Too Fresh or Too Soon?

During the discussion of orientalism in our 325 tutorial session there was much discussion about the ABC television show “Fresh Off the Boat”. A series that I have never seen nor heard of, yet, from the direct implication of the title, I could slightly gage an idea of the show. After class, I turned to YouTube, quickly glanced over Rotten Tomatoes, and searched Google for a synopsis. Immediately, the phrase “In Search for the American Dream” appeared quite frequently when diving through summary after summary. A phrase that stood out to me, seeing as every summary describes this Taiwanese-American family in total disarray when their expectations of “Florida Life” are sadly not met. I find this show places itself in a difficult category: somewhere between hilarious yet harshly true commentary on a minority group coming face to face with the reality of American lifestyle and treatment or just another racist dram-com meant to captivate its audience through offensive banter.

            ABC, host to shows like “The Middle”, “Modern Family” and “The Goldbergs” all revolving around the adventures and escapades of white families, one would think Eddie Huang’s show would receive minimal support seeing that a higher percentage of ABC’s audience is white and the previous success rate of shows revolving around minority groups are not so successful, Huang even mentions in the New York Time’s article, “A Bloom in TV’s Asian-American Desert”. However, Asian-American actor Ken Jeong, strongly believes this new show holds a beneficial spot in the nightly TV lineup. “I think ABC has done an amazing job in championing diversity in programming…What ABC has done is groundbreaking. None of the other networks have one Asian-American family sitcom, and ABC has two. They’re putting their money where their mouth is when they say they want to reflect diversity in America,” Jeong tells The Huffington Post. Reverting back to what was previously stated, in a world where shows like “Modern Family” and “Big Bang Theory” (once again, dominated by white actors and a white audience) dominate the TV scene, the fact that “Fresh Off the Boat” is on to its second season with consistent even gradually growing ratings, means something. Whether that “something” leaves a rather large, ambiguous question mark on which category this TV series places itself under, one can only hope but agree the theme of deciphering the complexity of identity through comedy is a positive one.