Editorials 
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Woody Allen, but ten times more unbearable
I finished Until the T-Shirt Dries, and the easiest way I can describe it is this: Woody Allen, but ten times more unbearable.
It carries all that neurosis, guilt, and intellectualization of desire so characteristic of Allen. A bus accident traps Sakiko and Sonoda in an almost solipsistic paranoia, obsessively trying to discover what their partners were really doing behind their backs.
Like Annie Hall or Deconstructing Harry, the series repeatedly uses conversations with imaginary projections and absent people, allowing its characters to debate their own emotional voids instead of taking a single real step forward.
But there is one fundamental difference.
Woody Allen usually filters his neurosis through cynicism, black comedy, or tragic irony. Until the T-Shirt Dries tries to execute a similar device with leaden solemnity and poetic pretension, and the pacing completely collapses as a result.
The frustrating part is that the series actually has some very good twists. At times, it seems as if it is finally going to become a fascinating mystery. But every time the story starts moving, it stops again to contemplate its own navel.
And although the relationship at the center of the story never becomes physically sexual, I still consider it infidelity. Two married people secretly reserving time for each other, traveling together, and building an emotional intimacy deliberately hidden from their spouses does not suddenly become harmless simply because they never had sex.
After ten episodes, Until the T-Shirt Dries ultimately felt like an exercise in the screenwriter's self-indulgence at the expense of the viewer's time.
It carries all that neurosis, guilt, and intellectualization of desire so characteristic of Allen. A bus accident traps Sakiko and Sonoda in an almost solipsistic paranoia, obsessively trying to discover what their partners were really doing behind their backs.
Like Annie Hall or Deconstructing Harry, the series repeatedly uses conversations with imaginary projections and absent people, allowing its characters to debate their own emotional voids instead of taking a single real step forward.
But there is one fundamental difference.
Woody Allen usually filters his neurosis through cynicism, black comedy, or tragic irony. Until the T-Shirt Dries tries to execute a similar device with leaden solemnity and poetic pretension, and the pacing completely collapses as a result.
The frustrating part is that the series actually has some very good twists. At times, it seems as if it is finally going to become a fascinating mystery. But every time the story starts moving, it stops again to contemplate its own navel.
And although the relationship at the center of the story never becomes physically sexual, I still consider it infidelity. Two married people secretly reserving time for each other, traveling together, and building an emotional intimacy deliberately hidden from their spouses does not suddenly become harmless simply because they never had sex.
After ten episodes, Until the T-Shirt Dries ultimately felt like an exercise in the screenwriter's self-indulgence at the expense of the viewer's time.
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