This just in: Kim’s Convenience Better than Fresh off the Boat - Much, Much Better
Okay, it’s probably old news for some of you, but I just recently finished binging Kim’s Convenience and holy crap it was amazing. Remember me, a few months back, ripping on Wong Fu’s little short story about Asian-American dude and also on Fresh off the Boat? It’s not that I’m hard to please... they just fell short and were receiving praise just for their novelty and not really because the storytelling was anything good. So when friends told me to start KC, I was like hmm brace yourself Amy for another colossal disappointment and misrepresentation of Asian-Americans, BUT I WAS WRONG. I WAS SO WRONG. KC nails a lot of stuff spot on actually. Even though its about a Korean immigrant fam, even as a Chinese-American I could relate. Korean nationalism/pride permeates throughout, which is hilarious because it’s so true, have you ever met a Korean who doesn’t think Koreans are the best Asian race ever created, lmao... but also, something I really enjoy is that the PARENTS ARE ACTUALLY DEVELOPED AND REAL AND AUTHENTIC unlike in FOTB where they’re just like white-worshipping assimilation-obsessed one-dimensional caricatures. Mr. and Mrs. Kim are like, parents that act like real immigrant parents would, and instead of just showing them be “strict” and stubborn without reason, YOU SEE THE REASONS, and in very nuanced ways, unlike the loud and obvious WongFu style where everything is laid out for you in script as if you had the critical thinking skills of a 7 year old. When the mom in FOTB starts one of her strict Asian mom rants I just want to eye-roll and fast forward but when Mr. Kim yells at his daughter for being ungrateful when he’s literally given everything he has to her it takes me right back to like, last month when my dad delivered the same ass lecture in the same way. KC doesn’t just make fun of these things Asian parents do - it portrays these human beings and immigrant families as real, rational, humanistic, people.
For those of you who don’t know what KC is about, basically a Korean fam owns a convenience store in Canada, there’s a son who dropped outta HS and ran away from home because poor relationship with his dad, and a daughter who is I guess more of the “model student” but also not because she is in art school. So the parents aren’t the most conservative parents out there but they also aren’t by any means liberal. They go to church and the hypocrisy of Korean church culture could be developed more but it’s at least somewhat developed. Mostly I’m amazed by how accurate that strained father-son relationship is. We don’t like to talk about it, but Asian kids run away from home. I know of someone and you probably know of someone too. Or, if they didn’t run away from home, they’re just flat out not on speaking terms with their parents anymore. The generational gap can cause divides that seem irreparable. At this point in KC, the relationship is still strained, but it’s also so real and I appreciate that so much. You don’t just see an unreasonable father who you blame the entirety of the strained relationship on - you also see a son who buys so much into Western culture that he fails to see the Eastern way his dad shows love, and is trained into assuming the worst of his dad because of a lack of cultural understanding and not because the dad is a bad dad. One of the biggest issues I have with what gets misrepresented for Asians = our parents. I feel like non-Asians think of Asian parents as like, these devoid of emotion robots who abuse the shit out of their children, which is just so untrue, and what sucks is that a lot of Asian kids who grow up in white-dominated cultures start buying into the white way to raise children being the RIGHT way to raise children, and a lot of these “can’t fix” relationships stem from that friction. And when white people are just like lol these parents are the reasons their kids are messed up it just reinforces the divided relationship. KC doesn’t do that, and it makes me emotional just thinking about how glad I am it doesn’t do that. Thank you KC for tackling the complexity of these immigrant fam relationships with attention to authenticity. Thank you for not becoming the shallow, white-pandering joke of a show FOTB is. Just, thanks, and keep churning out the seasons please. Some white guy was ripping on KC the other day and saying it was way worse than FOTB which only further emphasizes my point that FOTB has found its target audience and it ain’t us Asians, lol. Don’t listen to the white reviewers about our Asian shows. Gogogo give KC a chance, I complain about everything and I even loved this haha.
