After Crazy Rich Asians triumphed at the box office, some entertainment insiders predicted a Crazy Rich Asians effect would ripple through Hollywood. Didn’t the film’s $238 million in global receipts prove there was a massive audience eager to be entertained by Asian-American talent, after all? Netflix’s surprise smash To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before—a rom-com featuring a Korean-American teen heroine—dropped the same week as Crazy Rich Asians, confirming there was gold to be mined from more inclusive storytelling.

A rush of broadcast-network development announcements last summer and fall suggested that the post–Crazy Rich Asians party was in full, jubilant swing. There was Exhibit A, a legal series produced by Hawaii Five-0’s Daniel Dae Kim, to be written by Warren Hsu Leonard; Ohana, a family epic written by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen that would be told from the perspective of Pacific Islanders; Kung Fu, a Chinese-American-focused drama by Albert Kim; and a comedy from Rick and Morty writer Jessica Gao, whimsically nicknamed Lazy Rich Asians.

None of the dramas ultimately made it through the gauntlet of network development season. As Albert Kim tweeted, “One of the hurdles we have to clear is that TV execs like to say they’re eager for shows featuring stories from a different culture. But often what they really want are stories they’re already comfortable with. They simply want to cast them with diverse actors.”

Pinpointing why individual shows don’t get green-lighted is nearly impossible, since decisions take into account so many factors: trends, budgets, demographic targets, available talent, and how well a pilot meshes with the network’s existing lineup. But somewhere in those considerations are personal taste and blind spots. Sometimes it can feel like gaslighting, to be told that TV is a merit-based system when so few series by people of color are making it to the screen.

“It’s difficult for some decision-makers to pick up shows that don’t have something in them that directly represents their experience,” said Sue Naegle, Annapurna’s chief content officer, who is working with Barry producer Jason Kim and Russian Doll co-star Greta Lee to develop KTown, a dark comedy set in L.A.’s Koreatown. If picked up, it would be HBO’s first scripted series centered on and created by Asian Americans. “Traditionally, networks have mostly been run by middle-aged, white, straight men, so it’s part of the conversation around why television has had a hard time being as diverse as our country, our world,” Naegle continued. “An inordinate amount of money has been spent on pilots and shows about good-looking, bumbling 20, 30, and 40-year-old guys who are just trying to find themselves.”

Naegle said that KTown got multiple offers not because of Crazy Rich Asians, but because “it was just a really great pitch. But I don’t know if Jason Kim and Greta Lee would have had a chance to create a show about Korean families four years ago. In the past, I would have heard, ‘Who can we find to be in it? There’s not a big star who is Korean that we could put at the center of it.’ This is just what we’re all up against all the time.”