New Netflix series “Master of None” from Aziz Ansari. “Master of None” Twitter.
Whether you think it’s hilarious or just miss Tom Haverford, there’s no denying that Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” is important. I haven’t been able to peruse social media without seeing swathes of people and media outlets posting about the show since its release on Netflix a little over a week ago. Among them was actress Diane Mizota, one of my Facebook friends and someone I interviewed for my grad school capstone project about Asian-Americans in Hollywood. She claimed she couldn’t get enough of the show and especially liked the second episode that addressed immigrant parents.
This month’s Reel Women is dedicated to a brief blip in the generic morphology of the romcom known as the sex comedy. Between the large-budget movie musicals of the 1950s that replaced sex with song, and the notoriously bleak cinematic landscape of the 70s in which, it seems, only Woody Allen bothered to produce romcoms (a sign that the genre was, indeed, on the rocks), the sex comedy reigned with the sugary self-assurance of a pre-Nixon world. With an aesthetic that I can only describe as what mid-century Hollywood imagined middle America imagined New York to look like, it brought glamour to middle class sex.
Dedicated to the sexual exploits of the newly urban and distressingly unmarried boomer generation, the sex comedy—like all romcoms—attempted to deal with a lot of anxieties about gender, sexuality and class by marrying them off. Despite its name, the sex comedy is exceptionally chaste. Although its characters talk more explicitly and soberly about sex than almost anywhere else in American cinema before them thanks to the Hays Code, they never actually move beyond a theoretical discussion of the mechanics of premarital sex. Two decades earlier, audiences saw more bed-hopping in the screwball comedy than they would find in these movies. Instead, sex in the sex comedy is tasked with both emblematizing a new politics of gender parity while also providing the occasion to force those politics back into the home, ensconced within a loving and now sexually-fulfilling marriage.
This month’s Reel Women is dedicated to a brief blip in the generic morphology of the romcom known as the sex comedy. Between the large-budget movie musicals of the 1950s that replaced sex with song, and the notoriously bleak cinematic landscape of the 70s in which, it seems, only Woody Allen bothered to produce romcoms (a sign that the genre was, indeed, on the rocks), the sex comedy reigned with the sugary self-assurance of a pre-Nixon world. With an aesthetic that I can only describe as what mid-century Hollywood imagined middle America imagined New York to look like, it brought glamour to middle class sex.
Dedicated to the sexual exploits of the newly urban and distressingly unmarried boomer generation, the sex comedy—like all romcoms—attempted to deal with a lot of anxieties about gender, sexuality and class by marrying them off. Despite its name, the sex comedy is exceptionally chaste. Although its characters talk more explicitly and soberly about sex than almost anywhere else in American cinema before them thanks to the Hays Code, they never actually move beyond a theoretical discussion of the mechanics of premarital sex. Two decades earlier, audiences saw more bed-hopping in the screwball comedy than they would find in these movies. Instead, sex in the sex comedy is tasked with both emblematizing a new politics of gender parity while also providing the occasion to force those politics back into the home, ensconced within a loving and now sexually-fulfilling marriage.
The postwar decades saw a perfect storm of cultural and political agitation around sex and the sexual practices of heteronormative Americans. Both Playboy magazine and Alfred Kinsey’s second and most controversial report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, debuted in 1953. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was published in 1962, and it became increasingly clear that the happy housewife was a myth and teens and women were having all kinds of sex despite the Leave It To Beaver-ish representations of family life. The Pill was released in 1961, and individual states began rolling back their abortion bans throughout the 60s, eventually culminating in the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973. Freud’s theories on sexuality were so permanently in the water that you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a joke—or a straight-faced observation—about Oedipal desire. In other words, despite our vision of the 1950s as a supremely traditional, family-values oriented time—a nostalgic fantasy manufactured by the TV cowboy in the Reagan White House—it was actually as volatile and anxious about the institution of marriage as we are now.
The sex comedy is a pastiche of mid-century gender politics, a precious remnant from the early days of the Second Wave written from the other side. Metabolizing feminist concerns over professional equality, sexual freedom, and unmarried independence, the sex comedy solves these problems through hetero pairing rather than political activity—or rather, the only political activity in these films is marriage itself. In fact, the heroine is both a straw feminist and a romantic lead, seeking equality with her male professional rival while succumbing to the selfsame as a love interest.
