Ep. 52 - American Born Chinese (2023)

[00:00:00] We'll say catch me!

[00:00:02] Now go on me!

[00:00:06] I'm all done getting on the map.

[00:00:08] Let's go!

[00:00:09] Go on!

[00:00:10] Go on!

[00:00:11] Go on!

[00:00:12] Don't get any ideas, Mr. Blythe.

[00:00:14] Please don't take the cops.

[00:00:16] No, no.

[00:00:17] Please don't take the two.

[00:00:18] We can do whatever we want.

[00:00:23] Nothing matters.

[00:00:25] Hello and welcome to Episode 52 of the Complete Works, You still don't have a Disney Plus account, right? I do not. Okay, I think you might have, your family briefly did when Hamilton premiered. For one brief glorious moment, when Hamilton came out, my mom was like, we gotta get it. And I was like, all right. I guess, whatever. Yes, I think when I got Disney Plus, I offered it to you as like, hey, if you wanted, you can also use it.

[00:01:42] And you're like, I'm not supporting those bastards.

[00:01:44] Like, I'm gonna, I will go Edge of History, the Willow TV show, the Mighty Ducks game changers, a Turner and Hooch TV show. Oh, God.

[00:03:00] The Santa Clauses, which is still airing,

[00:03:03] Tim Allen is in a Santa Claus TV show,

[00:03:05] and people are guessing are watching the, that was the thing.

[00:04:20] He did not feel the world was ready for a story about an Asian American protagonist, Tag along to all of your classes. I found seeds for us! One! Except in math. He's way ahead of you in. So Michelle Yeo is part of the main cast of American-born Chinese where she plays Guan

[00:07:02] Yin, the goddess of mercy, who is it? Yes, yeah, absolutely. It was very fun to see him. He and Yo in the three episodes that I've seen, didn't share a scene together or anything, but still pretty cool. Beyond these two episodes, James Hong and Stephanie Shoe both also pop up in this series as guest stars. So that's a couple more,

[00:08:20] everything everywhere,

[00:08:20] reunions right there.

[00:08:21] And actually those are both three pre-reunions

[00:08:23] because James Hong was in Kung Fu Panda 2

[00:08:25] and Stephanie Shoe is in Shang-Chi.

[00:08:27] That's right.

[00:08:28] Yeah, I can em up. We are going to be talking specifically about the first two episodes. That's what Mike D watched. I watched those and I ended up watching episode three also. The show was created by Kelvin Yu, who co-wrote the first episode with Charles Yu, and the first episode was directed by Destin Daniel Kreton, who also directed Shang-Chi in the Legend of the Ten Rings. Look at that. Yes, more Yo-Ri-Yin-yans up the wazoo here.

[00:09:40] If you decided to go to the movies instead this weekend, you could have gone to see one

[00:09:44] of five major new releases that came out. that I watched it, which was almost an hour of the movie, she was still a mermaid. She had not become human yet. The movie, the original movie would have been almost over by now. Right. We were wrapping things up. Yeah, and just felt like there was no energy to anything. And Under the Sea was very boring and bland. And I loved that song. I was like, I was jazzed for Under the Sea at least. And even that didn't spark anything for me.

[00:11:02] Also there's a line in that song about how we have a hot crustacean band and none of

[00:11:07] the animals are playing instruments. balancing high school and home life. When he meets a new foreign student on the first day of school, even more worlds collide as Jin is unwittingly entangled in a battle with Chinese mythological gods. So, Mike D, going into American-born Chinese, what did you expect from this TV show and what did you get coming out of it? Going into it, I didn't really know what to expect.

[00:12:21] I don't really remember any of the marketing and stuff

[00:12:24] about this show a whole lot other than that.

[00:12:27] Like, oh, it's Michelle Yeo, looking for something like this necessarily. Right. Yeah, I had a blast. I watched the first two episodes. I was only planning on watching the first episode, even though I knew it was a Marco Polo with slash blood origin, which are blood origin situation that Michelle Jo shows up in the last five minutes or whatever. But I had 10 song movies to watch. So I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna have time. It's only 45 minutes.

[00:13:41] And it was good.

[00:13:42] I enjoyed that first episode.

[00:13:43] It was really fun.

[00:13:44] I was like, oh, this is pretty cool.

[00:13:45] I like all these characters.

[00:13:45] I like what the going on in the heaven realm or whatever. The kind of like a larger mythology story. And that's very cool. And that transitions into a high school drama, a comedy thing, you know, with Jin just trying not to get

[00:15:00] stuffed in a garbage can.

[00:15:02] You know, that's fun.

[00:15:04] So yeah, I really enjoyed this first two episodes.

