A Path to Growing: Fresh Off The Boat "Chestnut Gardens"/"Practicum?!"

"Chestnut Gardens" 

The Chestnut is back! Matthew Chestnut returns and it makes Jessica, Eddie, and Trent all suspicious on his return. Jessica sees that Chestnut has taken Louis away from his passion idea of starting a garden and sets up a plan with Eddie and Trent to get Chestnut out of Cattlemen. After Louis learned what had happened and tells Jessica he was disappointed in her; she learned that Louis did start that garden but handed it off to Jenny. Jessica tells Louis that she's happy and that his career move is a business consultant.

Meanwhile, Honey asked Emery and Evan to babysit Marvin while he's on his boat. Emery thinks that Marvin is just old school when it comes to being disrespectful to women. But after teaching Marvin the ropes on how to be a gentleman in the 90s but it turns out the trash-talking comes from Honey herself. But it does give Emery asking about his perspective on women but Evan gives a pep talk that helped him.

"Chestnut Gardens" was a good episode. Bring back Matthew Chestnut and having a conflict wit Jessica, Eddie and Trent with Louis was very good and had very good character development for both Louis and Jessica. At first, I thought the Evan/Emery/Marvin story was going to be a snooze but the ending had a very surprising and heartfelt moment. Overall, I give this episode an 8/10.

"Practicum?!" 

When Evan starts wearing a necklace, Jessica starts to worry about him and investigates by using her shadow teacher at Evan's school. There she meets Evan's new friend Geoff and starts embarrassing Evan with remarks about things including his boom booms with applesauce. Evan tries to get his mother out of his school and when Jessica sees how he's been acting, she turns to Emery and learns that Evan just needs his space as he's growing. As she confronts Evan at Geoff's party, they both apologized.

Allen Iverson is coming to Orlando and Eddie wants a signed jersey from him, but Jessica and Louis won't let him skip school. That is until Louis learns that Eddie is writing a paper on his hero for a scholarship that happens to be about Iverson. A jealous Louis picks up Eddie from school to take him to see Iverson but tries too hard when he fakes a car problem that turned into an actual car problem. Soon Eddie learns the truth and forgives Louis, who finally took him to get that jersey signed and even get banned from all NBA games.

"Practicum?!" was a very good episode from start to finish. While I've been loving the dynamic between Eddie and Jessica; the character and relationship growth between Jessica and Evan through the last couple of seasons has been amazing;y well-written. The Eddie and Louis story was just hilarious at times and even the pop culture references in this episode couldn't be denied on how funny it still was. Overall, I give this episode a 9/10.


You can catch Fresh Off The Boat Fridays at 8;30/7:30c on ABC.