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Reviews
Huang's World (2013)
Season 4 is Really Promising.
Huang's World started out as a mixed bag for me. I started watching it simply because Black Market and Cyberwar were not airing and it was the only obvious thing of interest to record. Huang is a bit of an entertaining host, but he seems to be irrational at times and it really dilutes the content of his messages (based on the third season). However, by the second season, you can pretty much understand what he means at any moment so the show has improved based on what they learned from their first season aired on Viceland.
Eddie Huang is a child of Chinese immigrants and he has built himself a career on studying how foreign cultures developed their foods and how it is important to find a connection to these cultures. However, in the third season, he often says we need to understand our homeland or we will be missing something vital and I find this to be a really confusing or simply assumptive statement. In Season 4, he seems to be much more keen on explaining the effectiveness of multiculturalism through food and is saying that food is what connects us all as humans. I can definitely agree with what he presents as his season 4 message.
Huang has quite a strong personality and this was more at the forefront in Season 3, but I feel like his history is more focused on in Season 4 and this format works better. Huang is pretty funny and he makes for a good underdog type of character, but I think focusing on him brought out a lot of personality flaws. I would say that the China episode where he talks about how visiting his home country for the episode was influential to made for a strong episode and another strong episode was about his home in Florida. Also, the Border Town episode in Season 3 was fun to watch too. Now he has been focusing Season 4 episodes on North America and I feel that he has really nailed everything he does and the show is more welcoming than before.
Oh, but there is also a Japan episode in Season 4 that is really worth watching if you are curious on Japanese culture. The first half of the episode is filled with commonly known stuff, but things get more interesting in the second half. South Korea is another recent episode and I feel that it pretty much does what the Japan episode does, but improves everywhere.
The part where Huang's World does not do too well is focusing on one aspect for too long and I think that Season 4 really has improved by not being overly focused on anything. They still explain things in an effective way so you will actually be learning more with the new format.
Basically, you should watch this show if you are curious about other cultures, especially in the United States or East Asia. I find other Viceland shows approaching more interesting topics, but some aren't as fun to watch as Huang's World has been.
Hate Thy Neighbour (2016)
Maybe Vice's Most Important Show Yet
This is probably the most intense Vice show made so far. Jamali is basically going behind enemy lines as he somehow interviews some of the most dangerous white supremacists in the world while being half black, half white (something that those groups really hate since they consider it promotion of interracial love). This show is mostly focused on white supremacy, but there is one episode which focuses on black supremacy. I would say the biggest highlight is the episode where Jamali visits the extremists in Sweden. These people showcase just how illogical racism is and how much racists rely on denying reality as Jamali shows many pieces of evidence revealing that someone is the leader of the biggest white supremacist group in Sweden, but he constantly denies as if the evidence is fake when it is as true as possible. In the black supremacy episode, black supremacists definitely appear to have a more legitimate cause than the white supremacists, but Jamali still thinks they are crazy and won't side with them. The black supremacists featured are very openly sexist, don't tolerate the opposition (which is true of every supremacist shown in these episodes) and actually combine their teachings with Judaism. One last big episode is the visit to Ukraine, which shows that Ukraine is perhaps more scary in its Nazis than Russia when it comes to extremism.
I will say that Jamali is a bit of an unreliable host. He doesn't inform us too much about what is going on until about the end of the episode, and it seems like that might be an effort at dramatic effect, but I feel like it detracts from the value, especially if people think he is just being biased on a topic. Sometimes, the scenes they decided to film can be disorienting and lack focus too.
Either way, this is pretty much a must-see based on content alone and you should tell everyone about this show given the current political climate.