So an old friend I haven’t heard from in a minute recently sent out an e-mail explaining why I hadn’t heard from her in a minute. Apparently she was participating in “The Amazing Race,” a CBS reality show, in which teams travel to various locales trying to win some kind of something in the end. As far as reality TV goes, it’s probably the one show with the lowest probability of being really offensive. So kudos CBS.

Now of course I hope she and her pops win, because they’ll get like a million dollars, and then the thought hit me: Asians tend to win reality shows. Tell me I’m wrong.

I don’t watch much television, but one of the few shows I’ve made an effort to catch over the past few years is Bravo’s “Top Chef,” and the excitement – at least among my friends – over Massachusetts-native Hung Huynh taking the whole thing still hasn’t died down. Throughout the run of the season, the judges constantly told Hung that his cooking had no soul, that there wasn’t enough “Hung” in his food. One couldn’t help but feel a lot of that came from the fact that the judges expected him to cook more Asian food. It’s interesting because Jennifer Aniston also competed on the show, and she considered herself an Asian fusion chef, and when incorporating Asian flavors, she didn’t get the same criticism, that there wasn’t enough Jennifer Aniston in the food. By the end of the season, the unfounded attacks began to wear Hung down, and in interviews he’d say shit like: “What do you want me to do? Make Sweet & Sour Chicken?” and “I don’t go to a restaurant and say, ‘that steak was so soulful.’”

Although Hung – brash, cocky, handsome, Asian…much like myself – is my favorite TV personality in recent memory, it seems Asians have a knack for taking the grand prize in these reality shows.

Aside from my man William Hung (I wrote an entry at BPRLive about him awhile back) and Sanjaya Malakar (the popular hatred of whom was more than a little influenced by his race), who did not win their respective seasons of “American Idol,” but came out the most recognizable contestants, there seems to have been a rash of legit winners who are of Asian descent. The fact that Asians can’t lose eating challenges on “Fear Factor” is well documented (“…anything with four legs, except a table…”), but let’s not forget that Dat Phan won “Last Comic Standing” in 2003 – and turns out to be much funnier live than on the show. Goddamn editing. Best of luck to him.

Also can’t go without mentioning Harlemm Lee who – at 36 years-old no less! – beat out a future Danity Kane member to win “Fame!” in 2003. I think he released a joint too, but you know industry rule number 4,083. (If you’re Asian, they’ll never promote your CD.) And I guess you could call it reality TV since ESPN started showing it, but Johnny Chan and Scotty Nguyen have each won the World Series of Poker twice. Jerry Yang – not the Yahoo! Founder – won last year (defeating another Asian Tuan Lam in the process. I also remember watching the Women’s World Series of Poker one year and the final four players were all Vietnamese. That’s gangsta. I cannot find anything about it online; maybe the Internets are broken.

But those folks are the forefathers to Yul Kwon, who won “Survivor” last year, a show I’ve never watched or had any interest in watching, but apparently two of the final three were Asian, and dude just came out on top. But no joke, he’s been using his elevated profile to actually do some good for API communities, and that is really dope, and actually not really expected. And that’s why I even take the time to mention all this bullshit. As fun or whatever it can be to zone out in front of the television for an hour, knowing that the folks on this stupid reality show are actually going to come back and do some of the same work I’m doing is the real refreshing thing.

So often, caring about your community gets you nothing but treated like an anomaly. It’s rare to see our folks on these shows that often just seem like exercises in ego-stroking. So I urge yall to root for Christina and her pops on “The Amazing Race.” I’m going to stop short of encouraging you to actually watch the show, because you know, CBS ain’t paying me to influence the 3 people who read this blog (hi mom!), but if you do, remember Chris is one of us – I don’t even mean because she’s Asian, but I mean she’s a part of the same fights we all are – and put on your rally caps for her.

Oh, but uh, everything I said doesn’t apply to any MTV reality shows. It would take a serious threat of bodily harm for me to tune into that Tila Tequila shit…

Tags: community

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 7:09 AM and is filed under nerd shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.