To View or Not to View: ‘Red Oaks’ and ‘Fresh Off the Boat’

In the war zone that is the fall TV season, it’s important to pick out the gems hidden in the media mesh. Each week, A&E columnist Sebastian Torrelio will profile one new show and one returning show that share a connection, detailing how they may make those after-school hours more meaningful.

Taking liberties is both a requisite and a creative freedom when a show like “Doctor Who” or “Game of Thrones” attempts to recreate a dated time period.

For the most part, it’s because those eras’ fine details are becoming long lost in the waves of time. When concerning more recently remembered years, though, homage is a different beast. Take “Red Oaks” and “Fresh Off the Boat” – two comedies that take their settings back to a version of the ’80s and ’90s, respectively, that never really existed. Luckily, it’s these shows’ acceptance of culture, not their accuracy, that hits the mark.

“Red Oaks” is the freshman of the pair, the newest product from Amazon Instant Video, with a 10-episode first season that premiered in late August. David Meyers (Craig Roberts) is a New York University student working his 1985 summer break at the Red Oaks Country Club, where he befriends club president Getty (Paul Reiser).

Like any good sporting club in the ’80s that employs college students, Red Oaks boasts its share of riotous partying, drugs and sexual deviance from the likes of David’s associates, such as the womanizing Nash (Ennis Esmer), the bumbling Wheeler (Oliver Cooper) and Getty’s hipster daughter Skye (Alexandra Socha). There aren’t too many rules at Red Oaks and when there are, they’re usually broken with a chaotic immediacy.

At first glance, “Red Oaks” has all the makings of a new generation’s “Caddyshack”: aristocrats playing sports while the more destructive types wreak havoc on the land. On further inspection, it would really appear to take more of its inspiration from the way of teen classics such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” or the John Hughes catalog.

In actuality, “Red Oaks” is neither of those. Though the coming-of-age element is what drives the whole show, David and company don’t trample through town with their heads held high the way that Ferris Bueller did. Life in their world is much more mundane, a symptom of a whole town made up of people who aren’t sure exactly what they want. Love, camaraderie and friendship abound, but maturation isn’t something that comes quite as quickly as a 10-episode binge-watch might imply.

The show’s mundanities are also an effect of the crew behind the series. With film directors David Gordon Green and Amy Heckerling, “Fast Times” alum, on board, “Red Oaks” is directed in the same cinematic way that other recent Amazon products, such as the fantastic “Transparent,” boast. This indie feeling provides “Red Oaks” with a brand of raw authenticity that keeps it from having the same network television, eye-catching value as a show like ABC’s “Fresh Off the Boat,” but keeps it enduringly meaningful all the same.

Not that “Fresh Off the Boat” doesn’t serve as a faithful messenger of the ’90s, from which its story originated – the based-on-real-life stories of celebrity chef Eddie Huang’s childhood growing up in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida just follow a more endured sitcom formula.

Hudson Yang portrays young Huang, who is more defined by his eclectic tastes in hip-hop and sports than his Asian American heritage and customs that the show so often pokes fun at. That job is left to breakout star Constance Wu as Huang’s mother Jessica, a pragmatic woman who will go to extreme lengths to make sure her children are star pupils, and that her husband Louis’ (Randall Park) dream of running a steakhouse goes off without the most minuscule hitch.

A lot of what defines “Fresh Off the Boat” as a coming-of-age series set in the ’90s is its attention and exploitation of the era’s details. A whole episode dedicated to Huang’s love of historically maligned video game “Shaq Fu,” or one that ends in a lesson he learns from the Wu-Tang Clan, sounds silly and comes out silly. But “Fresh Off the Boat” works in developing its characters alongside these motifs, striking heart and familial lessons to pair with its nostalgia factor.

“Fresh Off the Boat” isn’t a sincere account of the ’90s in the same way “Red Oaks” isn’t a straight depiction of the ’80s – they both have a surrealist touch that helps embody their periods’ culture without being hindered by the banal tropes of reality. Fortunately, they also work closely with enough well-worn inspirations to be believable.

Television can change platforms and evolve formats in today’s field; these two sitcoms prove that we’ll still have our memories of the past to laugh about.

– Sebastian Torrelio

What TV shows have you been watching lately? Email Torrelio at [email protected].