This is how the sex comedy goes: an attractive white woman living in the big city with a burgeoning career but a dour love life develops a personal or professional animosity, erotic in intensity, with a faceless man who has made it his purpose to crack her frigid self-possession through tricks, foul or fair. Once the hero accidentally discovers the luscious body belonging to his competition—in this world, the demure, musical comedy stylings of Doris Day are treated as the most sexually inspiring thing in Manhattan—he is forced to mask his identity in order to seduce her. Disguised as a sensitive, gentile, sexually mild drip, he manipulates the heroine into seducing him until his ploy is revealed and she declares that she will never forgive him. But by then, it’s too late. She has succumbed to his charms and is obliged by the power of her own sexual desire to quietly ignore his betrayal and ride off into the sunset with him.
Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor in Down with Love | Image from fanpop.com
If you’ve seen Down With Love, a loving, beat-for-beat send-up of the genre, you know the rhythm.
Like most romcoms, these films don’t pass the Bechdel test. In fact, in this world, there is only room for one respectable middle-class girl in all of Manhattan. Every other female character is either a middle-aged maid who provides our heroines with the only thing that will pass for girl-talk in these movies, or they are showgirls, actresses, and French women whose apparently casual sexual relationships with the male lead disqualify them from true femininity. It’s almost as if our heroine wins by default of being the only virginal choice left.
Virginity itself is a strangely ambivalent category in these films. Although the heroine’s relative chastity is the very thing that makes her the heroine, it is also a source of shame or contempt. One of the first exchanges between Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Pillow Talk ridicules the barren bedscape of the heroine, Jan:
Brad Allen: Look, I don’t know what’s bothering you, but don’t take your bedroom problems out on me.
Jan Morrow: I have no bedroom problems. There’s nothing in my bedroom that bothers me.
Brad Allen: Ohh, that’s too bad.
Even more notably, the heroine of Sex and the Single Girl spends most of the movie attempting to hide her virginity from the hero whose purpose it is to ruin her business as a sex therapist by revealing her as a romantic novice. The heroine’s fastidiousness about sex in these films is meant to betray an unenlightened prissiness that is unacceptable even in marriage and must be hijinks-ed away before her sexuality is safely ensconced in matrimony.
The sexual politics of Sex and the Single Girl are even more striking because they are directly tied to the real life cultural landscape. Named after the advice book of the same name by Helen Gurley Brown, who would later go on to found Cosmopolitan magazine, it follows the exploits of a woman named Dr. Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie Wood) who writes an advice book called Sex and the Single Girl. Her book, which advises single women to own their desires and have affairs with married men, is a controversial sensation and attracts the attention of a tawdry magazine journalist (Tony Curtis) who wants to write an exposé proving that Dr. Brown has never taken her own advice. Turning the book into a sex comedy means turning Brown herself, an instrumental figure in the Second Wave, into a naive priss in need of a husband. These movies trope feminism in order to reify tradition, celebrating the new sexual freedoms afforded to white middle-class women at the same time that they seek to put them in their place.
Meanwhile, male sexual dysfunction is a crucial plot device. In their attempts to seduce the heroine, the heroes of these films always adopt an impotent, sexually unassuming persona. Through a series of phone calls in Pillow Talk, Brad convinces Jan that the sensitive cowboy he is pretending to be is gay—“there are some men who…how shall I put this? Well they’re very fond of their mother. They like to share bits of gossip. Collect recipes.” This conversation is made all the more cruel by the fact that Rock Hudson was gay in real life. And Tony Curtis’s Bob shows up to Dr. Brown’s office as an impotent patient in need of therapy in Sex and the Single Girl. It seems that without an impotent straw man, the empowered straw feminist is neither empowered nor, finally, transformed into a wife.
These films seem to want to turn masculine vulnerability into a farce—it becomes simply a role played by a cocky alpha—in order to protect masculinity from true vulnerability. The type of vulnerability, say, made possible by a feminist politics. Although the trajectory of the sex comedy is from career woman to wife through the crucible of normative sexuality, it must get there by queering the masculine. A recurring gag throughout Pillow Talk involves Brad hiding from Jan in the office of an obstetrician where he distractedly attempts to make an appointment and convinces the doctor that he is, miraculously, a pregnant man. The last shot of Pillow Talk is not of the happy couple, but of Brad being dragged into the doctor’s office after cheerfully declaring that he’s “going to have a baby!” He may have gotten the girl and returned to his alpha persona, but, the movie seems to say, he is still a little queer.
