Aziz Ansari's 'Master of None' on Netflix

I didn't know whether or not I'd like Aziz as a lead in a show—sometimes he's just TOO MUCH—but this trailer makes the show seem better than anything I expected. Starts November 6th...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bFvb3WKISk

looks good, and a friend of mine did the music!

(for the show, not the trailer)

That's good work if you can get it.

Oh, that's Noël Wells! I knew she looked familiar when I watched the trailer, but she was only on SNL for, like, a minute so I didn't immediately put a name to the face.

I've heard it described as Ansari's Louie which appeals to me since we're unlikely to see peak Louie again

lol @ kids yelling out ethnicities

I've heard it described as Ansari's Louie

Kiss of death

ansari's career thus far has been so based in superficiality and and mainstream-y punchlines (kanye, rkelly, foodie shit) that his whole "thing" is a huge turn off to me.

his material is p vapid but there is something there imo

looking forward to this

ansari's career thus far has been so based in superficiality and and mainstream-y punchlines (kanye, rkelly, foodie shit)

This sounds far more like what he was doing in stand-up five years ago than what he might be doing now - I last saw him in 2013, but I saw him play to theatres of thousands and unannounced in a basement at 1am, and he was doing introspective material and extensive crowdwork about relationships each time that year.

His acting has been different along the way, too, and Human Giant was far more absurdist than Kanye/Kells references.

i saw his love guru/relationship set and that came off as smug and d-baggy to me idk.

his relationship book is way better than it needed to be and made me admire him

have never seen his standup though

as someone whos found him sometimes funny, mostly vapid and lightweight, this trailer actually looks good, like hes actually going to be looking at 'real' stuff for once, not fluff. as his shows have gotten bigger, he seems to have gotten *more* superficial and lightweight, while trying to appear to be 'introspective' (give me funny over that any day), so this show is welcome.

this is like louie def, w a character ~15 yrs younger and more outgoing and slightly more likeable

its good ive always dug aziz

i like this show

I just watched the first 7 with my sister lol

It's good! not mindblowingly amazing like some are saying but definitely good. a lot like Louie except w/ a higher budget and Aziz's topical concerns (I noticed they have a producer in common, not to mention some of the same performers). Some of it is a little pat (esp the gender disparity stuff) but that's to be expected in a first season. Eric Wareheim is a great foil for Aziz, more than I was expecting, and not only because he's twice his size, though that helps

Enjoyed the first two episodes, got a few genuine laughs out of it.

The Dad-bonding stuff was pretty sweet (maybe over-egged at times) but also interesting and those flashbacks were really well done.

Didn't like so much the weird plugging of Sherlock.

So far i'd say this is easily the best thing he's done. Really enjoyable.

Aziz owes a huge debt to Hedberg. I wish Mitch was still around to do a series like this.

Just finished. Really enjoyed it, thought it was nice and relatively low key and not too awkward.

Didn't like so much the weird plugging of Sherlock.

read this as "weird pegging of Sherlock," actual show will now be a huge disappointment

It's a Kevin Smith movie in Brooklyn instead of New Jersey.

read this as "weird pegging of Sherlock," actual show will now be a huge disappointment

this ain't Broad City yo

C- troll whiney

Has kevin smith ever put a nonwhite person in a movie or written a decent joke?

The Claire Danes one seemed out of step with previous, too cliched and coincidence-dependent.

Has kevin smith ever put a nonwhite person in a movie or written a decent joke?
--Οὖτις

There's.... Not a lot of jokes in this?

There are a lot of the kind of jokes that make you do the nasally "humph!", kind of like the humor column in the new yorker would do if it was better.

Two episodes in, I really like this show so far. Second episode (parents) much better than first, I think

Has kevin smith ever put a nonwhite person in a movie or written a decent joke?

