My heart breaks a little whenever I see delicious pastries go to waste just because the baker had to fend off assassins while they were in the oven. But that's how we meet Charles Sun (Justin Chien), elder of the eponymous brothers in this series. As he's peacefully living his best culinary hobbyist life in his luxury tower in Taipei, three unidentified men make an ill-fated (for them) attempt on his life. It turns out this baker is very good at killing people. When his father, Big Sun, head of the Jade Dragons triad, shows up to survey the aftermath, though, the real trouble starts.
As Big Sun ponders who could be responsible for this attack on his son, he's shot through the midsection by an off-screen sniper and falls into a coma. To Charles, this is a clear sign that his father's rival is trying to usurp his criminal empire, so with his father relatively safe in the hospital, he departs to protect his mother in Los Angeles, as she could very well be next.
We find that his mother, Eileen Sun (Michelle Yeoh), had gone into hiding in Los Angeles when Charles was still a teen. She'd taken her younger son Bruce (Sam Song Li) with her and successfully given him a fairly normal childhood. Bruce is now pretty much a typical SoCal nerd, secretly spending his medical-school tuition money on improv classes that his mother does not approve of. So when Charles shows up and has to fend off another assassin in the family's kitchen, Bruce is pretty horrified to find his mom and his estranged brother sawing up a dead body.
The chaos starts from there. Bruce must learn a little bit about the family business despite his law-abiding, nervous constitution, and Charles must learn how to...feel feelings again: the assassin life in a crime family wears on a person, apparently. Mama Eileen calmly stays one step ahead of everyone else as she tries to figure out who these people are who keep trying to kill them, and signs are pointing to a group who's not the rival gang they'd suspected. Meanwhile, Charles's childhood crush (Highdee Kuan), now an ambitious Assistant D.A., keeps a watchful eye on the goings-on.
The series strikes a beautiful balance between action and comedy and family drama. It's pulpy in the tradition of older martial arts movies, where one guy can mow down legions of bumbling assailants with handy chair legs and toasters, and it's also emotionally resonant for anyone feeling trapped in a life that they didn't choose or haplessly trying to repair a ruptured familial bond. And of course, watching an improv nerd trying to deal with oncoming assassins dressed in inflatable tyrannosaurus costumes is good for a laugh.
If I have one gripe, it's that its conclusion wasn't quite satisfying. This had potential to be an amazing mini-series if they'd tied everything up, and it was right there for the taking. I get it. You have to make more seasons to justify your existence in today's entertainment world. But I don't have to like it.
In any case, I'll surely tune in for another season, should it get made. The performances are all very good, Michelle Yeoh's excellence coming as no surprise, and relative newcomers Chien and Song Li pairing really well together as smoldering angry guy and innocent dork, both growing in opposite directions. One additional standout for me was Joon Lee as TK, Bruce's idiot best friend, convinced he's a gangster because he peddles drugs at the club. Watching him fail spectacularly around actual gangsters is thoroughly enjoyable, and Lee really nails the overconfident party-boy seeking validation.
This series has something for everyone. It's loads of fun with a lot of heart, and I highly recommend watching it. I hope they somehow keep it up in the next season, but if they don't, at least we have this one.