Today, E.L. brings us back to a movie invested in community—though this community is expressed in a somewhat unexpected way. As with all of the movies in our Reel Women series, this one offers up a kind of unabashed pleasure that can be the most radical form of self-care. And, like all movies in this series, this one is best enjoyed with your witch coven by your side.
Welcome back to Reel Women, our series featuring women on film. Last time we talked about the erotics of female competition in Working Girl. This time we’ll concentrate on the erotics of female collaboration in Sister Act.
Whoopi Goldberg, rare EGOT winner and shade-throwing daytime TV hostess, sparkles as a lounge singer-cum-nun on the run. My childhood memories of this movie include the musical numbers and habits, but I had totally forgotten the brilliance of Whoopi’s comic timing. She leads a cast of talented comedians who, dressed in habits, must more or less bring the laughs using only their faces. Considering the use of women’s bodies in mainstream comedy from the 90s, this is an impressive feat. Women tend to exist in these movies as either the objects of lust that reveal the limits of the male protagonist’s own attractiveness (think There’s Something About Mary), or as the undesirable butt of the joke (think every fat woman to grace celluloid since the inception of the film medium).
In Sister Act they are neither. Women’s bodies aren’t played for comedy here, which feels pretty impressive when you begin to count the number of non-normative bodies in this movie—the convent is filled with old women, fat women and a black woman, and none of these are targeted for easy jokes. Dressed in habits, their bodies don’t figure much at all (with a few notable exceptions, including Kathy Najimy’s dance scene). Instead, comedy grows naturally from women talking to each other.
Kathy Najimy, Whoopi Goldberg and Wendy Makkena owning the face game in Sister Act (1992)
Released in 1992, Sister Act feels like an anomaly. Part of a small cohort of early 90s sisterhood movies such as Thelma and Louise (1991) and A League of Their Own (1992), it is far more interested in the drama of female relationships than the will-they-or-won’t-they of heterosexual romance. In fact, the fantasy offered by all of these films is that of an escape from the stifling confinement and sometimes outright violence of a world with men. At best, the men in these films are well-intentioned but myopic (see Harvey Keitel in Thelma and Louise) and at worst, they are selfish and brutally violent (Harvey Keitel in Sister Act). And even Brad Pitt’s torso can’t soften the fact that the options for male relationships in these films are so much less compelling than those offered by women.
The action of Sister Act begins with the threat of masculine violence that sends us to the most homosocial place on earth. The convent here is at once a refuge from the world of men and a space in which female collaboration can transform the world for the better. Once sex with men loses its capacity to generate action and motivation, what’s left is the powerful, difficult and dynamic society of female friendship.
That’s not to say these female friendships aren’t also erotic. The taut looks that Maggie Smith’s Mother Superior shoots Whoopi Goldberg’s Deloris sizzle with angry energy, and their understated power struggles are nothing if not sexy.
Maggie Smith as the Reverend Mother with the look of a Dom in Sister Act (1992)
But the true romance, I think, blossoms between Deloris and Sister Mary Robert (Wendy Makkena), the convent’s hot young novitiate. Delores is the worldly older mentor to Mary Robert’s naive but curious pupil, and if Delores were a man we would expect a steamy kiss before the final credits roll.
Their relationship reminds me of another film in which witnessing a gruesome murder sends a worldly metropolitanite to a cloistered religious community. In Witness (1985), it seems obvious to us that Harrison Ford’s cop will end up in the arms of the Amish mother played by Kelly MicGillis, but in Sister Act the convent keeps queer possibilities safely in the subtext. Delores cracks Mary Robert’s shell and frees her voice, and Mary Robert in turn offers Delores a gentle welcome to the convent community and even sneaks into Delores’ bedroom to offer her flower (alarm clock) to keep Delores company while she sleeps.
Uncertain attraction in the convent, Sister Act (1992)
Mary Robert is almost always shot in closeup to capture her doe-eyed gaze at Delores, and the looks they exchange are always tender and quietly knowing. Beneath their robes Delores is velvet wrapped in steel, gently drawing out Mary Robert whose self-effacing timidity belies her spunk.
The thesis of Sister Act is that really well-arranged choral music can revitalize a neighborhood. In this world, a rollicking arrangement of “Salve Regina” can entice teenage street toughs to Sunday Mass and a dozen nuns in a local church choir can become famous enough to attract the Pope himself for a visit. In this world, the rejuvenation of the church and the community beyond is made possible by the artistic collaboration of a bunch of middle-aged women. In this world, the final reward isn’t the arrival of a man (even if he is the Pope), but is rather the final musical number itself.
