Fresh Off the Boat: Boy II Man
October 1, 2015 9:23 PM - Season 2, Episode 2 - Subscribe

Jessica shares her child raising and chess tips to Honey, who is having a tough time being the strict parent with Nicole, who makes Louis wish he and Jessica had a daughter. Meanwhile, Eddie is trying to avoid taking piccolo as his 5th period elective, and enjoying his time with Nicole, who protects the 7th grade boys from the 8th grade bullies.
posted by filthy light thief (6 comments total)
 
From the AV Club recap: "Jessica’s rant about terrifying Anne Geddis-type baby pictures is the latest installment in the ongoing series “Where is Constance Wu’s Emmy?”". I loved that rant so much, I was tempted to post the episode Fanfare thread myself for an excuse to transcribe the scene.

Oh, and I'm really glad that the Eddie/Nicole subplot has been done away with so soon in the season.
posted by oh yeah! at 4:38 AM on October 2, 2015


Specifically, the way she sold the "But there are no emperors any more!" line was just amazing.
posted by meese at 10:26 AM on October 2, 2015


Don't spend time trascribing TV when someone else has already done the hard work (you just need to add proper breaks and credit the characters).

Jessica: I found this in the sink. this in the pantry. And these... In between the magazines in the bathroom!
Louis: Oh, calendars with cute baby girls dressed as vegetables. How did these get everywhere?
Jessica: Do you know what baby girls turn into? Teenage girls, and, Louis, trust me, neither of us want that.
Louis: Are you sure? I mean, come on.
Jessica: I don't think that's cute! I think it's freaky! It's like a curse! It's like this poor baby angered some witch who cursed her to be trapped in a cabbage body! And now she needs an emperor's kiss to release her from the curse, but the emperors are gone... replaced by democracy. So this poor cabbage baby is left alone in the fields to be pecked at by crows. And then a photographer comes along, and he takes a photograph of her, and he sells it for lots of money, but he leaves her alone to a life of misery! For who could ever love a cabbage-faced baby?
Louis: February's a carrot.
Jessica: Shop is closed!

The script is good, but the acting is great.

Oh, and the boys all singing End of the Road, with Evan doing the spoken bit: "Girl. I'm here for you. All those times at night when you just hurt me and just ran off with that other fella... Baby, I knew about it. I just didn't care."

SO GOOD!

"It would be like asking Zong Dingbo to carry the ghost only halfway into the town."

Seriously, why aren't more people watching this?
posted by filthy light thief at 10:48 AM on October 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


this is the first episode i have seen and i love it!! i didn't expect it to be so charming for some reason.
posted by nadawi at 8:17 PM on October 4, 2015


I'm liking the second season so far. Bit torn; the Asiananity is all across the board from just for flavour to perhaps a little overboard (or maybe it hits too close to home - crazy neurotic guilt-tripping/tripped mother operating according to wildly disparate underlying assumptions/understandings than I was).

Constance Wu is incredible. Loving the new teen angst/rebellious Eddie character, actually*. Great grist for the writers to explore Asian integration. Randall Park is perfect; I love all of his scenes with Ray Wise, wonderfully typecast. The popular and preturnaturally well adjusted younger brothers is true enough to be hilarious kinda annoying. I wonder if Ian Chen did the solo himself in this episode. Grandma's solid.

The show's mellowing like a good wine, I really hope it gets more recognition as being a fun family sitcom that isn't too smarmy and isn't so uptight as not to push some boundries.

I thought that the school counselor with The Asian Wife bits were hilarious because the stereotype wasn't all that off from around that time period where I was growing up. I'm still/back there for now and interracial Asian relationships have really evolved. The only Asian guy my sister had ever dated, and there've been a lot of them, split because they were "better friends than lovers" and he's now "married to his job."

Any recommendations to good academic research on the anthropology (sociology?) of Asian/White-other vs. African-American/White-other (romantic) relationships or just interracial relationships in general? I have alumni access to UBC's (online) journal subscriptions.

*No, I didn't align myself with black culture; my timeframe was a decade earlier, my age the youngest brother, the location Vancouver BC, and a couple of (or three) steps down the economic ladder but probably (formerly) a step (or two) up socially, also from HK and not Taiwan which makes a bigger difference than appears on the face of it
posted by porpoise at 8:30 PM on October 5, 2015


Just started watching this, caught up on season 1. Love this show, especially the music!
posted by ellieBOA at 9:32 AM on November 15, 2015


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