Fresh Off the Boat

Premise

The story follows the course of Eddie Huang's Taiwanese family as they make their way from Chinatown of Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Florida to open up a cowboy-themed steak restaurant in 1995 (with the first season being set between 1995 and 1997). His mother struggles with the culture clash of her upbringing with a Florida community that doesn't have a large Asian population, his father embraces the "American Dream", and Eddie struggles with assimilating into school.

Main cast

Recurring cast

Development and production

Eddie Huang's 2013 Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir caught the attention of TV networks upon release, with ABC and 20th Century Fox Television signing in late that year. Huang, the show's creator and one of the producers of the series, led a Twitter campaign to change the original show name, Far East Orlando, when it was in development.

On May 13, 2014, ABC ordered the first season of the show during the May 2014 upfront to air in 2015 as a mid-season replacement.

The real-life Eddie Huang narrates the first season only. Eleven episodes into the first season, Huang expressed frustration over ABC's approach, saying it presents an "ambiguous, cornstarch story about Asian-Americans" that perpetuates "an artificial representation of Asian American lives." The sitcom was adapted to suit a broader American audience. He also Tweeted in April 2015, "I understand this is a comedy but the great comics speak from pain: Pryor, Rock, Louis...This show had that opportunity but it fails." Despite his concern for authenticity, he finds the show a "milestone" for Asian-Americans as they are at the forefront of this television series. Huang further explained in an interview on National Public Radio (United States), "The studio and network are not on a mission to not represent us. They just don't know how to."

Huang described the exchange between his team and ABC as brief. In an article in Vulture Magazine Huang expressed concern over the studio's decision that Nahnatchka Khan, an Iranian-American writer, would represent his memoir for the TV scripts, believing that she would present the story as less than realistic and authentic. "I would be excited, but you attached a Persian writer, and I’m kinda worried it's going to be The Shahs of Cul-de-Sac Holando."

In 2015, Constance Wu was interviewed by Jenny Zhang for The Lenny Interview. In this interview she spoke about her initial fear of criticizing some of the shows details. Now in its second season, Wu speaks openly about her request for the staff to make the show more specific, stating "If you change the food to a 1,000-year-old black egg with tofu and scallions, it will be a little more specific, and specificity is just better for character, and it's more interesting than, say, tofu and rice."

Season two changes

Fresh Off the Boat made many changes for the second season including the following:

Broadcast

Fresh Off the Boat premiered on FOX8 in Australia starting May 10, 2015; It was also picked up by Network Ten, and started airing on 7 March 2016 on its sister channel, Eleven. It debuted on March 12, 2015 in South Africa on Fox Crime.

In South Asia, Fresh Off The Boat, airs 12 hours after the U.S. broadcast on Star World Premiere HD.

Critical reception

Fresh Off the Boat has received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show has a 91% certified fresh approval rating, with the critical consensus "Once the cliched gags of Fresh off the Boat are superseded by a grounded truthfulness, the series evolves into a humorously charming family sitcom." It also has earned a 75 out of 100 score on Metacritic, indicating 'generally favorable reviews'. Particularly, Constance Wu's performance has been acclaimed, earning nominations for both the TCA Awards and the EWwy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Comedy, as well as an "Individual Achievement in Comedy" nomination at the Critics' Choice Television Awards.

Reviews cited the show's potential to increase the visibility and accuracy of Asian Americans in arts and entertainment. For writer and poet Jenny Zhang (who interviewed Constance Wu for Lenny Letter), Fresh Off the Boat was a welcome change from the representation of Asian Americans on the TV series she had seen as a child at age 11, where the few people who looked like her were either the subjects of crude jokes or had only minor cameos.

While admirable that ABC has decided to feature a sitcom about a Chinese-American family on primetime television, there have been concerns about the subliminal messaging that the writing of the show produces. "It means that there are real conversations being had about Asian American identity in addition to acknowledging the lack of inclusivity Asian Americans have had in the nation's cultural and entertainment dialogue." Ester Suh, writing for the Huffington Post, felt that many characterizations in the show misrepresented the Asian-American experience, but acknowledged that "our experience as Americans, like everyone else’s, is varied, and to say that a single show can exemplify all our experiences, would be a disfavor. I see Fresh as a sound board for future shows with Asian American casts, helping make television a more diverse and inclusive cultural platform."

The Harvard Political Review additionally commented that "Fresh Off the Boat captures the essence of why diversity in media matters—we, like young Eddie, all want to see ourselves as worthy of being protagonists, whether in stories or in real life. However, lost in translation are the stories of parents and grandparents, who also have claim to labels like the Asian-American experience."

Television critic Emily Nussbaum, in her review for The New Yorker, compares the memoir and television version of Huang's relationship with his father and with black culture, "Without a cruel bully for a father, Eddie's taste for hip-hop feels more superficial—in the book, it's an abused kid's catharsis and an identification with black history." Additionally, Huang's identification with black history has led to controversial remarks.