The good, the “meh,” and the ugly. Major SPOILERS ahead.
Ron Tom / ABC
This year was a landmark for Asians in Hollywood. TV launched ABC's Fresh Off the Boat, the first sitcom about an Asian-American family since All-American Girl; Quantico, the first primetime drama with an Indian lead; and Into the Badlands, which gave us our first Asian-American action hero protagonist on television.
But there were a couple films that made us collectively go "oof." Aloha featured definitely white actor Emma Stone as a half-Hawaiian, half-Chinese woman. And No Escape was essentially a yellow peril film that turned Asians into bloodthirsty zombies. (Note: It is 2015.)
Here's a look back at the Asian characters who graced our screens this year, from the ones who challenged stereotypes to the ones who perpetuated them, and some in between.
Jessica Huang (Constance Wu), Fresh Off the Boat
When I first heard that ABC had picked up a show called Fresh Off the Boat, I was nervous...and I wasn't alone. Would this be a white person’s interpretation of the Asian-American experience? Would its characters all be depicted as stereotypical immigrants with thick accents, speaking broken English? Would it share the same fate as its predecessor, All-American Girl, which was canceled after just one season? The Margaret Cho series began and ended when I was 4 years old, so I had never seen a family resembling my own on television, nor could I imagine that reality. That's why it was such a relief and delight to see how much the people behind this show and in front of it got it — especially Constance Wu, who plays Jessica, the Huang family matriarch.
At first glance, Jessica seemed like a tiger mom, snappy and unsmiling. But as the series progressed, viewers were able to see her for her brilliance and badassery: She jumps to Eddie's (Hudson Yang) defense after he gets in a fight with a boy who calls him a chink; she eventually aces her realtor's exam after a bit of setback; and, in Season 2, she starts flipping houses to make money. Jessica's proven herself to be much more than just a tiger mom — she's a hustler, which is a pretty accurate representation of many Asian immigrant mothers, if you ask me.
ABC
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