Back in Time, ‘Fresh Off the Boat’
Watching “Fresh Off the Boat,” the new ABC sitcom based on Eddie Huang’s eponymous memoir about growing up in Orlando, Florida, defies the time-space continuum in more ways than one. It’s not just that the series is set in the 1990s, or that I haven’t voluntarily viewed anything so old-school “sitcommy” since then. It’s that the last time television so matter-of-factly broke a glass ceiling was when “Will & Grace,” which featured two gay male characters, became an NBC smash in 1998. “Fresh Off the Boast” is the first stateside sitcom to star an Asian actor since Margaret Cho’s ill-fated “All-American Girl” was canceled in 1995 – the same year this series is set.
This doesn’t automatically mean “Fresh Off the Boat” is worth watching. Huang himself initially expressed trepidation about the production, suggesting it was a “reverse yellow face” – an attempt to fit an Asian American family into a traditional white TV family template. Others have rushed to the show’s defense. In a Slate roundtable, NPR’s Kat Chow agreed that it was “like a traditional sitcom” but praised it for “the various signposts for Asian Americans woven into them … the stinky tofu as the ‘weird Asian food’ … the ‘success perm.'” Continue Reading →