American Born Chinese: Season 1

 

Based on: 2006 graphic novel of the same name by Gene Luen Yang (in turn based on classic Chinese novel Journey to the West)

Created by: Kelvin Yu

Starring: Ben Wang (Jin Wang), Yeo Yann Yann (Christine Wang), Chin Han (Simon Wang), Ke Huy Quan (Jamie Yao), Jimmy Liu (Wei-Chen), Sydney Taylor (Amelia), Daniel Wu (Sun Wukong), Michelle Yeoh (Guanyin)

American Born Chinese season 1 trailer:

I had a couple reasons for picking up this series: the author, Gene Yang, also wrote the first several Avatar comic trilogies. So I knew I wanted to follow his work. Second, this specific comic focuses on Chinese culture, which I'm very interested in. 

Plus, the casting of Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Stephanie Hsu made it even more appealing to me. I had become familiar with the three actors in Everything Everywhere All at Once, which came out recently in 2022. 

American Born Chinese is about Jin, the first generation of his Chinese family to be born in America, navigating a predominately-white high school. Jin meets Wei-Chen, son of the Monkey King, who believes Jin possesses a magical fourth scroll that Wei-Chen is questing for. As Jin's and Wei-Chen's paths converge, so do American high school and Chinese mythology. 

Guanyin and Wei-Chen converse in heaven

Jin and Wei-Chen share an awkward lunch

The show excels at its primary mission: intermixing American culture and Chinese, laying the intentionally campy high fantasy Chinese heaven back-to-back with Jin's very normal high school environment and the social drama of friendships, meeting girls, and making the soccer team. I was taken aback in the best way when, in episode 4, the series threw me a fully immersive full episode styled after 70s Chinese drama. 

The Monkey King attends a ball in heaven in episode 4

With these intersecting plot points, the show successfully conveys several important threads and issues: the difficulties Jin faces in a subtly racist environment, the cultural differences between Jin's home environment and that of his American not-yet-girlfriend Amelia, how the media (via internet memes and television series) can perpetuate racist stereotypes, more traditional Chinese cultural dynamics, and the three-dimensional intricacies of Chinese folklore and its characters. 

Ke Huy Quan's character takes the bulk of the subtle racism. Quan plays Jamie Yao in American Born Chinese, where Yao is turn an actor on a fictional sitcom called Beyond Repair, in which Yao plays Freddie Wong. The only Asian character on Beyond Repair, Wong is the butt of a repeating and shallow one-liner, limiting his character to never grow beyond this simple joke. American Born Chinese shows Jamie on a great, introspective journey in which he has to deal with the legacy of his character, Freddie, in which he's only remembered for this repetitive, demeaning joke. Toward the season finale, Jamie is invited to a cast reunion with the other members of Beyond Repair. Jamie accepts only reluctantly, as the show is filled with negative, oppressive memories, and balancing his fortune to star on the show alongside the difficulties it caused his life is nuanced and complex. American Born Chinese and Ke Huy Quan portray these difficult scenes excellently, allowing the character to give thoughtful, deep, and complicated answers. 

Embarrassed by his role in Beyond Repair and not taken seriously in Hollywood, Jamie becomes a teacher instead

In a lighter but equally important plot, Michelle Yeoh, Jimmy Liu, and Daniel Wu portray a family of gods whose lives present the shift between American high school and Chinese heaven. Through them, we get a rich background of Chinese folklore and the sweet, campy flashback of a younger Monkey King living with his friend in heaven, among the other gods. Through most of the series, we see them in their human forms on Earth, just living their lives, questing to find the mythical fourth scroll. 

Jin and Wei-Chen form the bulk of the show, with Jin tending to be shy and simply wanting to blend in with American culture while Wei-Chen is outspokenly proud of his Chinese heritage. The tension between these attitudes, dealing with their variously ignorant classmates and teachers, and the lives of their respective families--who are given a necessary chunk of screen time to be fleshed out--form the heart and cultural dichotomy of the series. 

I loved the amount of screentime Jin's family got

While the season's main plot is solved, we're left unsure as to the larger reason behind it, as well as what happens to all of the main characters next. Additionally, we're dished a pretty significant cliffhanger in the show's final moments! So hopefully we'll see a well-deserved season 2 renewal soon. 

I also want to mention the attention this culturally groundbreaking series has received from a variety of national news outlets: Men's Health discusses one actor's workout routine, the NYT analyzes the series' risky characters, the Washington Post discusses the show's depiction of bullying, the Rolling Stone celebrates the reunion of Everything Everywhere All at Once actors, and NPR interviews the author about his career. Not to shabby!