All American Girl

During her slightly hilarious stand-up routine, Margaret Cho is more than successful at pointing out the absurdity of racial and ethnic stereotypes! She was successful enough to join the likes of: Tim Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Rosanne, and Drew Carey in the world of situation comedies! In "All-American Girl" she plays Margaret Kim: the daughter of Korean Immigrants. Three generations of Kims stay in the same household. Her parents (the bread-winning Kims) often set her up with Korean boys. Not just any Korean boys, but: doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other upwardly mobile professionals! Margaret however, likes to interracially date: aspiring musicians, actors, artists, writers; in other words worthless bums! She is much happier with the club hopping crowd than the silver-spoon eggheads that her parents try to set her up with!

Margaret probably had the most underrated supporting cast in the Industry. But sitcoms that cast a stand-up comedian as the lead only survive if they are well written! Casting Margaret as a party going mall rat did not give her the wiggle room to develop her character into an Emmy nomination! The series could've easily lasted more than one season if it were even SLIGHTLY better written! However ABC was notorious for abruptly pulling the plug on ethnic sitcoms! Margaret has enough talent to appear elsewhere, so look for her in the near future!

This was a hilarious sit-come starring Margaret Cho as Margaret Kim, who lives with her traditional Korean family.

Full of culture clashes and Asian stereotypes, Cho was absolutely hilarious in portraying her character dealing with her family life and trying to make decisions of her own. I could relate to her mother trying to shelter her, urging her marry a nice spouse and comparing her with other Asians. Amy Hill plays Margaret's grandmother, and was absolutely hilarious in her Asian-English accent!

Very witty with dry humor and laugh-out-loud moments. Too bad the show only lasted one season, and the later episodes of the season were a let-down, as the cast changes really brought down the show.

Grade B-

Margaret is switching her cultural roots completely. Considered like this, the series feels complete, if concise.

*

I found the first episode misleading. This is pilot episode quality. It made me look back to what I had read in the comments here, a quality series about Asian culture, and that did not fit. A series mangled by the channel that it was made for, but this was the pilot, before the mangling?

amended: For episode one to make sense to me I had to redefine it as part of TV sitcom culture, it following those ways and values. I have not seen broadcast television since the eighties and this told me that as far as sitcoms go I did not feel that I was missing anything.

The big difficulty for me was the canned audience response. I tried to imagine Buffy or Shrek with that sort of soundtrack and it did not click, to me it is a way to pull down a story, not to enhance it. I now know that I do not like can and audience applause genre, on principle.

Carrying on watching the series anyway, I did have the DVD set after all, I was discovering that the can factor was a bit calmer in the rest of the series. The humour was allowed to shine. It became noticeable and okay, not pulling down the culture that it was based on. I am from a different culture to the extent that there is a conflict of interests, but I can tolerate this. The humour reminds me of quality stand-up comedy that I used to like a lot. This says that I still like that particular genre. It helps this to be better than many sitcoms that I used to watch way back when for want of an alternative activity. Much of this series is enjoyable.

*

The comment about the negative support that this series received from its funding hierarchy, which would obviously be in tune with accepted sitcom ways. To me that could just be part of the script. I even assume that this one would not object to a series centred on Asians if they thought that it was on the right track. From episode eight commentary I understand the series to have originated with the network, part of a career development scheme for their comedy talent. I understand that many elements of the series content come from the script writers.

I obviously guess askew, the 'making of' video points to the hunger that backers have for precedent. The script that the backers brought in a big name, much bigger than Margaret and Amy, to ensure some sort of audience? Or is that a reminder that some here are babies in the sitcom gender? Or quality control? That Margaret and Amy are miffed by the backers' understanding? Was the series no go from the start? There are things that I do not interpret 100% literally.

The inclusion of children? It was not long after Booktopus and then the death of Inky The Squid that stand up comic Margaret spent part of an episode in jail, an episode that Ashley did not appear in. I assume that script writers play games. Jack Black.

*

I purchased the DVD set, a UK purchase from Canada, because it is an Ashley Johnson and My Price, very affordable. I continued trying to enjoy it because it is an Ashley, and to me it was worth the effort, even though she only appears in the early episodes. Her last episode was 13, with its death of an insect and romance between crickets.

She is a friend of family because of their son, who is not the centre of the stories, so she is not there often, anyway, but this is a nice role and nice script, she shines. I am glad she got the part. She is in 2 to 7, then 11 to 13.

amended: Ashley also appearing with Amy Hill in the series Maybe This Time of 1995. There are plenty of girl culture TV series that I would like to explore, just they are not there as full series in the affordable DVD world yet. Hannah Montana, Lizzie McGuire, etc. There seem to be affordable snippets occasionally available, but so far I do not know what these are really like and the thought of canned audience reactions is a downer. The warfare hinted at in this series would often be a problem for me too. I actually experience warfare to be rife in the media. All American is proving itself as interesting.

This links with my comments re Fame 1980 and Harry Potter 2.

I want to see this again! I'm still sad today that it was so short. There were a lot of problems at the studio, which only aggravated Margaret Cho's personal problems. I know the studio told her it was "not Asian enough" and also "too Asian." Not having seen it in a decade, I can't say how culturally accurate it was -- I've read some complaints about Cho's character (shallow, and unlike herself), and about how appropriate it is to cast Chinese and Japanese actors as Koreans -- but I know enjoyed it very much. I really like Margaret's stand-up, I have a crush on B.D. Wong, and know Amy Hill is hilarious -- so it should have been good, and I blame the studio if it wasn't. If you can find it anywhere, I highly recommend it, despite it's flaws. I'm very sad to have so little access to Asian culture (including Asians raised western) in the media.

It was not funny and Cho was barely watchable. She can blame the cancellation on whomever but in all honesty, the show was just bad. Stop telling her she's funny, she's not. America has spoken. Any attempt at a reboot and it will fail again. Do t waste your money.