Spoilers Below

Holy shit Cassandra’s parents are nuts. They break the news to Cassandra that she’s adopted and of course she’s devastated. Who wouldn’t be?

Turns out all of Cassandra’s friends knew she was Chinese they just thought she knew. This causes Cassandra to switch clothes with Amber and complain that she doesn’t want to be different from American born kids despite the way she looks. She decides to appease her worries by having her friends take care of all of Cassandra’s responsibilities.

Eventually the other kids at school decide to stop doing Cassandra’s bull shit and instead decide to start Googling up things that would make her feel proud about the fact that she’s Chinese. Unfortunately, it seems as though checkers, torture, and fire drills aren’t the answers they were looking for so they search up ‘music. Turns out, ‘The Gang’ is a HUGE deal in China and that Cassandra is seen as a national celebrity there. As a result, the kids hop on a plane and start doing a bunch of press tours and pretty much reenact the Beatle-mania era to a ‘T’. Of course, Cassandra continues to act like the wet blanket as she has no urge to be in China and even worse has no inkling for the potential of getting to meet her blood-parents. Nevertheless, Cassandra heads to ‘Factory-Land’ where she learns her parents were actually American-made. Turns out they decided to move to China when Detroit started outsourcing manufacturing jobs and they’ve been here ever since. However, they loved the job so much they didn’t want to give it up so when they had Cassandra they paid for baby plastic surgery so that she could be easier to ship back to America and live with a loving family there. When Cassandra rejoins the band for their sold-out performance, they get the terrible news that ‘Factory-Land’ burns to the ground and Cassie’s parents were probably in there. In any case, she doesn’t seem to mind and takes solace in the fact that her parents died happy and that she can now leave China once and for all.

My favorite thing about this week’s episode may have been the timing. Earlier this week a letter was sent by The Media Action Network for Asian Americans asking FOX to re-shoot some “racist” scenes in the pilot of Fox’s new Seth MacFarlane live-action comedy series, Dads. 

This week’s plot doesn’t directly hit you with the same sort of over tones like the Dads trailer seems to imply, but I actually think that’s because show writer Dino Stamatopoulos is smarter than the Dads writers and that’s why High School USA! works because we get rewarded with smart irreverent comedy as a follow-up to any of the shocking moments of the series. Blow up a factory with a bunch of Chinese workers in it? Fine! Those conditions were deplorable, we were probably doing the workers a favor. Political-correctness is overrated and at the end of the day you are always going to get your mom groups to complain about stuff, but sometimes its more about the delivery of a joke rather than the recipe. Want to get your dog to consume gross meds? Wrap it in bacon. Wanna write jokes with a seasoning of racism? Reward us.

Maybe its time for some comedy writers to go back to school and just watch High School USA! while taking notes. Just try your best to keep dub step out of the soundtrack.

 9 out of 10