All-American Girl aired from September 1994 until August 1995 on ABC.
For more on All-American Girl go to the mini-page right here at Sitcoms Online.
A Review from USA TODAY
TV PREVIEW/MATT ROUSH
You have to have a gimmick, and here's Margaret Cho's. She's Korean-American.
Sorry, but that's not enough. Neither is All-American Girl , which trots out enough trite ( if not offensive ) old-country stereotypes to set back trade relations for years.
As refreshing as it is to see a mostly Asian cast in prime-time, it hardly matters when the material is so stale. And mediocre comedy is a universal language, we discover as soon as Cho 's dragon-lady mother ( ferociously played by Jodi Lang as a " Korean Bea Arthur")reacts to her college-age daughter's bratty antics by weeping and walling or angrily chattering in the native tongue.
Shades of Ricky Ricardo: Ay-yi-yi-yi-yi!
Then there's the dotty grandmother ( Amy Hill), not unlike the Golden Girls' Sophia, who blurts out precious non-sequitur proverbs: " I like rice. It's bind-ing!" Or , when Margaret dates an anaesthesiologist: " Ooooh...gas is big bucks!"
All-American Girl is not big yucks, no matter how hard stand-up star Cho tries.
She bears watching, projecting a Roseanne-ish rawness into her one-note shtick, that of the man-hungry Asian valley girl who feels soooo superior to her square traditional family-a case of wanting to mock your kimchi and eat it too.
Cho can be funny when she tweaks customs, affecting a simpering demure titter to impress a stuffy beau. But her more standard reaction to things is an exaggerated double-take, eyes popped and jaw dropped in haughty disdain.
It grows old quick.
While Long and Hill are spirited foils, tony-winning actor B.D. Wong ( M. Butterfly) is wasted as Cho's brother, though in the second week he seems to have been loosened up from the pilot, where he was an insufferable pig( a revised pilot was not made available for preview, never a good sign, but just another example of a new comedy struggling to get its act together.)
After one silly episode, Cho laments " The irony is , I grew up watching sitcoms so really I should have known better."
Perhaps she should have watched some better ones.
An Article from USA TODAY
Published on September 14, 1994
Actors' chance to part a racial and cultural curtain
By Jefferson Graham/USA TODAY
When Clyde Kusatsu told his college acting teacher he wanted to be an actor, he was informed that he was making a very poor career choice.
" Why would you want to do this?" Kusatsu says he was told. " There are only three roles that will ever be available for you-Teahouse of the August Moon, Flower Drum Song and the King and I."
So Kusatsu, who plays dad on ABC's All-American Girl, left Chicago and returned home to Hawaii, where he worked the night shift at a brewery until he returned to his senses.
" I was shocked and stupified by what he said to me," says Kusatsu. " It turned out to be a great motivator. If I had to be 10 times better than a white actor, so be it."
Now 47, Kusatsu went on to appear in episodes of All in the Family, Magnum P.I., Star Trek: The Next Generation, Kung Fu, Family Matters, L.A. Law, and M*A*S*H and in the films In the Line of Fire, and Made in America.
He also appeared in two short-lived series, in subordinate roles. Now he's the authority figure of All-American Girl, the voice of reason.
" The great thing about this show is that we're dealing with people, behavior, and family," he says. " We're from different cultures, but we have the same values."
B.D. Wong who plays son Stuart, and series star Margaret Cho both grew up in the same section of San Francisco. But they didn't meet until a few years ago, when both spoke at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Cho was doing comedy and Wong gave a lecture on the challenges of finding a career in the arts during an Asian Pacific Heritage Month celebration.
" When I grew up and watched TV, I saw no Asians," says Wong. " When I got older, I hated being Asian_American and wished I could change until I finally realized that it was one of the best things I could have. I could embrace it and use it in my work. Its much more of a blessing than a curse."
He's exited about the images All-American Girl can provide for young Asian-American kids. " For there to be an all-Asian family in prime time was not even conceivable to the networks a few years ago," he says. " We were't thought of as Americans, but as exotics. The existence of this show is really major and an indication of the change in sensibilities to how we're viewed as people."
While ABC's move with Girl is a positive one, there still are only a handful of Hispanics on prime time and there is no black family represented in a drama.( Last season's South Central wasn't renewed by Fox.)
And besides Girl and the upcoming syndicated Vanashing Son, there are no other series prominately featuring Asians.
" My dream isn't to have a slew of Asian-American shows," says Amy Hill, " but more multiculturalism. I'd like to see all kinds of ethnicities represented."
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