Sato and Samantha are in bed together, and Sato is taking his ring off. Watching from home, I’m wondering why. Is this item of jewelry significant to him in some way — a mark of his membership in Chihara-kai, maybe? If so, I don’t remember it coming up before. Nor is it a wedding band he couldn’t bear to part with following a death or divorce, not unless there’s a whole lot about Sato we don’t know. I couldn’t quite figure out why writers Annie Julia Wyman & Joshua Kaplan and director Takeshi Fukunaga bothered to include this detail, beyond perhaps adding a little down-to-earth touch to the sex scene…until I noticed the position of Sato’s arm between Sam’s legs. He took off his ring so he could finger her without hurting her.
I bring this up not out of prurient interest — although I firmly believe that if you’re not operating at least partially out of prurient interest, you’re not watching TV for the right reasons — but out of admiration for how Tokyo Vice handles, well, pretty much anything. For the second episode in a row, the show has served up an admirably graphic sex scene, in which the technical aspects of physical sexuality are made clear, whether that’s Trendy’s legs in the air around his boyfriend or Sato slipping off his ring before putting his fingers inside Sam. Much as I hate to give them any oxygen, there’s a vocal contingent of viewers who prefer not to watch sex scenes at all. Sex is as much a part of life as anything else going on in Tokyo Vice, and as such it belongs on screen. The show has little time for those who think otherwise, and good on the show for it.
I reviewed this week’s Tokyo Vice for Decider.
Tags: decider, reviews, tokyo vice, TV, TV reviews