ARTS & CULTURE
10 Obiter Dicta
What to Watch this Week
A Netflix Guide to Shaking an Early Fall Cold
kathleen killin › arts & culture editor
With the chilly weather and the beginning of cold and flu season upon us, many of us are hunkering down, spending more time indoors and doing what some of us
do best – “Netflix and chill”. Like my colleagues who have reviewed television in other excellent articles within this issue, I too have decided to write about what is on
our favourite streaming site that I watched over the weekend.
ê (Above) Delicious, but not authentic, General Tso
chicken. Photo credit: The Search for General Tso
ê (Left) Wagner Moura plays Pablo Escobar in Narcos.
Photo credit: Netflix
NARCOS
THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO
LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT
Drama
Documentary
Drama
Starring: Wagner Moura, Boyd Holbrook
and Pedro Pascal
Directed by Ian Cheney
Starring Mariska Hargitay, Ice-T, Kelli
Giddish, Danny Pino, Raúl Esparza
Written by: Chris Brancato and directed by
Jose Padilha
I stumbled upon this documentary after losing the
rock paper scissors match my boyfriend and I have for
who choses what to watch (I had my eye on The Mindy
Project, he said for us to check out this), and I am
happy to say (just this one time) that I lost. The documentary explores the origin of General Tso Chicken;
and a little spoiler alert, General Tso Chicken is actually not traditionally Chinese cooking (shocking!).
Rather, it is the concoction of a Taiwanese chef in
upper Manhattan during the mid 1960s in an attempt
to appeal to American taste buds. The film travels
from the United States to Asia in an attempt to find
out who General Tso actually was and how his name
came to be on every Chinese restaurant menu on this
side of the Pacific. Through a series of interviews,
director Ian Cheney addresses deeper issues faced by
Chinese immigrants to the United States during the
twentieth century and how local Chinese organizations assist immigrants to find work primarily in restaurants. During one of the interviews, the owners
of a Chinese restaurant in Missouri claim that after
visiting their restaurant and tasting their deep-fried
chicken in the 1970s, McDonalds executives created
the Chicken McNugget. This film is an excellent range
of history and culinary appreciation in one. I would
suggest, how WfW"