Awkwafina is an actor who keeps popping up in shows and movies I'm watching, only for people around me to say, "oh hey it's Awkwafina!" each and every time. I'm yet to see what makes her special, as none of these movies, including Paradise Hills, Crazy Rich Asians, and Oceans 8 have been particularly good. So I thought I would try her own show, Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens to see her on her own terms, and discover if this is what was putting her on people's radar.
Nora from Queens is in the same sort of neighbourhood of comedy as Broad City but with the NY Jewish cultural references swapped out for Chinese American ones, and also with the jokes stripped out and not replaced by anything at all. It's a show about a shiftless, grungy lout called Nora (who is played by Awkwafina, if you weren't paying attention). She is doing her best to stave off adulthood and lives with her grumpy, sarcastic grandma.
This is the sort of set up I've found funny before, but like I said, the show doesn't really have jokes. In a typical episode, we get presented with a vaguely humorous situation, Nora gabbles constantly about it, and the show hopes this alone will make us laugh. Or we get treated to a lazy visual gag, like Nora gets out a giant vibrator, and the joke is just that she owns a giant vibrator. Outside of a couple of gags provided by grandma and her unlikely fondness for K-dramas, I don't think I laughed once at anything in the entire show.
And really, that's all I have to say. There's only so many ways you can say you didn't find something funny. Broad City wasn't particularly hilarious by any stretch of the imagination, but it is basically a better version of the same thing. Meanwhile, I'll carry on the search for good Awkwafina television.
Series Nora Good Show.
Awkwafina is an actor who keeps popping up in shows and movies I'm watching, only for people around me to say, "oh hey it's Awkwafina!" each and every time. I'm yet to see what makes her special, as none of these movies, including Paradise Hills, Crazy Rich Asians, and Oceans 8 have been particularly good. So I thought I would try her own show, Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens to see her on her own terms, and discover if this is what was putting her on people's radar.
Nora from Queens is in the same sort of neighbourhood of comedy as Broad City but with the NY Jewish cultural references swapped out for Chinese American ones, and also with the jokes stripped out and not replaced by anything at all. It's a show about a shiftless, grungy lout called Nora (who is played by Awkwafina, if you weren't paying attention). She is doing her best to stave off adulthood and lives with her grumpy, sarcastic grandma.
This is the sort of set up I've found funny before, but like I said, the show doesn't really have jokes. In a typical episode, we get presented with a vaguely humorous situation, Nora gabbles constantly about it, and the show hopes this alone will make us laugh. Or we get treated to a lazy visual gag, like Nora gets out a giant vibrator, and the joke is just that she owns a giant vibrator. Outside of a couple of gags provided by grandma and her unlikely fondness for K-dramas, I don't think I laughed once at anything in the entire show.
And really, that's all I have to say. There's only so many ways you can say you didn't find something funny. Broad City wasn't particularly hilarious by any stretch of the imagination, but it is basically a better version of the same thing. Meanwhile, I'll carry on the search for good Awkwafina television.