In ‘House of Ho,’ a Vietnamese Immigrant Story Gets the Reality Show Treatment
Eight minutes into “Ho Sweet Home,” the pilot episode of HBO Max’s House of Ho, Judy Ho announces to her family over Sunday brunch that she intends to divorce her absent husband. Fighting back tears, the mother of three explains that her decision was based on what was best for her kids. Her own parents, Binh and Hue Ho, have no words of comfort to share. “You tell me to support that? I won’t,” responds patriarch Binh, a former penniless refugee from Vietnam who’s now a successful Houston banker. It’s a scene that cuts deep for those from immigrant families who’ve found themselves trapped between old-country collectivism and a more liberal, choose-your-own-happiness American ethos.
This intergenerational clash of cultures forms the dramatic undercurrent of the eight-episode docuseries, billed as a sort of Crazy Rich Asians meets Keeping Up With the Kardashians, with a Texas twist. Set in Houston’s posh, leafy River Oaks neighborhood—home to the likes of Senator Ted Cruz and Lakewood pastor Joel Osteen—the show, which premiered earlier month, centers on the pampered albeit high-pressure lives of Binh and Hue’s American-born children. It quickly becomes clear that the women in the family face several challenges that the men do not. “My brothers are named Washington and Reagan,” Judy, a lawyer, explains. “I was a disappointment because I was a girl, so I’m named Judy.” First-born son and heir Washington, by contrast, is seen in the first few episodes as a functioning alcoholic whose idea of work is spending daddy’s money, yet who stands poised to inherit the keys to the kingdom. He’s coddled by his mother and supported by his long-suffering wife, Lesley, a pharmacist who had a humble upbringing in Oklahoma, which she describes as “very country” and not “cosmopolitan like Houston.” (Reagan, the younger brother and most nonconformist sibling, appears only briefly in the series.)