ABC’s midseason sitcom Fresh off the Boat has earned some surprising acclaim, but it hasn’t gotten any of that from Eddie Huang. The sitcom is based on his memoir and he even narrates the show, but that doesn’t mean he likes it.
In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Huang started criticizing the show, which has already aired 11 of its 13 episodes. He started off by saying that he does not watch the show.
“I'm happy people of color are able to see a reflection of themselves through #FreshOffTheBoat on @ABCNetwork but I don't recognize it,” he continued. “My only goal was to represent my Taiwanese-Chinese-American experience & I did that. We also proved viewers want diverse content so make it!”
So while he’s happy that the show brought diversity to network television, he doesn’t like the execution.
“I had to say something because I stood by the pilot. After that it got so far from the truth that I don't recognize my own life,” Huang wrote. “I don't think it is helping us to perpetuate an artificial representation of Asian American lives and we should address it.”
Huang also took a swipe at the Deadline article that got Shonda Rhimes and many others angry. “You have no idea how hard this is,” he wrote.
Huang also said that he embraced hip hop and black culture after being a victim of domestic violence. His grandmother had bound feet, his grandfather committed suicide and child protection services tried to take Huang and his siblings from his parents. “I understand this is a comedy but the great comics speak from pain: Pryor, Rock, Louis... This show had that opportunity but it fails,” he added.
He also responded to critics who asked him why he would think a sitcom on ABC would cover such serious topics.
This isn’t the first time Huang has been critical of the show. In January, he wrote an essay for Vulture, in which he admitted that he started regretting selling the rights to his book.
“The network’s approach was to tell a universal, ambiguous, cornstarch story about Asian-Americans resembling moo goo gai pan written by a Persian-American who cut her teeth on race relations writing for Seth MacFarlane,” Huang wrote. “But who is that show written for?”