Fresh Off the Boat, Season 4, Episode 19: “King in the North”
Original airdate March 20, 2018.
Synopsis: Honey needs time away from home to relax and get ready for the baby, so Jessica tricks her into going north to Maine (instead of south to the Keys) in pursuit of a book jacket blurb from Stephen King for A Case of a Knife to the Brain. Louis orders a new sign for Louis Huang’s Cattleman’s Ranch (disappointing me and surely countless others by not naming it Louis Huang’s Kenny Rogers’s Michael Bolton’s Cattleman’s Ranch). Grandma plans to move out, so Emery wants her room, leaving Evan alone in the room they once shared. Eddie and Nicole rebel against the school dance’s policy requiring boys to wear pants and girls to wear skirts.
I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped: The several silly Stephen King references are cute, but I have a feeling I missed a whole bunch. I’m waiving my usual distaste for cameos this week because the rule doesn’t apply when it’s a Kristi Yamaguchi cameo. I enjoy this show when it’s subversive on multiple levels. In this case, I think it’s just the one obvious level, and that’s okay too. Can’t put my finger on it, but Randall Park’s acting is especially good in this. And the “Somewhere Out There” gag is cute and funny!
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps: The Jessica-Honey story is too long and only interesting because you spend the whole time looking for Misery references. I Googled the name of the diner (Downy’s Diner) and hospital (Penobscot Memorial Hospital) thinking they might be King references, but alas. I think some kind of spoof on King horror stories might have been more interesting. Unless this story is a spoof and it just flew over my head, in which case I apologize.
FOB moment: “I know what it’s like to be treated differently because you’re not the same as everyone else. It sucks! But if we don’t take a stand, then we are the same as everyone else.”
Soundtrack flashback: “Every Heartbeat” by Amy Grant (1991, a song I love). “Somewhere Out There” from An American Tail (1987, sung by Evan, Emery, and Louis). “ATLiens” by Outkast (1996).
Final grade, this episode: This feels good for a season finale (what? with the nineteenth episode?) and it works for a series finale if FOtB isn’t renewed for next season. Here’s hoping we get at least one more season out of Eddie and the Huangs. B.
