'Fresh Off the Boat' and the Burden of the Ethnic Sitcom
Micropolis | Feb 9, 2015
ABC's "Fresh Off the Boat," based on Eddie Huang's memoir of the same name, premiered last week on a wave of hype. This is the first Asian-American sitcom since Margaret Cho's "All American Girl." What took so long?
In this episode of Micropolis, we consider the long, fraught history of Asians in TV (not including the excellent "Goodness Gracious Me," below), and why ethnic sitcoms are generally problematic.
But as NYU's Charlton McIlwain argues, we could be at a turning point. The Big 3 networks are now scrambling to make up for lost audiences, and are essentially telling minorities: "Tell me what you want, and we'll do our best to give it to you, because we need you really much more than you need us."
