Humour keeps sitcom buoyant
NEW YORK — Diversity on TV takes a step forward with ABC’s Fresh off the Boat, which boosts Asians’ scant presence in prime time with a sitcom about an Asian-American family pursuing the American dream while holding onto their own ethnicity. It previews Wednesday. But first a couple of caveats: • The title overstates the premise. Yes, Louis Huang and his family (wife Jessica and their three sons) have moved from Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown to Orlando, where Louis has opened a new restaurant. But the title suggests refugees paralyzed by culture shock. Most of the show’s humour comes, instead, from the sometimes perplexed reactions of its strangers-ina-strange land to the quirks of suburbia.
• The show takes place in 1995 and is narrated by the adult version of the oldest son, 11-yearold Eddie. There are shades of Everybody Hates Chris, another single-camera comedy whose narrator, Chris Rock, told of his 1980s boyhood in an African-American community, and ABC’s The Goldbergs.
In an ideal world, the arrival of Fresh off the Boat would be judged purely on its merits, not as a much-belated breakthrough in TV diversity.
But the fact is, Asian-Americans, who make up 5.3 per cent of the U.S. population, found their representation on primetime scripted shows last fall to be half that figure on ABC, NBC and Fox (CBS matched the Census figure).
More to the point: Boat is the first comedy centred on an Asian family since Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl aired during the 1994-95 season.
A sitcom is typically held to no higher standard than to keep its audience amused. But hopes for Boat are inevitably higher (as are its potential rewards): to help normalize the presence of Asians on TV and help declare their place in the American mainstream.
Yes, the show comes with a message, expressed by narrator Huang: “You don’t have to pretend to be someone else in order to belong.”
In the process, it also happens to be funny.