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I follow a couple of youtube channels produced by young Americans from East Asian families, one group living on the East Coast, one on the West. The West Coast group in particular has bemoaned the fact that unlike African Americans, and Hispanics there really haven't been any TV shows centered on Asian Americans. Disney recently got in touch with them and sponsored a few videos to help promote the new ABC sit-com Just Off The Boat which premiered with two episodes last night. It's about a Chinese American family struggling to make a success in Florida after moving from the DC area.
To be perfectly honest the show was not very good. Not horrible. Just not good. Frankly the youtubers I follow present the same kind of material in their skits with better acting and more imagination. There were a couple very funny moments, but that was scattered over two episodes. Oddly I think the first episode presented a very good reason why such a show would have a tough time making it as a long term hit, even if it were done better. The mom gets together with the local "Anglo" (i.e. non-Asian, non-black, non-Hispanic) moms and they have a pot luck. The others politely refuse to try Chinese mom's dish. There are a lot of ordinary people out there who absolutely refuse to try anything new. I don't consider myself to be very adventuresome, but compared to whole sections of my family I'm Indiana Jones on a caffeine high. Too many people just don't feel comfortable away from the same old, same old. More on this later.
A second problem with the show is that it plunged into stereotypes Chinese Americans have about themselves. This is fine for Chinese Americans or those of us "Anglos" who have watched some of the East Asian American youtubers sharing a laugh at themselves and their families. But otherwise I think most people would question why the adults on the show were acting so goofy. It's not that what they were doing wasn't obvious, but why they were doing it to such extremes was not at all obvious. When I was in high school we thought of ourselves as having two races there: the black guy and the rest of us. But in my own class we had, besides the black guy, two kids who were East Asian or at least half East Asian. They certainly must have had their own special opinions about how well they fit in. But I don't know about anyone else there even thinking about them as being different. I think the average American is not going to understand the quirks of this TV family as being stereotypes, and just shake their heads and change the channel.
The next show was on PBS, an American Experience episode on tuberculosis in America. It was interesting mostly since I know that several people on my mother's side died from it, including my great grandmother, who died quite young, and her mother who died from it in her 80s.
Finally I found myself really enjoying Forever. I quit watching Bones last fall, because I found myself not caring anymore. Castle has really gotten into a rut lately. The writing is not nearly as good as it once was. One plot I absolutely loathe on Castle (and Bones) is the maniacal genius, serial killer who is always one step ahead of them, always taunting them, all picking somebody close to them to frame or kidnap. Blah. If you've seen Bones and Castle all the way though you've seen this thing more than a dozen times. The other night Castle started a two parter with this plot with Kate kidnapped. Kidnapping is desperately overdone on Castle anyway. This season we already had the season begin with Rick kidnapped and that was never resolved. Enough! The plot twist was a joke. I knew within five minutes what the villains were doing, and walked away from the TV and did other things with the show playing in the background. I refuse to watch the next episode of Castle and hope the following one will be less cookie cutter.
Why was Forever good and the last Castle so bad? Forever may not be the greatest show ever. The plots aren't spectacularly original. But at least for now the approach is totally fresh. Where Castle is churning back through plots in the same way people seemed to like in the past, Forever has no history. The Forever characters are not exceptionally new, but they don't know everything about each other. Castle is trying to please the audience it had in the past without the clever writing it once had. Forever is trying to get an audience.
I'm not completely different from everyone else. I like the familiar. But I like seeing it in new ways. I like Castle but I don't like seeing them churn through the same villains with the same emotions and the crime fighting crew with a lack of foresight toward these villains they would not have when approaching every other crime they solve.
To be perfectly honest the show was not very good. Not horrible. Just not good. Frankly the youtubers I follow present the same kind of material in their skits with better acting and more imagination. There were a couple very funny moments, but that was scattered over two episodes. Oddly I think the first episode presented a very good reason why such a show would have a tough time making it as a long term hit, even if it were done better. The mom gets together with the local "Anglo" (i.e. non-Asian, non-black, non-Hispanic) moms and they have a pot luck. The others politely refuse to try Chinese mom's dish. There are a lot of ordinary people out there who absolutely refuse to try anything new. I don't consider myself to be very adventuresome, but compared to whole sections of my family I'm Indiana Jones on a caffeine high. Too many people just don't feel comfortable away from the same old, same old. More on this later.
A second problem with the show is that it plunged into stereotypes Chinese Americans have about themselves. This is fine for Chinese Americans or those of us "Anglos" who have watched some of the East Asian American youtubers sharing a laugh at themselves and their families. But otherwise I think most people would question why the adults on the show were acting so goofy. It's not that what they were doing wasn't obvious, but why they were doing it to such extremes was not at all obvious. When I was in high school we thought of ourselves as having two races there: the black guy and the rest of us. But in my own class we had, besides the black guy, two kids who were East Asian or at least half East Asian. They certainly must have had their own special opinions about how well they fit in. But I don't know about anyone else there even thinking about them as being different. I think the average American is not going to understand the quirks of this TV family as being stereotypes, and just shake their heads and change the channel.
The next show was on PBS, an American Experience episode on tuberculosis in America. It was interesting mostly since I know that several people on my mother's side died from it, including my great grandmother, who died quite young, and her mother who died from it in her 80s.
Finally I found myself really enjoying Forever. I quit watching Bones last fall, because I found myself not caring anymore. Castle has really gotten into a rut lately. The writing is not nearly as good as it once was. One plot I absolutely loathe on Castle (and Bones) is the maniacal genius, serial killer who is always one step ahead of them, always taunting them, all picking somebody close to them to frame or kidnap. Blah. If you've seen Bones and Castle all the way though you've seen this thing more than a dozen times. The other night Castle started a two parter with this plot with Kate kidnapped. Kidnapping is desperately overdone on Castle anyway. This season we already had the season begin with Rick kidnapped and that was never resolved. Enough! The plot twist was a joke. I knew within five minutes what the villains were doing, and walked away from the TV and did other things with the show playing in the background. I refuse to watch the next episode of Castle and hope the following one will be less cookie cutter.
Why was Forever good and the last Castle so bad? Forever may not be the greatest show ever. The plots aren't spectacularly original. But at least for now the approach is totally fresh. Where Castle is churning back through plots in the same way people seemed to like in the past, Forever has no history. The Forever characters are not exceptionally new, but they don't know everything about each other. Castle is trying to please the audience it had in the past without the clever writing it once had. Forever is trying to get an audience.
I'm not completely different from everyone else. I like the familiar. But I like seeing it in new ways. I like Castle but I don't like seeing them churn through the same villains with the same emotions and the crime fighting crew with a lack of foresight toward these villains they would not have when approaching every other crime they solve.
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I don't see Fresh Off the Boat improving much. I kind of feel sorry for the guys who stuck their necks out to help ABC/Disney promote the thing. At least they got paid a little.