[00:15:06] And I think maybe it's a little, so I gotta watch Moon Knight, you know? Or Secret Invasion or whatever. And with the Star Wars stuff, I've been feeling like I did not like Obi-Wan. I think Mandalorian season three was quite bad. I haven't even seen Ahsoka yet, because I just have no desire for it. And it feels like increasingly rare

[00:16:20] that I get something that I really like

[00:16:22] out of one of the Disney Plus shows.

[00:16:25] And American-born Chinese comes along. I'm born Chinese and all the shows that we've talked about so far is probably the one that's I'm most likely to continue watching beyond these episodes that we're talking about today. Really? That's exciting. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was super fun. I thought the mystical elements were fun, but I thought the actual, like the show's strength. I think it is a really good high school show. Yeah.

[00:17:40] You know, I think it does a really good job of just, you know, you want to see this kid,

[00:17:44] you know, succeed, you want to see him make's appearance. And he's just like, oh, yeah, you're right. Honestly, I apologize.

[00:19:01] Stuff like that is very silly and funny.

[00:19:04] And so yeah, all the way the show examines that in a really fun and interesting way. I think the idea of this kind of viral TikTok going around of like the old 90s sitcom that has like this like problematic character, you know, and then that becomes like a meme like that Gen Z is doing on TikTok. Like that's a whole thing. And I do think the recreations of like

[00:20:21] the 90s sitcom world is are really good, like really funny. And so, right? When he falls into the garbage can and then into the trophy case or whatever, right? And then that gets memed into like the edit, the sound and the what could go wrong. They like the whole beyond repair stuff onto Jin. He's just like, well, it'll all blow over. And then he turns the corner into like a student protest for it and he's like, no.

[00:21:42] And all of that was very good.

[00:21:43] I think the culture club or whatever,

[00:21:45] that whole plot line seems to be very good I didn't cut to credits, so I don't know. So that's an interesting hook there for that. So I'm excited to hear about how he starts to fit into the mythical stuff, because so far he's uninvolved. Yeah, so I watched one episode beyond you. I watched episode three. And actually by only real gripe with episode three is that Jin still seems more interested in being on the soccer team than he is

[00:23:01] and being involved in this mythical quest.

[00:23:04] Oh my God.

[00:23:05] Yeah.

[00:23:06] It's like, there's a guy with a magical staff

[00:23:08] right next to you. Right. The J. Denver. The J. Denver, I think you're right. Yeah. So, Wei Chen has stolen his father's staff, brought it to Earth to make sure that rebellion doesn't happen or whatever. So, it's just a discussion of them between Guanjita Wei Chen talking about it and just like, what do you plan to do? And that discussion is like so heavily ad-yard. I don't know if you noticed that like none of the stuff

[00:24:21] they're saying is like, it's all different sound qualities.

[00:24:24] It's very weird. Yeah.

[00:24:26] But I guess whatever happens. I mean, she does get more to do in episode three. Like I said, she gets involved in a fight scene, which is pretty cool. And I like the angle that they kind of take with her character, where she is this, thousands of years old goddess, right? That's her character. And she's sort of acting as a guardian for Weichin on his journey. As she's doing that, she has to like blend into life on Earth.

[00:25:40] Oh, I forgot that that happened.

[00:25:42] That does happen into you.

[00:25:43] Yeah, I think you see a little bit of that,

[00:25:44] where she'd pop into Earth and she's like,

[00:25:46] she's suddenly like, it's Michelle wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants. And it's pretty fun. And episode three opens with her getting dinner with the Monkey King and they go to like an all you can eat Chinese buffet and they're just like hanging out in the real world like both in as regular people. And it's fun. And there's a bit in episode three where Michelle Yost character is having difficulty trying

[00:27:01] to assemble Ikea furniture.

[00:27:04] And she's like, okay, you've conquered know if it's interesting that they managed to work that very well.

[00:28:22] But yeah, I'm trying to think of,

[00:28:24] so I guess what's the roles that we've seen

[00:28:27] Michelle Yoe play years old, right? Yeah, and I guess they make sense if, you know, Journey to the West is from 1600. Right. There's a lot of Yeah. Kung Fu Panda. We'll be able to, I guess, you know, there's some of that mythical stuff going on in there. She was the sousser in Kung Fu Panda, too. Yeah, absolutely. Well, anyway. Yeah. Any of you, any scenes in American-born Chinese that you wanted to shout out that we haven't

[00:31:00] talked about, Mike, and that stands out to you?

[00:31:02] Let's see.

[00:31:03] I thought this scene that was very biting and's set to the Hives Tick Tick Boom, which is the greatest song I've ever recorded. It's... Yeah. Imagine if that had been into your legend? Yes, yeah, absolutely. It was crazy. You guys ripping off the guy's skin armor to the tune of Tick Tick Boom.

[00:32:22] Pretty rad, pretty cool.

