2 Broke Girls, Mathew Moy, And WTF Was I Watching?

Tuesday, October 11, 2011



I get that actors need to work and that sometimes they just can't win especially if they're a person of color and especially if they're from the APIA community - but that doesn't mean we can't ask questions - and there're a few large ones looming over CBS's "2 Broke Girls" that come to mind including the following:


  • Why does Mathew Moy have to play the new immigrant learning the language, doing every stereotype in the book including getting bossed around by "hot" White Women? Haven't we seen that before and wouldn't his character be just as good being a 2nd or 3rd gen API?


  • In an interview, co-creator Michael Patrick King "pointed out that the show, which takes place in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, is simply representative of the real-life neighborhood. 'It's a very mixed melting pot environment, Williamsburg, and we're interested in showing the difference between the cool hipsters [and the rest of the neighborhood].'

    First, let's just remember the differences between the melting pot and the salad bowl - the latter doesn't slowly morph away your racial and ethnic identity but instead allows you to co-exist intermingling tastes and textures while keeping your identity.

    Second - what - POC hipsters don't exist? Hipsters are only White Americans with English as their first language?

    And they're cool?

    So the show is about the differences between "cool" White People and how they interact with the "uncool, non-progressive, non-independent thinking, can't appreciate art, uneducated population"?

    Haven't we already seen that show and weren't some of those episodes titled "Watts Riots of 1965", "Anti-miscegenation laws", "Redlining", "The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882", "Japanese American Internment Camps", and "The Jan Brewer Show: How To Fuck An Immigrant And Keep Them In Jail For As Long As You Want"?


  • How come no one outside of the two White Girls on the CBS page for the show has a character name? Is there an HTML shortage I'm unaware of? Is the recession that bad that someone couldn't even get an intern who works for free to type in those extra letters?

To me the show can be summed up in one of the scenes from last night's episode where Max (lord of the hipsters played by Kat Dennings who shot to fame in that White flick about a playlist) tries to school the character Caroline - which basically went like this:

Max: Sushi? That's lazy. I want my fish cooked.

Caroline: You think it'll be good? The lady said it would be good.

Max: Of course it'll be. Why would the immigrant lady who sold it to a White Girl lie to you?

Automatically labeled an immigrant because she sold the character some sushi?

Check.

Sneaky ass Asian lady who lied about how good the sushi was?

Check.

White hipsters creating a show about White hipsters that makes me go "How the hell did this show get picked up for another season"?

Yup.