A Special New Year Treat, Fresh Off the Boat 312 Clean Slate Review

A special Chinese New Year episode filled with American Culture – Fresh Off the Boat 312 Clean Slate Review

For Chinese New Year, ABC has given America the gift of an extra new episode of Fresh Off the Boat! It is 10 days early, but no one is complaining. Tonight’s episodes is titled Clean Slate, and is about the Chinese tradition of starting the New Year off without debt, grudges, and negativity in general. Each of the Huangs, minus Grandma, are out to clean their slates or keep them clean. Louis and Evan are out to prevent Evan’s hate letter from reaching Louis’s Barber. The episode began with the pair getting new haircuts for the New Year with Evan wanting a Randy haircut, but receives a Brad instead. Evan, understandably upset, written a hate letter, sealed, addressed, and stamped on his desk where his mother had seen it and mailed it for him. Louis and Evan then scheme to prevent the letter from reaching its destination.

Jessica, having cleared her slate, attempts to stay home to avoid any potential grudges being created. However, her New Year’s dress is still at the cleaners. She takes Emory to pick up her dress, as he is much more calm and level headed and should prevent any conflicts. However, the cleaner attempts to rip Emory off and he is not having it. Unfortunately, Jessica does not stand up for Emory and becomes very upset with Jessica.

Eddie is tasked with showing his super lame second cousin Simon (Jonathan Chang) around to experience America. Eddie does not want to and keeps trying to find ways to keep his cousin busy while he does his own thing. Eventually, Eddie can no longer take babysitting and drops a freestyle diss at his cousin, only to get schooled when his cousin drops a sick verse of his own.

Everything of course resolves and the Huangs are ready to start the new year with a clean slate, and new found respect and admiration for each other.

I have personally never celebrated Chinese New Year and this episode does not really do much to explain the holiday or teach about it other than the tradition/belief of starting the year off fresh. The episode had its moments and was overall nice, hardy, funny, family television. However, I feel an opportunity was missed to really share Chinese culture and also delve deeper into the family’s dynamics with each other. While there were plenty of hilarious moments and a truly impressive flow from Simon, I wish the episode would go deeper into the characters and the culture like Blackish does. Everything wrapped up so neatly and quickly that it did not feel authentic.

Overall, it was an enjoyable episode and one fans will undoubtedly enjoy. I wish it would be a bit edgier and deeper, along the lines of Blackish, but it is still fun and hilarious show. And there’s nothing to complain about considering we got two new episodes in one week. I give Clean Slate 3.5/5