Stream It Or Skip It: ‘American Born Chinese’ On Disney+, Where A High School Kid Gets Sucked Into A War Between Chinese Gods

We’re suckers for coming-of-age high school stories, especially when the person coming of age is super awkward (so that pretty much means all of those stories). High school was a long time ago for us, but we still identify with that awkward kid who was trying to find his or her place in the social strata of the student body. In a new Disney+ series, that awkwardness is also layered with some mythical battles and racial microaggressions.

AMERICAN BORN CHINESE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A field of red leaves. Text explains how the Jade Emperor has ruled the Heavenly Realm for millennia, but is being challenged by the Bull Demon. Jingu Bang, the Iron Staff of the Monkey King, is needed to help defeat the Bull Demon. But the staff is missing.

The Gist: Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu), the son of Sun Wukong (Daniel Wu), aka The Monkey King, is running through the woods with the staff. The being who is chasing him switches between animals and then a burst of fire. It turns out that Sun Wukong is the one chasing him; he wants the staff back in time for the Autumn Solstice to defend the realm against the Bull Demon. But Wei-Chen decides to jump through the cloud entry to the earthly realm instead.

Down on Earth, Jin Wang (Ben Wang) is about to start 10th grade. He’s definitely suffering from a lack of confidence, but he’s made some cooler friends at summer soccer club, though he’s found himself on the outs with his best friend Anuj (Mahi Alam). He has an awkward encounter with a girl named Amelia (Sydney Taylor) while clothes shopping with his mom Christine (Yeo Yann Yann), but she left an impression on him.

At home, he hears his mom and his dad Simon (Chin Han) fighting about his dad’s job, and because his Chinese isn’t great, he thinks he keeps hearing the phrase “fried squid.”

On the first day of school, he’s encouraged to try out for the JV soccer team, and then realizes Amelia, whom he used to go to elementary school with, is in his class. They hit it off and they almost become lab partners, until he’s pulled out of class to chaperone a new student named Wei-Chen.

Of course, the only reason why he’s paired with Wei-Chen is because they’re both Chinese. Jin finds Wei-Chen to be a little strange but a “confident dude”, and he’s fascinated that he has merch from issues of a manga that hasn’t been released in the US yet.

While Jin struggles with his parents fighting, a meme that’s been made of him that’s connected to a racist ’90s sitcom starring Freddy Wong (Ke Huy Quan), and Amelia saying they can hang out as “buds,” Wei-Chen has his own issues, as we see when his father comes down from the Heavenly Realm to get the staff back. He almost has to give it up until another god, Guanyin (Michelle Yeoh) comes down to put a stop to the fight.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s not a stretch to say that American Born Chinese could be a spiritual companion piece to Everything Everywhere All At Once, and not just because there’s a lot of overlap between the series’ and film’s casts.

Our Take: Even though the episodes of American Born Chinese are introduced with a paragraph of exposition, we still struggled a bit to figure out who was who and what was what in the first episode. Kelvin Wu (Bob’s Burgers) created the series based on Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel of the same name, and it seems that he decided to build the world of the Heavenly Realm as the story goes along rather than try to establish its “rules” before Wei-Chen descends to Earth. Those familiar with the mythology will likely feel more comfortable with that than those, like us, who aren’t.

That decision, however, gives the show the advantage of getting right into the struggles of Jin in high school and how he contrasts to Wei-Chen; there, the show succeeds with some smart character-based comedy and a fine lead performance by Ben Wang as Jin. But where it gets murky is just who the heck is who in the Heavenly Realm. It doesn’t help that both Wei-Chen and his father the king look different on Earth than they do in the heavens. And when Guanyin comes down to protect Wei-Chen and preserve his journey with the staff, we have no idea who she actually is.

We’re confident all of this will be cleared up as the season goes along, though. It will only enhance a fun story with lots of well-choreographed action sequences. There’s no question that Wei-Chen encountered Jin for a particular reason, and that the journey Wei-Chen takes as the Bull Demon threatens his home will parallel in some way Jin’s quest to be a more confident person. Wei-Chen has already influenced his new friend in the first episode; Jin not only gets the stones to ask Amelia out but bashes into a particular tormentor at the soccer tryouts. Yes, that may cost him a spot on the team and time with his new buddies, but he’ll be better off for it.

As you might expect, we’re excited to see Oscar winners Yeoh and Quan do their thing here, but Wu does a good job of establishing that this series is about Jin and Wei-Chen, and both Ben Wang and Jimmy Liu inhabit their characters completely and convincingly.

We are rooting for Jin pretty much from the jump, and his struggle isn’t just the usual coming-of-age high school stuff. He has to deal with being a first-generation American with parents who are more traditional with high standards, but in conflict with each other. But he also has to deal with the microaggressions he hears and sees every day, including being called “Jim” by every single teacher, even though the teachers know who he is. Wei-Chen (whom the principal calls “Wayne Chang”) seems to be able to confront those microaggressions, which Jin wants to emulate. You can tell he wants to be a good guy who doesn’t want to blow off friends like Anuj even as he tries to climb the social ladder, which is why it’ll be fun to see Jin and Wei-Chen depend on each other to get what they want.

Sex and Skin: None. Given the show is TV-PG, it’s definitely one that the family can watch.

Parting Shot: Jin takes the action figure that Wei-Chen gave him, which has a hidden lion-shaped head, on his bookshelf.

Sleeper Star: Yeo Yann Yann doesn’t play Christine Wang as the typical overbearing Asian mom; while she may tell Jin that their family aren’t “waterskiing people,” she does have a sense of adventure that comes off when she tells her husband Simon that she misses the brave man she married.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Amelia says that she and Jin “could hang out as buds,” we so felt his pain. At least she acknowledged that she phrased that completely wrong.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While it took a bit of time to get our bearings with regards to what’s going on in the Heavenly Realm, we still enjoyed the first episode of American Born Chinese because of the earthly part of the story, as well as the well-done action sequences.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.