The Best Moments from 'Fresh Off the Boat'
by Awl Sponsors
This post is brought to you by Hulu. Don’t be left out of the conversation! Be sure to catch up on the episodes of Fresh Off The Boat and Saturday Night Live.
Fresh Off The Boat’s only had thirteen episodes, but it’s already one of the funniest and most charming comedies on television. It’s the first sitcom to star an Asian-American family since Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl ran for just one season in 1994, so the expectations were sky high and kind of nervous, too. But Fresh Off The Boat is confident, consistently delivering hilarious jokes and touching family moments alike.
If you’ve missed any of them, now’s a great time to catch up or give it a go on Hulu !
Also, the show takes place in the mid-nineties, but somehow manages to incorporate ’90s nostalgia without feeling like a “10 Far Out Things Everyone Totally Remembers About the ‘90s” listicle — though to be fair, they are generally far out, and I totally remember them from the ’90s. Like how much of a bummer people who discovered grunge were for a while:
Or any of the jams hip-hop fanatic Eddie (Hudson Yang) treasures, as seen from his impressive collection of concert shirts to his equally impressive dramatic entrances:
Or waiting so long for dial-up internet that you could do a lap/make a sandwich/kill a Tamagachi before it connected:
I don’t think a 9 To 5 video game was a thing in the ’90s, but I need to acknowledge it, because it sounds amazing:
(I’m still waiting to see a binder plastered in Lisa Frank stickers, but that’s just another reason to hold out hope for season two.)
One of the best episodes even focuses on Eddie trying to get to a Beastie Boys concert. In true Fresh Off The Boat fashion, though, the story also taps into a poignant truth that an all-white show couldn’t touch. Eddie’s forced and eventually failed friendship with the only other Chinese student in school (Trophy Wife’s Albert Tsai) shows how majority white schools tend to group minority kids together based on nothing more than their shared ethnicity.
As it turns out, not all Chinese kids are into the same things just because they’re Chinese! Who knew!
So while race isn’t the driving factor for every story, Fresh Off The Boat definitely doesn’t shy away from talking about it. This might seem obvious, since it’s called Fresh Off The Boat (as inspired by chef Eddie Huang’s memoir of the same name), but it’s still refreshing to see a non-white family struggle with racism and assimilation alongside usual sitcom plots like “how to tell white lies” or “how not to coach your kid’s basketball team.” There are the sillier moments, like when family comes to visit and Eddie’s parents get “success perms” to prove they’re doing well:
Or Eddie’s mom Jessica worrying so much about losing their Chinese culture that she accidentally dresses like Chun Li from Street Fighter:
Then, there are the more serious moments. One of the most rewarding moments to date happens in the very first episode, when Eddie gets into a fight with a boy who calls him a “chink.” It doesn’t look good for Eddie when the principal calls in his parents — until they stick up for their son and demand to know why the other boy isn’t in the office for using the slur in the first place.
Ultimately, the heart of this show is its incredible cast of characters and actors. The children aren’t just ridiculously adorable, but they’re better than kid actors have any right to be, and the writers take full advantage of it. In addition to Hudson Yang as Eddie, there are his brothers Emery (Forrest Wheeler) and Evan (Ian Chen), who only need a single scene to steal an entire episode. While Emery is the deadpan ladies man and Evan is just…well, the cutest, their best and most delightfully absurd moments always happen when they’re together. Like when Evan got the chicken pox and spent half an episode coming for Emery like the drowned girl in The Ring:
Randall Park (The Interview) is Louis, the father with has big dreams of supporting his family with a wildly successful barbecue restaurant.
Louis is an eternally optimistic dreamer — at least until you take away his lucky jade.
And then there’s Constance Wu as matriarch Jessica. You might have already heard how perfect they both are, but that’s only because they are perfect.
Jessica also builds herself a real estate career from scratch in record time:
Jessica is stubborn, fiercely protective, and always confident she knows best even if her obvious superiority isn’t always acknowledged.
I do, Jessica. I really, really do.
This post is brought to you by Hulu. Don’t be left out of the conversation! Be sure to catch up on the episodes of Fresh Off The Boat and Saturday Night Live.
