Fresh Off The Boat: "Huangsgiving"

Premiered November 17, 2015

Louis: We're gonna throw the best Huangsgiving your mother's ever seen!
Jessica: You're really committed to that name, huh?  
Louis: That's the shortened version.  The full name is Louis Huang's Huangsgiving, featuring Louis and the Huangs.

It's almost Thanksgiving.  Jessica Huang (Constance Wu) and her sister Connie (Susan Park) are competitive when it comes to hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  This year, their mother (Shu Lan Tuan) selects Jessica to host, much to Connie's dismay.

The Huang family gathers for a planning meeting.  Clipboard in hand, Louis (Randall Park) decides their feast will be called "Huangsgiving" and the the family will serve up some new spins on tradition.  Instead of the usual roast duck, they will serve individual cornish hens.

Individual cornish hens are the personal pizzas of the bird world, according to Louis.

Jessica intends to  make her own cranberry sauce instead of the usual canned variety.  She also invites Oscar Chow (Rex Lee), her mother's favorite person.  (Oscar and Jessica's mom like to re-enact scenes from Dynasty.)

Younger sons, Evan (Ian Chen) and Emery (Forrest Wheeler) will play to their strengths and create table decorations.

Oldest son Eddie (Hudson Yang) ... promises not to bump into stuff and is looking forward to impressing his cousin Justin (Lance Lim) with his new Pearl Jam CD.

The Huang family awaiting their guests' arrival

Connie and her mother arrive, but Connie's husband Steve (C.S. Lee) pulls up in a separate car.  Connie announces that their marriage is over, which changes dinner seating plans, and upstages Jessica's feast.

Louis had planned to stay up late to work on dinner preparations, but that changes when a lonely Steve asks Louis to have a drink with him.

One drink turns into way more than that and Louis awakens on Thanksgiving morning in quite a sorry state.

This means that NO prep work got done the night before and that they're already behind schedule, which angers Jessica.

Things get worse when the cornish hens arrive...and Louis did not realize he'd ordered live hens!

Luckily, Louis has a turkey at his restaurant, but it's frozen solid.

The turkey is missing a drumstick as a result of being chipped out of the restaurant freezer!!

Neighbors Honey (Chelsey Crisp) and Marvin (Ray Wise) show up and add to the mayhem.   All Jessica and Louis can think of to do is stall by playing football or by any other means until they can get Huangsgiving on the table.

Meanwhile Eddie and his cousin Justin discover the wonders of the mid-1990s internet.

Waiting for a "sexy" picture to load ...

Will Huangsgiving turn out to be an utter disaster?

RigbyMel says:

This is a very funny Turkey day episode with an Asian-American twist.

Jessica and Connie's sibling rivalry is both amusing and believable.  And Jessica's tribulations in the kitchen ("The cranberry is a very stingy berry!") are hilarious.

Grandma Huang's (Lucille Soong) commentary on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and obsession with Garfield are awesome.  Her willingness to dispatch the poor cornish hens is a bit disturbing, but funny.

Having the series set in the 1990s adds a dash of nostalgia to the Thanksgiving fun.  (I well remember how long it took things to load from the Internet back then!)   However, it does lead to a bit of anachronistic dialogue -- I do not believe anyone was saying "It's on like Donkey Kong!" in the mid to late '90s.

Jessica and hair dryer vs. frozen turkey

Holidays are times of heightened emotion -- often spurred by inter-familial drama -- and lend themselves well to comedy.  As things spin out of control for the Huangs in this episode, we can laugh at their escapades and be glad that (maybe) our own Thanksgiving experiences won't wind up being quite so wacky as all this!

RigbyMel's rating: 

3 and a half pumpkin pies.

The family gathers for the Huangsgiving feast

J.A. Morris says: 
"Huangsgiving" is a very entertaining holiday episode.  It features lots of the tropes found in other Thanksgiving programming (cooking disasters, family quarrels, old rivalries rearing their heads), but still manages to be original.  Fresh Off The Boat is one of my favorite current series, so it makes sense that I'd enjoy this episode.

I thought Randall Park was particularly funny in "Huangsgiving."  He is determined to sell his family on the name Huangsgiving and says it as often as he can.  Louis is also optimistic throughout "Huangsgiving," never freaking out despite the odds mounting further and further against the family.

Constance Wu is equally good as Jessica.  Her best moment comes when she tells Louis that she seems calm, "but it's a calm anger, which is a much scarier type of anger."

C.S. Lee also delivers some memorable lines as Steve.

Since my family has hosted Thanksgiving before, I can say that visiting relatives often serve to unify one's immediate family.  "Huangsgiving" nails this aspect of the holidays, since Jessica, Louis and their kids always keep up a united front (despite Jessica's frustration with Louis).

The only problem I have with "Huangsgiving" is Oscar's boyfriend Michael (David Smityman). Michael feels like an outdated stereotype and adds nothing to the episode.

Oscar arrives with his new boyfriend, Michael.