Church choir remixes “Salve Regina” in Sister Act (1992)
Community in this movie takes shape around the commune rather than the couple. Sister Act is interested in the possibilities that open up when we shift our attention away from heterosexual sex, reproduction and the nuclear family toward forms of connection that do not need men to thrive. Community spaces and relations are built through joint effort among non-reproductive women rather than through normative family structures, and the aesthetic appeal of the choir’s performances replaces the sex appeal of the female body as the site of community (re)production.
While heterosexual sex ends with Vince chasing Delores with a gun, female collaboration here ends with a bunch of nuns cackling joyfully over contraband tubs of ice cream.
Finally, because I can, I will leave you with this image of one of my favorite moments from the film: Delores dismissively eyeing Vince’s gift of a purple mink jacket while sporting a full-length fur coat. An allegory of heterosexuality if there ever was one.
Now let’s look at “Blind Spot!” This episode drew a lot of attention because it spotlighted the LGBTQ community, bringing in a gay Asian character (who will be recurring if the show gets renewed for a second season) and presented other gay characters. However, the creators of the show took a stereotypical approach. Oscar is a flamboyant and effeminate “Gaysian,” and the lesbians at the bar are butch and rowdy. While these over-the-top portrayals are necessary to the plotline of Jessica’s “gaydar” being broken, are they problematic? Should they have been more nuanced?
E: So before we start, B, I want to ask you about meeting the show’s creators!
B: I got to briefly introduce myself to [FotB writer/executive producer] Nahnatchka and tell her about my capstone project [for my journalism degree]. I asked if I could interview her about FOB and she directed me to her assistant! I’ve contacted him and am waiting to hear back. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to discuss anything at length with her.
But it was a great forum because it featured her and several LGBT activists and performers, including Rex Lee, who plays Oscar!
K: Aahhh that’s so cool!
E: Ooh cool! Let us know how the interview goes if you get to do it!
“My favorite moment in this episode… maybe in this whole show… was when Eddie turned to the white character and said, simply, ‘Shut your damn mouth.’ Now that’s a mic drop moment.”
This week our roundtable discussion of TV’s Asian American family looks at episodes 5 and 6. Read below for more on Shaq (Fu and Soda, respectively), “the talk,” and more.
Belinda: What stands out most in episode 5 (“Persistent Romeo”) is the discussion of sexual assault, consent and sex, all of which are big issues to tackle in one 25-minute episode of a family sitcom. The fact that “Fresh Off the Boat” even addresses these matters shows a lot of complexity and audacity from the writers. A few scenes stand out. First, there’s Jessica’s “sexual harassment seminar” at Cattleman’s Ranch. This is, of course, played up for laughs, but Jessica ends up essentially harassing the workers (in what we’re supposed to see as a goofy, endearing manner). Louis cuts her off and later hires Dusty Nugget, who similarly gets kind of creepy with the employees. While I think the show has good intentions, do these instances make light of a serious problem?
Karen: I think those are really interesting questions, Belinda, and frankly, I have to say that the fifth episode’s treatment of sexual assault really made me wary and kind of uncomfortable. To begin with, the Dusty Nugget cameo was mostly played for laughs, as were Jessica’s (well-intentioned) attempts at teaching her employees and kids about sexual assault.
Esther: I agree, and I thought the framing device was also problematic: i.e. the way that Jessica’s fears were shown as irrationally stemming from her attention to “nightly news.” That kind of framing makes it seem like an individual woman’s quirk, or a housewife’s boredom, rather than a larger issue that’s worth addressing in a serious way. But I wonder how much this has to do with the limitations of a sitcom format and tone.
K: Yeah, exactly. Her paranoia was framed within her obsession with Stephen King — as a kind of pulpy read. So in that context, her fixation on issues of sexual assault was seen as a singular obsession, too. I agree that the sitcom doesn’t enable one to consider such fears more seriously, though.
B: Yeah, and Louis doesn’t take her and her concerns very seriously. He seems pretty dismissive of her “irrational” fears. It would’ve helped if he agreed that some kinds of precautions, like a sexual harassment seminar (which is normally required) are necessary. Like, he allowed for the sexual harassment seminar to happen to placate her rather than agreeing that it is a good safeguard in its own right.
E: I wonder if that is tied to a class discussion — like in terms of Louis’s money-making “pragmatism.” Which is part of the problematic nature of it, because then sexual assault education becomes a discussion of monetary ‘value’ for the restaurant.
K: Right. That’s a really good point.
