Relationship Spotlight: Louis & Jessica Huang (Fresh Off the Boat)

The “goofy dad” and “buzzkill mom” tropes are as old as family sitcoms themselves, and I don’t deny that Louis and Jessica have elements of this dynamic.  After all, Jessica’s the one who rules the family expenses with an iron fist while Louis dreams of living dangerously by turning the AC on, and he’s definitely the optimist to her cynic.  But overall, I think this couple goes beyond the tropes and comes out with something more refreshing.

Again, I’m not saying he’s not silly and she’s not strict.  They totally are.  Louis likes doing Rocky impressions.  Jessica terrorizes the employees at the restaurant.  Louis loves Halloween.  Jessica loves correcting people.  Louis enjoys the occasional splurge.  Jessica takes the hiring of a maid as a personal insult.  The patterns are there.  However, the tropes tend to come pre-loaded with expectations of each partner – namely, that the dad is a lovably-irresponsible screw-up and the mom is an always-right shrew – and most of the time, that’s not what I see with the Huangs.

First of all, for all his sunniness and periodic lapses in judgment, Louis is a hard worker who takes his business seriously even as he has fun with decorating the restaurant and dreaming up theme promotions.  He’s also a good father who doesn’t have all the answers but always tries to do right by his boys, and what’s more, he understands Jessica and what makes her tick.  He doesn’t constantly criticize her exacting nature or her spendthrift ways, but he doesn’t live in fear of speaking up to his “overbearing” wife, either – depending on the situation, he challenges her, backs her, defers to her, or helps her.

Meanwhile, it’s not as if Jessica is incapable of having fun.  She adores Stephen King books and movies, she’s passionate about her collection of ceramic colonial mice (by far the most endearing of her obsessions,) and she gets immense satisfaction from her success as a realtor – I love her “pimp walk” after she sells her first house.  And more importantly, she isn’t always right.  She frequently goes overboard on stuff and has to be pulled back from taking nuclear options. 

In both of their cases, the differences between Jessica and Louis can be both the best and worst thing about them.  Jessica swoops in to rescue Louis from the results of an impractical decision about as often as he talks her into not taking something so seriously.  In this way, they complement one another, each relying on the other’s strengths while compensating for the other’s flaws.  There’s a nice give-and-take.  Not always, of course – in general, I’d say they understand each other quite well and balance each other out, but there are inevitably times when one or the other puts up roadblocks.  They always sort it out in the end, though.

And I love watching them in their groove.  I like that they get excited about working on their tax returns together.  I like that Louis understands Jessica even when she can’t say what she needs, and I like that Jessica is always there to look out for Louis.  That said, one of my favorite Louis/Jessica moments actually comes on the tail end of a rocky episode for them.  Although Louis pulls his weight most of the time, he can’t deal when Eddie and Evan get lice – he abandons Jessica mid-clean-up operation, hiding out at work or with his friends and leaving her to deal with the stress and the mess.  Eventually realizing that he screwed up, he returns home with an edict:  they’ve washed enough sheets.  They’re buying new ones.  It’s so funny, but utterly sweet, too, and as Jessica falls into Louis’s inviting hug, it’s just a weirdly perfect moment for them.

Favorite Characters: Jessica Huang (Fresh Off the Boat)

I like all the Huangs on Fresh off the Boat (it and Black-ish have both become stellar examples of the single-camera family sitcom,) but Jessica has always been my favorite.  She’s such a well-done character; even though she can frequently be seen as skirting the edge of a stereotype, she never feels canned to me.  The fantastic humor of the character comes through her, not at her.

Jessica definitely fits the mold of a “Tiger Mom,” a strict Asian mother who demands high scholastic performance and irreproachable behavior.  Emery and Evan, her two younger boys, know to expect faint praise at best for any grade below an A++, she forever strives for her family to operate like a well-oiled machine, and she could be an Olympic medalist in micromanaging.  Eddie (her oldest son/black sheep) is a little cowed by her, the school principal is intimidated by her, and the employees at her husband Louis’s restaurant are terrified of her.

Her other best-known qualities fit similarly into the “uptight and controlling” category.  Much as she likes her family to be “just so,” she wants both her house and the restaurant in perfect order.  In a recent (hilarious) episode involving a lice outbreak at school, she banishes the infested Eddie and Evan to the yard while she and Louis scour the house, and getting a head-start on taxes is her idea of a satisfying night in.  She’s also notoriously frugal.  I bet this comes up at least once an episode and has been featured prominently in numerous plotlines; a recent/awesome example is when she’s disappointed at the thought that Louis went out and bought mood music for a romantic night, then gets turned on when he reveals that the CD is actually from the library.

It all adds up to one tough customer, and she is, but what the show does with this is important.  While Jessica is often the boss of the family, the series doesn’t lose sight of the fact that this is often her way of showing love.  She pushes her children in hopes of securing the absolute best for them, she wants everything in their lives to go well, and her greatest wish is for them to grow into capable, successful men.  Plus, when the chips are down, she’s absolutely someone you want in your corner.  She can turn all that tightly-wound Jessica energy on someone and browbeat them handily into submission.  When Louis encourages laxer spending habits on the family’s first vacation, she’s the one who swoops in to haggle down the resulting exorbitant bill.  And one scene from the pilot is still a favorite Jessica moment for me.  Eddie is sure that he’s in for it when his parents are called in over a fight at school, but Jessica’s only concern is why the school did nothing to punish the boy who started the fight by calling Eddie a racial slur.  After being introduced to her as the exacting hardass forever at odds with the academically so-so and hip-hop-loving Eddie, it’s so lovely to see her come to Eddie’s defense no questions asked.

Because Jessica really is so much about love, and this is most evident in how she steps out of her comfort zone for Eddie.  Another big moment for her in the pilot is when she darkens the door of the chain grocery store (where she’s never been) to buy Eddie Lunchables for school.  She gets them despite the expense, despite the fact that he turned his nose up at the noodles her made for his lunch even though he likes them (kids have been making fun of his “weird” lunch,) despite not knowing the unwritten rules behavior in this store and being too proud to admit it.  For Jessica, all that is huge.  I like it because the basic fact of the scene – going to the store to buy Lunchables – sounds so small-time, but anyone who’s familiar with Jessica knows what a big deal it is, and I think that right there is a good sign of a well-drawn character.