Kim’s Convenience and Managing Offensiveness as a Viewer

Kim’s Convenience (CBC — -> Netflix) Season 1- The show stars a nuclear family in Toronto with two immigrant parents and two fully integrated millennial children. The college-aged daughter (Andrea Bang) is as rebellious as a daughter can be who lives under her parents’ roof whereas the son (Simu Liu) is a high-living bachelor who works as middle management in a rental car agency.

The degree of development given to the parents (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Jean Yoon), on the other hand- yikes! I haven’t delved too much into critical response to the show (it matters much less with streaming television, however), but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was extremely negative. It traffics in such roughly drawn stereotypes of Korean-American characters that I have no idea how this show got on the air. The two parents speak Chinglish despite being in the country for decades, they’re extremely judgmental and stick out for their tight-fisted avarice more than any altruistic means. A more forgiving view could see what the writers are going for: Capturing the meddling nature of Asian-American parents but this is beyond the line of overkill.

Here’s the thing though: I’m capable of compartmentalizing this negative aspect of the show and enjoy the parts of the show that work.

I can also take comfort of knowing that this is the show exists alongside a media landscape that has rapidly increased the visibility for Asian-Americans including “Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (what…