***SEASON 1 SPOILERS AHEAD***
Fresh Off the Boat is a comedy television show loosely inspired by the life of Eddie Huang and his best-selling memoir of the same name. Created by Nahnatchka Khan, it takes a comical look at the lives of Chinese immigrants in America and further explores the struggles minorities face while assimilating to the American way of life.
Set in 1995, the “Pilot” episode of Fresh Off the Boat introduces the Huang family as they make their way to a suburban neighborhood in Orlando, Florida from the Chinatown section of Washington D.C. Second generation 11-year-old Eddie is an uncompromising hip-hop fan who finds it difficult to fit in at school as he is the only Asian student there. Eddie’s emigrant parents, Louis and Jessica, pursue the American dream by opening a western-themed restaurant named Cattleman’s Ranch Steakhouse. Louis assumes control of the failing steakhouse certain that he can turn its fortunes around, while Jessica is confused by the rituals and habits of her new white neighbors. Realizing how different life is in Orlando than the Chinatown area of D.C., The Huang’s attempt to acclimate to their strange, unfamiliar surroundings the best they can.
Fast forward to the last episode of the first season, “So Chineez,” and we see that the Huang family has come a long way in becoming accustomed within their new society. Eddie has become his school’s first “black” president, Louis successfully put his restaurant on the map, and most of all, Jessica was “assimilating like a fiend” — her real estate game was on point and she was getting along with her white neighbors better than ever, enjoying book clubs and American TV shows together. However, when the Huang’s close neighbors casually mention to Jessica and Louis that they sometimes forget that they are Chinese, Jessica has an epiphany.
“Maybe he’s forgetting because we’re forgetting. I mean, when did we start wearing shoes in the house?”
She convinces herself that she has not been “Chinese enough” and decides to intensely amplify her Chinese identity in an effort to remind her sons not to forget where they came from. Jessica immediately begins to dress daily in qi’pao, cooks chicken feet instead of Mac n’ Cheese for dinner, and enrolls Eddie and his two younger brothers into Chinese school nearly 2 hours away from their area. She becomes obsessive in trying to reconnect herself and her family with their Chinese culture until she breaks down and cries out that she likes all this American stuff — rollerblading, Mac n’ Cheese, and Melrose Place, her favorite show. Jessica expresses that she hates that she likes it and hates that she’s too weak to give these things up, especially when she keeps telling the boys to hold on to their identity and she cannot even do it herself. Louis comforts Jessica and tells her it is okay for them to like this stuff and reassures her that they are not losing their identity. It isn’t until Jessica overhears Eddie at his school’s “World Cultures Day” defending China after his friends make fun of his ethnic country that she realizes no matter what, they were never going to leave their heritage behind.
In Thomas Faist’s “Diaspora and transnationalism: What kind of dance partners?,” he describes diaspora as someone living in a country and having multiple national identities, relating to Jessica who is torn between her Chinese nationality and new American identity. He further claims that a “diaspora perspective should be able to deal with both new social formations sui generis” in which the Huang’s eventually come to accept and embrace both Chinese and American cultures. Faist also says that “we should avoid peremptorily attributing a single shared or dominant identity to all members of a group.” Despite the fact that Fresh Off the Boat is the first American television situation comedy to star an Asian-American family as protagonists in nearly two decades, the series may be condemned for its extreme stereotypical portrayals of the characters. For example, one of the first things the audience will notice is Eddie’s parents’ strong Asian accent throughout the entire series. Also, from the very first episode, the frugal, conservative Asian mother is illustrated and emphasized as Jessica constantly expresses her concerns on money. Furthermore, Eddie’s younger brothers, Emery and Evan, are portrayed as the stereotypical extremely smart, nerdy overachieving Asians. I enjoy this satirical show because it hilariously embraces Asian culture — however, others who do not understand Asian culture can be mislead to think all Asians are what Fresh Off the Boat portrays their characters as. It is important to note that this is a sitcom so it is crucial not to label all Asian-Americans with accents and these stereotypes.