All American Girl - The Complete Series

Set in San Francisco, All-American Girl is a culture clash/generation gap comedy. Cho's free-spirited Valley Girlish Margaret works at a department store and lives with her tradition-bound bookseller parents (Clyde Kusatsu, Jodi Long); her Grandma; brother Stuart (B.D. Wong), a successful doctor; and her younger, assimilated brother, Eric (J.B. Quon). Margaret's relationship with her imperious mother is particularly adversarial. The show seemed to be finding its footing when it was canceled, and some episodes offer a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been had the show's creators been left alone. "Pulp Sitcom" is a clever homage to Pulp Fiction, complete with a guest-star appearance by Quentin Tarantino as a purveyor of bootleg videos. "The Apartment" spoofs MTV's The Real World as Margaret shares an apartment with her two co-workers, one of whom (comedian Judy Gold) has a penchant for walking around nude. The show took a fleeting Seinfeld-ian turn with "Take My Family, Please," in which Margaret performs a stand-up routine about her family, who are in the audience and are not amused. In solo episode commentaries and in an on-camera conversation with Amy Hill, Cho thoughtfully reflects on where All-American Girl succeeded and why it ultimately failed. But her through-the-Hollywood-looking-glass experience inspired her breakout performance piece, the highly recommended I'm the One That I Want, in which she chronicles the series' demise much more candidly and graphically. This is the unexpurgated Margaret we know and love. --Donald Liebenson