The Terrace House panelists are the best dressed people on TV

When I first discovered the Japanese reality television show Terrace House on Netflix, I fell hard, fawning over the show’s refreshing distance from anything remotely like American reality TV. House mates drink socially and rarely (if ever) to excess, courtships are measured and snail-paced, and everyone says hello and goodbye when they leave for their jobs, school, and regular lives.

What I failed to properly appreciate until much later is the best part of the whole damn show: the panel. Comprised of six commentators from Japanese pop culture, the panel introduces and closes each episode, which they watch together, pausing at various intervals to discuss and react to whatever drama they’ve just seen. The panel features three women—model/singer/actress/TV personality You, fashion model Reina Trendl (also referred to as Torichan), and comedian Azusa Babazono — alongside comedians Ryota Yamasoto and Yoshimi Tokui, as well as a rotating cast of youthful pop culture fixtures.

The panel members represent a diversity of personalities; Yamasoto talks the most, gleefully honing in on the clumsiness of the young housemates, while Tokui is talkative and excitable, outlining imagined inner monologues and contributing autobiographical romantic notes. By contrast, Babazono is markedly quiet, chiming in only occasionally with a joke or spot-on impersonation, while Trendl can be relied on for more charitable interpretations of the housemates’ motivations, delivered tactfully with flashes of sharp humor. You offers up thoughtful, largely impartial moral verdicts, and the rotating teen panelist typically chimes in with naïve observations before invariably getting owned by the other panelists.

The panel is Terrace House's emotional backbone, alternately providing catharsis and heightening the stakes of the in-house drama. I used to call my friend during the commercial breaks of Desperate Housewives to break down what I’d just seen, and the panel replicates that experience while adding humor to the show’s emotional-rollercoaster structure. The panelists carry another added element of appeal: their clothes. While the Terrace House tenants mostly dress boringly in t-shirts and neutral-colored lounge clothes, the panelists' clothes get more outrageous and exciting as each season (there are eight currently available on Netflix) progresses.

In celebration of Netflix releasing the latest installment of episodes from the show's Opening New Doors season, here's our own commenting on the commentators, ranking them according to the sartorial drama they bring to the table.