"Christmas at the Golden Dragon: Eight straight people find love, , a tiny gay subtext, and Markian's dick

Christmas at the Golden Dragon, on Hulu, drew my attention because we always used to get Chinese food on Christmas Eve.  Also the poster shows the focus character deciding between two suitors. One is Osric Chau, who is gay in real life.  Plus Jason Fernandes, left, isn't gazing at a woman, so he might be gay.   Let's give it a try.

Holy cow, a dozen named characters and their long, boring backstories occupy the first ten minutes! 

Focus charcter Romy: Montage of parents and kids decorating trees, opening presents, and hugging.  Lots and lots of hugging.  It's focus character Romy, at her High Power Job selling Harlow Furnishings: "We spend so much time running around buying things that we forget that Christmas is about hugging."  So you criticize buying things in a pitch for buying things, and there are no furnishings in the video?  Way to illustrate cognitive dissonance, girlfriend!

On their way out of the meeting, Romy and her assistant discuss how wonderful New York is at Christmas time. Her family back in Wichita owned a Chinese restaurant that was open on Christmas, so they didn't have time to celebrate. That's a switch; usually you abandon the big, heartless city for small-town hugging. 

Cut to the restaurant in small-town Wichita, population 396,000, where Romy's Dad is teaching Delivery Boy Miguel how to make a potsticker with peanut butter and shrimp -- their speciality.

Her Love Interest, Blake  (Markian Tarasiuk): Hey, Romy is already dating someone in the Big City, but he's actually from small-town Vermont, so he counts as an appropriate small-town Love Interest.  

Miguel, the unattached guy (Jason Fernandes):  He's getting ready to make some deliveries.  Romy's Mom notices that he got into  Princeton and three other "amazing colleges," and he's interviewing for the scholarship that Jane got him.  

But Miguel notes that he can't go to college, because his dad is absolutely against it; he had to apply secretly so Dad wouldn't "freak."  Why would Dad  object to a full scholarship to Princeton? My parents didn't want me to go to college, either, until I showed them my full scholarship.

Jane the Widow: Meanwhile, Romy's Mom chats with regular customer Jane: a retired architect still mourning her late husband, a Wichita State University basketball coach.  Why include this irrelevant detail, unless it will be important later?  

She also has a daughter who didn't mourn adequately, and spends all of her time at work, at a "fancy CFO job." Will this be important later?

Her Love Interest, Mr. Barber (Bobby Stewart): Miguel delivers pork fried rice to him, even though he had a stroke and can't have fried food.  Also he's not supposed to leave the house, but he told his therapist he was going to the bathroom, and sneaked out.  Must be a physical therapist; psychiatrists don't make house calls.  But later Mr. Barber comes and goes whenever he wants.

More Love Interests after the break. Warning: Explicit.