Terrace House Is the Ultimate Comfort Watch For Awkward People

Have you watched Terrace House yet? The Japanese reality show has inspired several Twitter accounts and memes, and earned a devoted audience with its gentle rhythms and barely-there drama. Get in the know with ELLE.com: We’re celebrating the Netflix favorite all this week.

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Being someone who recently asked a person I barely know “What are your top five ways to eat eggs?”, some variation of this assessment blooms in my head daily: Did I say the wrong thing again? Wait, should I not have mentioned Gritty? Arghgghghggh. I’d estimate I spend about 5 percent of my day feeling bad about the dumb things I say (which is an improvement from 10 years ago, when it was more like 17 percent). Which is why, when I first watched Japanese reality TV show Terrace House, I felt immediately soothed and seen.

Terrace House is known among an elite group of Netflix bingers as the Rockabye Baby! version of the American reality TV shows we know and punish ourselves with nightly. In the show, three men and three women cohabitate in a nice house together. That’s it! No tasks, no prize money, no isolation from the outside world; they just do their regular business and act like regular-ass people. Thanks to this utterly gentle modus operandi, the show has replaced Fireplace for Your Home as my go-to self-soothe. It turns out that day-to-day rhythms are calming rather than stifling when they belong to strangers.

There are plenty of other reasons this show has developed such a cult following: The insight into Japanese culture is fascinating, the fact that it’s all subtitled means you have to actually pay attention and can’t multitask too much while watching, and the subtle daily drama is extraordinarily relatable. But one of the main reasons I’m Terrace House ride-or-die is that it exposes the everyday awkwardness that everyone experiences and inevitably muddles through.

Here’s an example of dialogue from the very first episode of the latest season, Terrace House: Opening New Doors. Two of the new roommates, Yuudai and Ami, have entered the house and are making chit-chat:

Yuudai: Where should I put my luggage?

Ami: Um…

Yuudai: Anywhere? Is this okay? Am I the second one to arrive?

Ami: Yes.

Yuudai: Insane.

Ami: Insane. Oh, yeah. I’m Ami Komuro.

Yuudai: Nice to meet you.

Ami: Are you nervous?

Yuudai: How old are you?

Ami: I’m 20, but I’m about to turn 21.

Yuudai: I see. I just turned 19.

Ami: So you’re two years younger?

Yuudai: Yes.

Fascinating.

Nothing here is really worthy of repeating. If you tried to put this in a novel, an editor would say, “Cut this. Excruciating.” But I love it. It’s what everyday speech is actually like, and it reminds me that not everything you say has to be perfect or engaging. In fact, it’s totally normal to not have anything interesting to say to someone you just met, or even to someone you’ve lived with for a couple of months. That’s okay! That’s life, goddammit!

As the rest of the house members enter and begin spending more time together, their commentary drifts from important inquiries about career and love to more trivial or repetitive topics. Isn’t it cold today? Wow! Delicious. I’m home. Seriously? Amazing. What are you doing later? Cool! Sometimes conversations are memorable, emblazoned on your brain or in your group chat as you dissect the significant elements. Other times, they work like glue, oozing out any which way to bind people together in a shared moment.

Even moments that rom-coms would have us believe are supposed to tick like screenwriter-crafted clockwork, like a first meeting between future lovers, are as banal IRL as going to the supermarket. (Terrace House has quite a few supermarket scenes.) Take this exchange from the first episode between eventual couple Tsubasa and Shion:

Tsubasa: How tall are you?

Shion: I’m about 6’2”.

Tsubasa: So tall!

Part of the blahness of these interactions comes from the starkness of subtitled speech. Typed out plain for everyone to see like that? I wouldn’t want to look at a transcript of even my most thoughtful chats. See this snippet featuring Taka and Ami, a young aspiring model whom several dudes will swoon over in episodes to come:

Ami: I’m a university student. I go to classes twice a week. I also work as a model. Or at least, I want to…but there aren’t many opportunities.

Taka: I’m sure there are.

Ami: Definitely.

Later in the season, the will-they-or-won’t-they between these two house members will become one of the house’s main dramas, but there’s only the barest hint of it in this discussion. Terrace House doesn’t have meet-cutes—more like meh-mutes. From the awkward silences that reign between people who’ve known each other for five minutes to the less-than-perfect remarks someone might make to their crush, the show portrays every kind of cringeworthy, boring, forgettable comment. And yet relationships and fast friendships form between many of the inhabitants—all it takes is some effort and wanting to try again the next time.

What a relief to a self-conscious overthinker and conversation analyzer like me! Speech doesn’t have to be immaculate to get across the fact that you’re a kind, fun, considerate person who might be a really good friend, partner, or colleague one day. Not everything that comes out of your mouth while window-shopping or washing the dishes or gossiping over beers has to be Pulitzer-worthy. Take it from Terrace House: Wow! Congratulations. Welcome back. You did your best.