"Huangsgiving" has not been released on DVD, but it's available for streaming on Amazon and iTunes.

This episode is recommended, but Michael's characterization keeps me from giving it a higher rating.

J.A. Morris' rating:

3 pumpkin pies.

Fresh Off The Boat: "Year of the Rat"

Premiered February 2, 2016

Nancy: You guys have  your own New Year?
Louis:  Yeah,  we get together with family, have a big dinner,  there's decorations, dragon dances, fireworks ... I mean, you should see how crazy it gets in Chinatown,  if you can breathe properly the next day, you weren't there!

The Huang family is excited to be heading off to Washington, D.C. to see their family and celebrate Chinese New Year.   Unfortunately,  Louis (Randall Park) got the dates wrong on the plane tickets so the family stuck in Orlando and unable to make the trip to D.C.  

The Huangs search the phone book looking for other Chinese families in Orlando that they might be able to share the holiday with to no avail,  but Jessica (Constance Wu) discovers an organization called the Asian American Association Of Orlando or AAAOO that is having a Chinese New Year celebration.

This seems like good news, until the Huangs actually get to the AAAOO's celebration and find it to be disastrously unsuccessful.

There are no other Chinese people in attendance and precious few Asians at all.   The presumably well-intentioned white organizers have failed to do much research and the resulting celebration leave much to be desired.

The kids -  particularly Eddie (Hudson Yang) - are very concerned that they won't be getting traditional red envelopes full of  money and try to butter up their grandmother (Lucille Soong) in hopes that she will come through for them.

Mountain Dew and Combos, Grandma?

They enlist youngest child Evan (Ian Chen) to try to do some stand-up comedy for her, on the grounds that he is small, funny & cute, like Grandma Huang's favorite character Garfield, but it does not go well.

Louis also tries to lighten the mood with jelly donuts in lieu of pork buns.

After several unsuccessful attempts to raise the family's spirits,  Louis makes one last ditch effort to save Chinese New Year for the family with help from the staff at his restaurant the Cattleman's Ranch!

Can Chinese New Year be saved?

RigbyMel says:

This is, I think, the first sitcom episode centered on Chinese New Year that I've ever seen.

The episode was humorous while managing to make some interesting points about cultural appropriation vs. cultural appreciation.    It's funny but also quite telling that everyone seems to think the holiday the Huangs want to go to Washington to celebrate is President's Day.

NOT an authentic Chinese New Year tradition!

The AAAOO folks are curious and want to have a Chinese New Year celebration, but their lack of research about what that would actually entail winds up being rather painfully embarrassing (for the Huangs, anyway).   The AAAOOers are rather unaware of the awkwardness of their party.

For instance we meet some dudebros sporting tattoos with Chinese characters.  They think their tats mean "understanding,"  when neither actually says that.   Grandma Huang attempts to school them (one is a tic-tac-toe board and one says "toaster"), but as they do not understand Chinese, they miss the point.

The whole family feels pretty let down about missing out on the holiday, and even more let down by the lack of attention paid to important details about what Chinese New Year entails -- adding to their sense of isolation.

The AAAOO people plan to do a Times Square style "rat drop" as part of their celebration.   (While 1996 was the Year of the Rat per the Chinese zodiac,  this is rather a misunderstanding of the custom.)

Jessica is very disappointed that "Nobody cares enough to get it right!"  but Louis points out that it's more a case of not knowing than not caring about the Chinese New Year traditions.

Lion dance at the Cattleman's Ranch!

Louis manages to make up for his major screw-up with the plane tickets by surprising his family with a much more authentic Lunar New Year celebration at the family restaurant he owns  (with a little help from his staff and a few family friends.)     The end of the episode comes off as rather sweet and also educational in a fun way.   It's also funny to see Jessica at first delighted by her friends' questions about the traditions of the holiday and then increasingly annoyed as she doesn't really get a break from said questions.

Something I found off-putting was a bit of product placement involving Panda Express in the dialogue -- I don't think it was necessary nor was it as funny as the writers seemed to think.

This is definitely a fun episode of the show that has fun with its "fish out of water" premise.  It also manages to be informative about Chinese New Year and about cultural appropriation without being overly preachy or political.    This may not be the best of the Huang family's adventures,  but it is certainly an interesting one.

RigbyMel's rating:

3 bundles of red firecrackers

J.A. Morris says:
I generally enjoy Fresh Off The Boat  and this is a solid episode.  I generally agree with RigbyMel's take on "Year Of The Rat."  It's nice to see Chinese New Year celebrated in a sitcom.  If you've never seen this series, "Year Of The Rat" is a good "starter" episode.

Evan's "stand-up comedy"  routines are a highlight of the episode.

This episode premiered last week and is currently available for streaming at abc.com.

"Year Of The Rat" is worth seeking out.  I don't usually celebrate Chinese New Year, but this episode was actually an education for me and I can see myself re-watching it in future Februaries.

J.A. Morris' rating:

3 bundles of red firecrackers.