"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Sunday, November 4, 2018

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.

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