Feb 4, 2015 4 min read

Restaurateur Eddie Huang was angry about ABC’s initial marketing for the new sitcom based on his memoir “Fresh Off the Boat,” premiering Wednesday with two episodes before settling into its regular Tuesday slot next week.

He had good reason to be angry about the original promo for the show, which the network immediately yanked off the air because it was astoundingly offensive, given the show’s theme. If he only saw Wednesday’s pilot, he might have more reason to be angry. Fortunately, ABC airs a second episode an hour later that suggests no matter how steeped in stereotypes the pilot is, there is, indeed, nuanced character development, humor and legitimate promise down the road in the show about a Chinese American family moving from Washington, D.C., to Orlando in 1995.

The show’s title traditionally refers to immigrants, of course, but in this case, it’s about young Eddie Huang (Hudson Yang) feeling out of place in his new overwhelmingly white neighborhood and school. His younger brothers, Evan (Ian Chen) and Emery (Forrest Wheeler) fit in just fine. They aren’t ostracized by their classmates for bringing pungent Chinese noodles to school for lunch, instead of ubiquitous Lunchables. Eddie, whose life heroes are African American basketball stars and rappers, tries to make friends with an African American kid at school, who is only glad Eddie’s there because now he’s no longer the biggest outcast in the school.

When Eddie gets into a fight with another kid for calling him a “chink,” his mother Jessica (Constance Wu), instantly establishing herself as a stereotypical “Tiger mother,” swoops down on the school for failing to punish the white kid for using the slur.

As much as Jessica is the Tiger Mother, her husband Louis (Randall Park) is so eagerly accommodating, he borders on being the stereotype of the obsequious Asian functionary. He has opened a restaurant in Orlando – not a Chinese restaurant, but that most “American” of eating establishments, a Western-themed steakhouse. Fretting that business is bad because there are no white faces working at the Cattleman’s Ranch, he hires Mitch (Paul Scheer) to dress up in cowboy gear as one of the restaurant’s two waiters.

The first episode focuses far too much on these stereotypes. On top of that, it’s not even funny.

But what a difference a second episode makes. The stereotypes are still there and, in some cases, even more in your face. At the start of the episode, parents are gathered together to hear a warning from the principal about a guy distributing drugs to kids at school. Any questions? Jessica raises her hand: When do report cards come out? When the kids come home with excellent grades, Jessica determines that the school is too easy and augments her kids’ education with her own version of a Chinese Learning Center, an after school program epitomizing the stereotype of Asian parents overly concerned with their kids’ pursuit of excellence at the expense of everything else in their young lives.

The real difference between the first and second episodes, though, is not just that the stereotypes are eventually turned upside down, but that the characters are no longer just those stereotypes. We see Jessica’s humanity, her partial realization that there should be more to her sons’ lives than academic excellence, and that her husband’s genuine affection for others isn’t a sign of a weak character.

The performances are adequate in the pilot, but understandably better in the second episode because the actors have more to work with. Yang (son of culture critic Jeff Yang) is especially good as Eddie, injecting a winning sense of “real-life kid” into the role.

Huang himself is one of the show’s producers and contributes a “The Goldbergs”-like (or, for you older viewers, “Wonder Years”-like) voiceover that doesn’t add anything much to the show but doesn’t harm it either.

If you only watched the first episode, you might conclude that it’s great to see other Asian Americans carrying a new show because Mindy Kaling must have been getting lonely, but that the quality of any show is about more than just diversity. With the second episode, “Fresh Off the Boat” begins to demonstrate that truth, belatedly delivering the promise missing from the pilot.