It’s what’s been missing on TV for, oh, 20 years. Asian Americans. No, not just sprinkled around as the best friend or doctor or quirky love interest. We’re talking about a show centered on an Asian American family, one that we can relate to, invest ourselves in and laugh with—not at.
Finally, that show is here.
“Fresh Off The Boat,” a comedy based on Eddie Huang’s memoir of the same name, has been picked up by ABC, making it, when it airs, the first Asian American family sitcom on network prime time since Margaret Cho’s “All American Girl” premiered in 1994. (God, we feel old.)
The sitcom, written and produced by Nahnatchka Khan, follows hip-hop obsessed Eddie (Hudson Yang) as he grows up in suburban Orlando with his immigrant parents, played by Randall Park and Constance Wu. Yang is the 10-year-old son of Asian American pop culture guru Jeff Yang, who wrote in his Wall Street Journal column, “The show is like nothing you will have ever seen before on television. If it makes it to air, it will blow minds, raise eyebrows and, to quote a line that my son says as Little Eddie, ‘change the game.’ I would honestly say the same if I weren’t the lead actor’s father. It’s that different. And provocative. And, yes, gut-bustingly funny.”
Just tell us when to set our DVRs.