@FreshOffABC/Twitter
B: Yeah, maybe that’s why he had her lead the seminar to begin with rather than hire someone legitimate.
E: Ugh, Dusty was so sketchy.
B: And even after she kind of botches it, he hires someone illegitimate still.
E: I guess that’s the joke, though. I did like when he spoke Mandarin.
B: YES! Hahahah. And not entirely horribly.
K: YES! That was hilarious. And so true to life, even — I always switch to Mandarin with my friends or parents when I’m about to rag on someone but don’t want them to know, haha.
B: But essentially, the sexual harassment training should’ve been something that was important to Louis regardless of the cost, and not something that he was forced into doing because of his wife.
E: Right. I kind of want to chalk up this episode as a forgettable attempt to address a topic kind of outside the scope of the sitcom format.
B: Well, many sitcoms address sex, especially in the parent-child context. So I think that was the focus of this episode, but they wanted to throw the whole sexual assault topic in there. Which, again, I think was audacious, but it wasn’t the best delivery.
E: I guess the generous reading of it would be something like: it was nice of them to try and address it, even though it was kind of botched. At least it was put out there? But that’s a pretty generous take on it.
K: Yeah, I appreciated them trying to tackle these kinds of issues, which does ring true to a kind of middle-school experience. From what I’ve heard, it’s also an adaptation from a moment in the memoir.
B: How did we feel about “The Talk” overall? It a strong bonding moment between Louis and Eddie, and it’s great that Lois didn’t want to water anything down, i.e. “Flowers and Watering Cans.” Some of it was a little uncomfortable, though, like when he talks about how excited he is for Eddie’s future spring breaks and how he might come with. Or how he moved to this country so Eddie could have lots of sex. I think this aspect was a lot more solid than the show’s way of addressing assault, but it still seemed a little awkward to me.
K: I think that’s a productive reading, Belinda.
E: Seeing this moment in the context of the next episode, which is more explicitly about father-son bonding, I am inclined to see “the talk” more generously. I appreciate the way that they build up the father-son relationship, and how (uncomfortably) direct the talk is. But there is also a squicky element of treating sex as… a prize? Or something to look forward to that takes the human connection element out of it.
B: Yeah, that’s not the way I see a father explaining sex to an 11-year-old. That’s how I could see an older brother explaining it to a younger brother, or a friend explaining it to a friend. But it definitely seemed like more of a “sex is awesome” kind of discussion rather than “here is what sex is.”
K: For what it’s worth, I do appreciate that Eddie got a less euphemistic talk about sex than the other kids in his class, though.
E: The contrast with the watering can version was pretty hilarious.
B: Yeah, the directness was definitely good and I like that he addresses contraception! Another big highlight is, of course, Jessica’s fervent “anti-date rape” lesson. It’s so over-the-top with her tackling Eddie on the bed with a giant stuffed animal. “You like that? Well, girls don’t either. No means no! Respect girls!” It has an important message but the delivery was, uh, peculiar. How did you feel about the way Jessica handled that?
K: YES, I really appreciated that moment just for the content and the message. But the way it was framed was definitely weird. I feel like we were supposed to be critically distanced from Jessica in that moment, and given how important that message (“no means no”/”don’t date rape”) actually is in a broader context, that made me really uncomfortable. Especially as Louis repeatedly tried to get her to apologize afterwards.
B: Agreed. I didn’t even find that very funny, and I think that was the writers’ intention.
E: Should we transition from there to episode 6’s (“Fajita Man”) handling of the father-son relationship?
Photo @FreshOffABC/Twitter
K: Well, for starters, I liked episode 6 a lot more than 5.
B: Me too! This episode is more focused on the Huang family’s internal relationships than previous episodes.
E: I thought they did a very sweet and funny job handling a VERY common, pretty played-out theme: the intergenerational narrating of hard work. I loved that they brought the grandma in to the episode more and allowed her to speak.
K: Yes!! And even bringing in the legacy of the grandfather, while still troubling his work and parental ethics.
B: Me too! And I love that the grandma only speaks in Chinese. I almost wish the parents would interact with her in Chinese, but I know the writers don’t want to put off audience members with too much Chinese.
E: It definitely complicates a traditional narrative of filial piety, since the grandma steps in to point out that this hard emphasis on work alone has emotional costs. And I think that’s something that’s addressed at great length in other formats (I’m thinking of Asian-American literature here), but it’s nice to see a sitcom take on it. And some genuine sweetness. Or, I guess “genuine.”
