actor who had starred in a Taiwan television drama, I decided to give the rest of the show a chance. And now that I've finished all 40 episodes, I've decided to write perhaps the first English review of The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter.