✒️Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram) Prefer listening? An audio version is below.
This show is not meant for kids. I’d say 16+
When the trailer for Dang! came out, there seemed to be an instant backlash against the adult animated show over its stereotyping of the Asian-American community. And I guess I’ll just start off by saying that I am an Indian viewer (the India-Bollywood kind) who decided to stream the show for its cutesy animation and comedic premise: two carefree New York siblings hyperventilating because their no-fun older sister might move in with them and is threatening to kill all the joy in their lives. I’m here for the laughs, not for a PhD on the accurate representation of Asian-Americans.
‘Dang!’ follows Andrew (voiced by creator Andrew Law) and Eunice Dang (Poppy Liu), siblings sharing an apartment in New York and happily shirking pretty much every adult responsibility. Eunice makes money through feet videos, while older brother Andrew pays her bills, does her laundry and even picks up her unemployment cheques, all while doing zero work at the company he co-founded. Their blissfully irresponsible existence is threatened when their overachieving older sister Ruthie (Stephanie Hsu) announces she’s coming to town. The two almost pack their bags and scram, but it’s too late: Ruthie is already waiting in their flat, ready to interrupt their Ruthie-free existence.
These aren’t exactly your model Asian-American siblings with doctorates and impeccable manners. Ruthie comes closest, she is a successful, wealthy lawyer married to a British guy, until she torpedoes her “perfect life” by having an affair and getting knocked up by a married co-worker. An Asian parent’s nightmare! “Now you’re a screw-up like us,” her younger siblings gleefully tell her when she reveals why she’s really in New York. The rest of the show is all family, office, and friendly drama.
I definitely couldn’t stream all eight episodes in one go, because Dang! just isn’t consistently funny and is so packed with pop-culture references that it can get exhausting. That’s apart from the fact that some are bound to be lost on viewers, while others will inevitably get outdated. One of the funnier nods comes in episode 2, when Eunice lands an unpaid internship at a lifestyle and wellness brand run by a Gwyneth Paltrow-esque boss. She greets Eunice and another employee with, “Hello Greta and new Greta”, a fun nod to the iconic Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada.
The best bit about Dang! is that the strict parents don’t even enter the picture until the final episode. So while the whole “Asian kids with a tiger mom” thing is still there, thankfully, it’s kept to a minimum. Instead, the show is more interested in watching each of the three siblings deal with their own shit. And yeah, none of them is particularly likeable, but that’s clearly intentional. Awful bosses, exploitative beauty giants, therapists turned into emotional dumping grounds…. lots of themes in there.
Ruthie is selfish and self-centred, but also hard-working, and fiercely ambitious. Her British husband, who hilariously sounds like a Hugh Grant knock-off and is the kind of basic nice white guy you want to throw off a building, while Peter (voiced by SungWon Cho), the married co-worker she’s infatuated with, is a total sexist asshole. Now pregnant, Ruthie has to work twice as hard to prove she belongs among the close coterie of men running her law firm.
Andrew Dang is a hopeless people-pleaser, riddled with anxiety and somehow friends with all his ex-boyfriends. He gets fired despite being a co-founder, only to be shoved into a demoted role where he continues to barely do anything. And then there’s Eunice, the youngest and most Gen-Z of the lot: she hates the very idea of working for money and ends up having a wild time dealing with her wacky, wealthy boss.
Dang! gets its simple, colorful 2D animation from Titmouse, the studio behind ‘The Legend of Vox Machina’ and ‘The Mighty Nein‘, and there’s something pleasantly early-2000s Cartoon Network about it. With such a fun voice cast, I did occasionally wonder whether a live-action version might have been better. But then you wouldn’t have crazy, over-the-top scenes, like the one where Eunice’s boss crawls out of a biohacking chamber like a zombie/monster from a horror film and starts chasing her around. Animation was the right choice.
At eight episodes, Dang! has pacing issues and isn’t nearly as hilarious as a New York comedy about three dysfunctional siblings should be. But it’s colorful, occasionally ridiculous and entertaining enough for a one-time watch. It’s just not something you’d want to binge, but the Dangs can be fun in smaller doses.
Rating: 6 on 10. ‘Dang!’ is on Netflix.
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