[00:32:25] And then episode three, there's,

[00:32:27] so the plot of episode three, stuff in the show. And I think it's testament to how well it nails that kind of stuff. So you think Ki-Kwan is in more than just the Beyond Repair stuff? Do you know? I think that he probably shows up at some point. He's got it. He's got it. You don't get Ki-Kwan just to cut to him every once in a while. He's an Oscar winning actor now.

[00:33:41] It's right. Yeah, no, I would guess because done. You know, it's it's a weird thing where like we've kind of come back to that model for the most part for like TV shows. We're like disrupted it with Netflix being like, you can drop all the seasons at once. And then now it's like, oh, but now people will like remember that the shows around for like a longer time and stay subscribed to the service.

[00:35:03] And so this show they put all at once.

[00:35:05] And it's sort of, and it to me of the strike, that could be impacted by the strike. Like maybe they're not going to move forward with season two that might have been planned or whatever because of that or whatever.

[00:36:22] But in any case, it's good.

[00:36:24] Yeah, it's good.

[00:36:25] And don't forget, it's always morally correct to steal from Disney. I did watch Andor. I liked Andor, not as much as a lot of other people did, but I did like Andor. And I appreciate Andor a lot more now having watched Mandalorian season three. Which, because I really liked the first two Mandalorian seasons. I thought they were really fun. You know, season two kind of went in some directions that I wasn't crazy about, but I overall liked it.

[00:37:41] And then Andor came out and I watched the whole thing.

[00:37:44] I enjoyed it.

[00:37:45] I thought it was the concept that this is putting forth, but this is the only part of the show that I enjoy. So there was that. But yeah, Book of Both that was bad. Obi-Wan was bad. And I haven't seen Ahsoka yet. So I haven't really given that a shot yet. I probably will watch it at some point, but I just, it's tough to muster the enthusiasm.

[00:39:00] I still haven't watched the finale of Mandalorian season three actually.

[00:39:03] It's just been sitting there.

[00:39:06] And then yeah, and then there's Snyder DC stuff. Yeah, it's like the Snyderverse stuff. And there's like some posters in his bedroom and I was like, wait a second. What's going on here? They let them do this. Yeah, absolutely. So that is a little weird. That is a little surprising. Like it's surprising that Disney didn't make them be like,

[00:40:21] no, that has to be Spider-Man.

[00:40:22] Like that has to be.

[00:40:23] Absolutely.

[00:40:25] But yeah, I think that with the Marvel stuff,

[00:40:27] it does seem like, and this might be like like they shot like two or three episodes of it. And I think they're scrapping it and starting from scratch because the mini series model that they've kind of been developing for them is not working. It's what it sounds like because they're so expensive to make. And they see no return of investment on it because it's a TV show for Disney Plus. Like there's no ads for it, right?

[00:41:40] That kind of thing.

[00:41:41] And so I think Secret Invasion might've been the last straw

[00:41:43] where that show cost like,

[00:41:46] I think't know, let's save a couple thousand dollars and make an AI generated opening credits thing. You're already in for $200 million. Like why not spend more? Yes. What do you do? Yeah, secret invasion had a budget of $212 million according to Wikipedia. That is a lot of money to spend on, that's basically like more than you would spend

[00:43:01] on your typical blockbuster.

[00:43:03] Yeah.

[00:43:04] And your typical blockbuster would maybe have the potential

[00:43:06] to gross billions of dollars.

[00:43:08] Right. this show because it is a TV show. So I think we can start wrapping up there, Hamic. Yeah, I think so. We did it unless you got anything else to talk about. It's good. That's an exciting piece. Yes, I've had no ideas. It's a fun show. People should check it out. And Michelle really fun it. Yes. Yeah, Michelle, you're really fun in it. And if you liked everything ever all at once

[00:44:20] and you want to see all four of those actors again,

[00:44:22] everybody except for Jamie Lee Curtis basically

[00:44:24] is in American born Chinese.

[00:44:26] Yeah, she was off making, I was aware of it. I know people really love those games, but like, ah, fuck off, who cares? The kids love it and they're making it into a huge hit. It's actually, it's even streaming right now. Like it's on Peacock. But it's, yeah, it was like a Peacock in theaters, day in date, simultaneous release. So it's a huge theatrical hit. I think it took a lot of people by surprise.

[00:45:41] It's gonna be a thing.

[00:45:42] I feel like I sort of feel like I need to see the movie

[00:45:44] just out of like a cultural obligation.

[00:45:47] At the same time, I don't care about it. on Letterbox and Radio, Mike Sandwich and Instagram. Thank you so much for listening to Complete Works. I'm Mike Smith. That's my Tchaikri Show. Don't forget to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or any other podcast app. And if you want to contact us, you can tweet at us at Complete WorksPod. That's WRKSNO-O in the word works. And you can find the rest of our podcasts and wrap your press alongside many other podcasts about kinds of comic books and movie news

[00:47:01] and all that good stuff.

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