I don't believe what I am seeing. Could it be? An Asian American woman paired with an Asian American man on TV? Not in Chinatown, no martial arts, no stupid accents, but there's.... romance????Cashmere Mafia is on ABC and the show with this character is expected to premiere on 1/24. I'll have to record this one and see how they play it out. Love to hear everyone's opinion when it airs.
6 comments:
well, i'm not holding my breath... i watched the 15 minute preview on abc.com, and in that 15 minutes, lucy liu's character gets engaged to her white male colleague.
maybe that's her brother? j/k. =P
brother from another mother...!
From what I've seen so far, she's using him to make her former boyfriend jealous.
Having actually seen the show (Lucy Liu looks like she's had plastic surgery, by the way), there appears to be some (somewhat forced, maybe) chemistry. The parents of Liu's character arrange a date for her (her white ex-fiance broke off the engagement after Liu's character beat him in a competition for the same job). Anonymous is right--Liu asks her new date to act like he's really into her at a party also attended by
said ex. There's a strangely written conversation where the two Asian characters discuss how neither of them tend to date Asian (one of his lines is "I don't really go for Chinese [women]").
It remains to be seen what will happen, but the casting of an attractive Asian male as a love interest (particularly for an Asian female...!) is a step toward progress, at least (sad that it's come to that). It also appears that there might be a future relationship of sorts as at the end of the episode, Liu's character turns down her ex's attempts to get back together.
Liu's still playing the tired old dragon lady/bitchy Asian woman stereotype though (better or worse than the submissive geisha thing? I'm not sure). Her character's parents were both featured on the same episode (this week's) as Jack Yang (the actor above). Both are Asian but very Upper East Side WASPy, which is kind of freaky. Liu noted in an interview, that her character, "Mia Mason," was originally intended to be a blond woman, and the writers oddly didn't change the name.
I just saw the episode. Their relationship is a bit contrived, dramatically, as well as socially.
But this is why I liked it:
-No silly accents
-No kung fu (not that I don't like kung fu)
-No Chinese food delivery (I do like Chinese food, BTW)
-No stereotypical characterizations in general
-Positive portrayals of Asians (yet neurotic enough to facilitate a compelling narrative)
-Multi-dimensional characters
-Characters were not ethnicity-specific like most of the roles that Asian actors tend to get (e.g.:Lost). Their predicament could have been anyone's, regardless of their ethnicity.
-They actually had more than a page of dialogue.
Um, Lucy Liu's shot with the very good looking guy is not a realistic depiction of the dating scene in my experience as a 30 something year old single asian woman looking to date a single asian man.
I'm in my mid/upper 30's, and most of the asian men in their mid/upper 30's featured on the internet dating sites say that they want to date women 5-8 years younger. I would say that asian men have an age preference that isn't the same as non-asian men, most of whom will happily date someone as old as they are.
So at my age, even though I would love to meet an asian man, it looks like I might have to date my second pick: non-asian men.
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