K: Right. To be honest, I appreciated Louis as a character a lot more after this episode. I didn’t think he was as fleshed out (or perhaps as comedic?) as the other main characters, or even the grandmother, in the previous episodes. But this episode worked well to give him more dimension and deepen his relationship to Eddie.
B: I like that the grandma is able to get through to Louis — and that he follows in his father’s footsteps of promoting strong work ethic in his own son, but is able to soften up and compromise. That definitely makes him more complex and likable in my eyes. And it makes the grandma a more valuable character as well, rather than just a secondary character.
E: Yeah, definitely. I really liked the exchange between Evan and Emory at the table — where they have this weirdly detailed but adorable exchange but Evan’s career as a future pickle-maker, hahaha. The show is really smart about strategically utilizing the cuteness of their characters. I feel like that cuteness also is used too cover up otherwise problematic themes, like the womanizing we talked about re: Eddie.
B: Yes, their adorableness is kind of a distraction. Like comic relief… cuteness relief. I hope the brothers become more developed so that they start interacting with the parents beyond just being these little goody two-shoes, mamas’ boys. Haha.
K: To this episode’s credit, that little moment of interaction between Evan and Emery particularly did develop them a little more, I think… I feel like they maybe connect to each other a little more because they both model the ideal son, albeit in different ways, whereas Eddie is more of a rebellious son. I love the moment when Emery said, “I know you’re expecting me to say [my specialty is] the ladies, but I’m too classy for that.” So much snark!
E: Haha, yeah.
B: Yeah, that’s a good point. It does serve to distinguish them… Side note: I think it’s important that the show promotes work ethic as not just studying and achieving good grades — what many people *may* associated with Asian-American “work ethic” — but also helping out the family. What Eddie does is more on par with physical labor, but it’s still a character-building and father-son bonding activity, and I’m glad the show makes that a positive thing… that it’s not just pushing the “Chinese Learning Center” facet of hard work.
K: Right, it doesn’t feel stereotyped or reductive — especially with the fact that they lingered on the photo of the grandfather at the end. Speaking of work, let’s talk about Jessica’s job search?
E: Starting from the end, I loved that that storyline brought that moment of celebration where Jessica imitates Eddie’s “pimp walk,” haha. It was so cute and went against the stereotype of the stoic Chinese family that’s centered around the patriarch/filial piety.
K: Oh, yeah, that was adorable. I think every episode so far has ended with a feel-good family moment, but so far that one resonated with me the most.
E: What I really liked about it was the way this episode took a really clichéd sitcom storyline — the kid trying to buy something he can’t afford — and put an Asian-American spin on it. But that spin also managed to avoid feeling really reductive or essentializing.
B: Agreed! It was a fun moment, and it showed this sense of deeper understanding between Jessica and Eddie. Jessica’s always skeptical of these “fat brown men” Eddie is into, and Eddie feels like she never sides with him. But in the end, she kind of celebrates in a way that resonates with Eddie. And I like that everyone joins in, haha.
K: Yes, not to mention it was really culturally and historically resonant to that particular moment — I looked it up and apparently Shaq Fu WAS a hyped up game that later became dubbed as one of the “worst video games of all time.” LOL.
E: Hahaha.
B: I loved that the show mentioned that! That the one girly game the kid at the table got was so much better in the end, haha.
E: The 9-5 video game was awesome.
K: Yes hahaha. And it had a proto-feminist message! Bless.
B: That 9-5 ending was perf.
K: Thank goodness for Shaq that Soda Shaq (of the Arizona Iced Tea variety) was a much more successful business endeavor.
B: What is this Soda Shaq you speak of and how can I get some?!
B: I love Arizona Iced Tea! So good to know. haha.
E: My favorite moment in this episode… maybe in this whole show… was when Eddie turned to the white character and said, simply, “Shut your damn mouth.” Now that’s a mic drop moment.
K: Yes, Esther, that was such a good moment, since it addresses a common Asian-American stereotype really well and in a funny way.
B: Not sure if the kid genuinely thought he was Japanese or was trying to tease him. Either way, that was a badass response.
All in all, our team still finds “Fresh Off the Boat” a sweet and fairly balanced look at a particular Asian American family, replete with 90s nostalgia and a great soundtrack. We look forward to next week’s episode.
Not ready to disembark just yet? We recommend Phil Yu and Jenny Yang’s post-show commentary stream, “Fresh Off the Air.” Access it through The Angry Asian Man Blog, here.
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