TV Review: Nora From Queens Returns To Dominate Screens
Till this day, I grieve the loss of Broad City. For Zellennials, it was the show that masterfully and hilariously captured the weird limbo of being an adult without the benefits: stable job, good home, and enough self-respect to gain the admiration of fellow coworkers. Moreover, it was outlandishly, strange enough to feel honest and raw. Awkwafina is Nora From Queens returns for Season 2 to bring in the laughs and more introspection. In this go-around, Nora is not afraid to show the quiet, sadness of being young and unstable.
Love life? Working on it… Career? One day! Happiness? Occasionally, after a good weed session. Life for a Zellennial is a complicated, fun mess, especially if you are living with the savviest grandma on earth (Till this day, I grieve the loss of Broad City. For Zellennials, it was the show that masterfully and hilariously captured the weird limbo of being an adult without the benefits: stable job, good home, and enough self-respect to gain the admiration of fellow coworkers. Moreover, it was outlandishly, strange enough to feel honest and raw. Awkwafina is Nora From Queens returns for Season 2 to bring in the laughs and more introspection. In this go-around, Nora is not afraid to show the quiet, sadness of being young and unstable.
Love life? Working on it… Career? One day! Happiness? Occasionally, after a good weed session. Life for a Zellennial is a complicated, fun mess, especially if you are living with the savviest grandma on earth (Lori Tan Chinn), a sweet dad who can feel as lost as you do in life choices ( BD Wong’s Wally), and a cousin-brother, Bowen Yang’s Edmund, that may be doing “better” but is as quick as you for a “get-money” scheme. I guess what fascinated me most about this season is that it oddly captures a depressing truth about “Zellennial” life” you can be in the “same place” for years. Season 2 is technically a “new year, new shot,” and yet Nora is jumping from odd jobs, romantic fantasies, and non-existent economies to deliver a season that is funnier because it is more honest: never attaining a goal doesn’t mean you stop trying to get them or, at least, make up a new one.
Awkwafina (real-life Nora Yum) assures that Nora is an oddly, lovable mess, but as I perused through the first 8 episodes, I realized the warmth I found in Nora was that Season 2 gives her ambitions and dreams. Season 1 was a Nora that didn’t know what she wanted and didn’t believe she could even get it or thought “wanting” was necessary. Yet, she wasn’t a monk that had renounced desire as we all know the hustles she schemed. She was surviving life through comedic, but callous choices, which I can’t say Season 2 is better: no one should ever pick up a hair dryer from a toilet bowl and if you wake up with a chicken nugget in between your toes and no questioning as to how it got there …. well….. it’s time to start questioning yourself. I guess, in a way, what I like about Season 2 is that Nora starts wanting a life, and there is a mutual excitement and heartbreak that stirs from not just wanting money and fame to have them, but from wanting love, security, and to be genuinely good at something that makes you happy.
Season 2 of Awkawafina is Nora From Queens has found and solidified the show’s rhythm and humor to provide a super funny binge or a show that I could easily and loyally watch Wednesdays at 10 on Comedy Central. It is one of the more unique comedies currently gracing TV, and continues to place a a lens on a generation struggling find its way in a world not to keen on opening them. Also, Awkwafina is so good in it!
