Adopting a tactic used at dinner tables everywhere, Fox has opted to just ignore its racist Dads and quietly hope things change, following complaints from an Asian-American advocacy group who asked that the network reshoot its pilot. The main offending scene—which involves Brenda Song dressing up in a “sexy Asian schoolgirl” outfit/Sailor Moon costume we’re not really supposed to call “sexy” in polite society—will remain, with network executives responding by saying that, eventually, “You will see that Brenda Song’s character is a strong, intelligent, empowered young woman who basically runs the company, and who almost always gets the upper hand.” Even when she’s asked to be a living erotic manga-based masturbatory fantasy for laughs, and she makes the empowered decision to comply. (Because how else will she get the upper hand, unless all the lower hands are busy?)
Furthermore, Fox reiterated its TCAs stance that Dads is “a show that will be evocative and will poke fun at stereotypes and bigotries—sometimes through over-the-top, ridiculous situations.” And also, it concludes, the show is “based heavily on the executive producers’ own lives,” which have been spent finding stereotypes and bigotries pretty damn hilarious.