Being a teenager can feel like being at war. Navigating high-school hierarchies requires tactics and courage, knowing which battles to fight as well as when to retreat.
For Jin Wang (Ben Wang), the goal is to win the war to be seen as normal, maybe get a minor place at the cool kids’ table and perhaps even go on a date or two. As a second-generation Chinese American in a predominantly white environment, this is not without its additional difficulties. He finds himself having to thank schoolmates for telling him their favourite band is the South Korean boyband BTS and assure them that it is OK to laugh at Asian American stereotypes on TV because the show is being “ironic”. When a new Chinese student, Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu), joins the school, the principal makes Jin responsible for him as she can see they have “so much in common”.
