The first episode does a pretty good job of introducing us to Jiro, a quiet sushi chef who seems to care about only three things, his food, his restaurant and doing things properly and when I say properly, I mean VERY properly. Their are rules to his sushi, and apparently breaking those rules can have consequences that are slightly more serious than receiving a bad review. The show wastes very little time telling us what kind of person Jiro is. He doesn't talk much, he is from Japan, he doesn't seem interested in impressing anyone and doesn't particularly care about the power struggles happening around him. Unfortunately for him, the moment he becomes involved in the conflict between Bob and Rose, two extremely powerful chefs, that peaceful existence begins to disappear. What I admired about the first episode is that it doesn't try to make the world feel normal. It commits completely to the absurdity of the premise.
Chefs are treated like mob bosses. Restaurants have territories, food is a status symbol. Even the authorities seem more concerned with culinary offences than ordinary crime. It is ridiculous, but the show plays everything so seriously that it somehow works. Bob, who is one of the mob food bosses, represents one side of this culinary empire, while Rose represents another, and both have their own ideas about what food should be. The show takes those differences and turns them into something much more extreme and violent. Then we get to the second episode, and this is where I felt the show really started embracing its ridiculousness. If you haven’t watched it i wouldn’t want to spoil it for you but the 2nd episode is super dope, jiro is one cold man. Like i watched him scoop a mans eye from the eye socket with an ice cream scooper, like what!!!!
One thing I really appreciated across these two episodes is the food itself. The animators clearly put a lot of effort into making the food look good. There are moments when you can almost forget that you're watching a show where people are fighting over restaurants and start thinking, "Okay, that actually looks delicious." The biggest one for me is that Jiro is still a little difficult to connect with after only two episodes. I understand that the character is supposed to be mysterious and reserved, but I would like to see more of the person underneath the chef, like is that just it he’s an action chef? But i wouldn’t be too quick to judge as it is just the first two episodes. Overall, I had a good time with the first two episodes of Get Jiro!. It is weird, violent in tone, incredibly food focused and completely unapologetic about its ridiculous premise. It feels like someone took a serious crime drama, added a samurai movie, threw in a cooking show and then asked Anthony Bourdain to supervise the whole thing. So far so good it has been a very good show and will definitely continue watching it.
