Moving forward, I will not tolerate dogpiling, coordinated harassment, strawmanning, or bullying - especially from non-Asians who think they can speak over Asians on Asian representation. Zoe is white. I will not allow her to speak over me anymore or to coordinate harassment against me with her friends. Bullying me across multiple social media platforms is beyond gross. Misconduct will be documented and reported to the appropriate authorities.

Some quick thoughts before tonight's episode...

I LOVED Tim in 8x02. He was going through his own stuff but put Lucy first throughout the episode by supporting her and not paying his demotion forward.

“Have you eaten yet?” really stuck out to me. If you’re Asian, you hear this a lot. It’s a love language. Saying this to Lucy while holding boxes of sushi sold home the point that he’s dating an Asian woman. Tim did the representation work this episode that was absent from Lucy.

“We eat ingrained misogyny for breakfast”

There’s a moment in 8x02 that keeps bothering me, and it’s not because misogyny isn’t real. It’s because the show keeps reaching for “womanhood” as the only lens for Lucy Chen. 

When the white Secret Service agent ignores three WOC and defaults to a white man (Tim) instead of the woman who is literally in charge (Lucy), framing it as only misogyny takes away from what just happened.

Because Lucy naming only misogyny keeps her positioned as “a woman” - not a WOC - and in American media, it’s white-default. 

It’s implying she doesn’t share the “WOC” bit in common with Angela and Nyla. Like she can only extend herself into womanhood as the commonality, not racialized womanhood. That’s whitewashing.

And what makes it worse is that the scene doesn’t even play as Lucy thinking he was misogynistic to the other women. It reads like: he was misogynistic to me. Lucy is the sergeant in charge. The two times that he defaulted to Tim, he should’ve defaulted to Lucy. She’s upset that her authority was undermined. Ingrained misogyny was about her, not so much about Angela or Nyla. The reality is, there are fewer Asian-American policewomen on the force than there are Latinas and Black women. Lucy is in a precarious position where her race actually matters a lot.

This is why “ingrained misogyny” doesn’t cut it.

Beyond this, there are multiple “little choices” that add up in this episode:

Shoes on in Lucy’s apartment and in Tim’s home (yes, I noticed).

Celina and Angela being given culturally specific lines and references without blinking (Diego Rivera, “Christina,” etc.). But with Lucy, moments that have a racial layer keep getting whitewashed. 

The string bracelet. Lucy wears the same string bracelet throughout this season. It’s Melissa’s personal item, and it comes from her predominantly white social circle whose nucleus is East Asian cultural appropriation. As an Asian-American, I don’t feel good about this.

Even during roll call, Lucy walked past an Asian cop to take her seat and she doesn’t acknowledge him, doesn’t nod, doesn’t do the quick “hey,” nothing. She sits in between him and Nolan, talks to Nolan instead, and even flicks her hand back in the guy’s direction.

When Asian representation is already scarce, a micro-choice like a nod toward the Asian cop would be meaningful. These are the kinds of tiny human beats actors can adjust on their own.

Whitewashing in fandom (the 8x02 version)

Deric Augustine livetweeted 8x02 and used the blonde emoji for Lucy.

Deric is very sensitive with his skin-tone and heart-tone emojis but he chose a blonde woman for Lucy. It’s not nothing. It contributes to overall whitewashing.

He doesn’t do it with Harper and Lopez:

Secondly, when Tim made sea bass, veggie burger & fries, and croissants for Lucy in 7x18, the entire fandom not only identified what he made, but they made connections to prior episodes. He brought her sushi in 8x02 and it’s a callback to 5x18, but I've only seen it generalized to "a meal" "snacks" & "food”. It’s this pattern again of “white” food getting amplified and highlighted but sushi gets little fanfare.

Asian-American fan discussions

This episode was not perfect, and the Chenford dock scene felt rushed and unearned. I love the scene as a standalone but don’t think the show did enough work in these past two years to get them here. 

The dock scene was much better after a few rewatches. I cried, because I earned a reconciliation after 2 years of this ship being broken up. That’s not to say it deserved to happen the way it did. Even though I earned it as the bare minimum, I think it deserved more and better. Having said that, I enjoyed the callbacks to S5.

I've spent enough nights without you that I want you all the way in my life. 

Beautifully written. Beautifully delivered by Eric.

Representation:

This season I’m doing something different in my recaps: representation gets its own section. Because I want to track it clearly, and I want other viewers to be able to track it too.

The string bracelet. Lucy wears the same string bracelet in every scene. It’s Melissa’s personal item, and it comes from her predominantly white social circle whose nucleus is East Asian cultural appropriation. It yanked me out of the moment-now it’s impossible to watch those scenes without that reminder. She wears this bracelet throughout the entire season as Lucy. As an Asian-American, I don’t feel good about this.

One of the most intimate ways that we connect with culture is through food. In the earlier seasons, Lucy’s often seen eating Chinese food. Chenford canonically enjoy sushi and Vietnamese food together. This absence in 7x18 is notable, especially during an episode that aired on Asian American Heritage Month. Though this episode made food callbacks to sea bass, pancakes, and veggie burgers, it would’ve been culturally meaningful AND relationship-specific for Tim to get her Chinese, or pan-Asian food. Cantonese style steamed sea bass would’ve been a good substitute too. Croissants are not relationship-specific. It could’ve been easily substituted for something that held meaning for Lucy and relationship-meaning for her and Tim.

While I love the culture we got with Celina writing a Spanish song with Rodge, and Angela calling her mom “mamí”, Lucy continues to have nothing. In S5, Lucy called her grandma “nana” which isn’t a word we use. That word signals cultural whiteness. Angela gets “mamí” which has cultural specificity. Her and Celina's ecosystems are representing. Why then does Lucy’s ecosystem, helmed by Alexi and consisting of the writers, script supervisors, producers, Melissa O'Neil, props and set designers, wardrobe, etc. continue to come up empty with Asian representation? Structurally, in American society, and particularly in media representation, when people including POC don't have cultural specificity, they default to whiteness because whiteness is seen as the norm and culture is seen in contrast to whiteness. I'm happy to get into this more in private, but that's the big picture.

Another easy way to bring in some of Lucy's culture would've been for her to wear a jade necklace instead of an emerald one. It would've still matched her sweater but just that tiny touch could've made a difference. Jade is often worn as a good luck charm, which would've been a nice tie-in to Lucy's headspace.

That aside, I loved the last Chenford scene. I would've loved it more if Tim told her "Congratulations, Sergeant Chen". But where the script didn't deliver, Eric more than delivered with his expressions.

...

I’m genuinely trying to understand why you feel the need to do this.