Chris Rock in the Catholic movie is one of the funnier characters in his oeuvre. Not sure if CR wrote all his own jokes in that.

anyway having caught the whole thing now, I'm sticking to "good," not great. I felt like he played it pretty safe this season, more sitcom-y beats than I was expecting. a little surprised to see James Ponsoldt's name come up, and sad to see Harris Wittel's.

My roommate pointed out that a lot of this is like a christian sitcom

I don't know about that. Its view of marriage/domesticity is considerably more ambivalent than, say, the Apatow shit.

Whats a christian sitcom

book of job

Dunno what a christian sitcom is

just seems kind of christian

Honour thy parents (by casting them as thy character's parents in thy show)

http://www.themoviescene.co.uk/reviews/_img/153-2.jpg

aziz's dad is so wonderful in this show tbh

He is, and he reminds me a lot of a couple of eccentric Indian dads I know. The parents episode is one of the most charming things I've seen in ages.

Oh man, this is so good! I'm about to start the fourth episode.

Like, it's a level of enjoyment that makes me not even hate Eric Wareheim.

Aw, Eric is good. Though Tim might be a little better at this sort of thing.

Bearded guy seems like they wrote it for Brian Posehn then couldn't get him.

good start, stopped watching once it turned into emo relationship without any jokes

I like Ansari but the uptalk inflection he does at the end of a sentence can be grating.

Just finished the Nashville episode. That was my favorite episode yet and had some great character-dependent jokes (like, ordinarily doing the voice of a ghost koala would be stupid, but in context it was funny and charming). Didn't find it emo at all, but maybe that's still to come.

Just watched the first 3 episodes, decent so far but more muted chuckles than laffs

I don't get a moralizing tone from this at all - agree it seems much more ambivalent about domesticity than Apatow and co. The opposing fantasies of having children in that one episode were lol funny, I liked how Aziz's ideal parenthood scenario looked like it was set in 1965.

Also agree Parents episode was incredible. All of the ethnicity/race stuff seems very well done - I lol'd at "Is Mindy Kaling real?"

I thought all the parents were hilarious. His mom's caustic facial expressions were great.

just watched the whole thing. firs episode i thought was sort of terrible - it felt like that was a rehearsal almost, like it wasnt even written or the actors hadnt even worked together until someone started filming. but it gets progressively better. last episode is actually really great (though maybe just because his concerns almost exactly mirror my own). the parents and indian casting ones are brilliant. though oddly, in the guardian review it talks about how the show is so great cos its about how there are next to no white people in it, and the show is about inter-ethnic relationships, which is kinda true, and what makes it novel actually, but white people have pretty significant roles in this... like.... his girlfriend! and apart from the indian casting episode, there are no other south asian ppl in this except his parents, which strikes me as... interesting. its not really a comedy series though, forget what people are saying. its basically just a US indie drama, delivered in a slightly 'funny' tone. like how i feel when i watch a lot of modern american indies. the tone is that of a comedy/dramedy but there arent many jokes, or funny scenarios. which is bit of a problem with AA in general - his lines often feel like jokes, but the actual joke doesnt come. i wonder if the series would have worked better as one indie movie, but its a good first series. and the first real US series presented from a south asian perspetive (apart from mindy obv) as far as i know...

did anyone else think in that episode about the father john misty show, that the 'smoking hot' barmaid alice wasnt actually all that smoking hot?

also, soneone needs to broaden AA's taste in tv and movies.

I think she was just tall which when you are as short as Aziz is probably = hot.

I HATE it when women on TV aren't hot enough.

im not moaning about women not being hot enough on this series - the girl playing rachel is very hot. but i am entitled to comment on the hotness of a character who is explicitly referred to in the episode as being 'the super hot' girl that is way out of AA's league etc etc.

something about this show made me weirdly happy. i wonder if there will be more. it ends in a weird, semi rushed way.

one thing that bothered me, but is fairly typical of movies/tv shows these days - he is this struggling actor, but did you SEE the apartment he lives in? and how does someone only doing adverts and shitty movies get to eat out that much?? also, why must he be an actor? do comedies with people doing non glam/media jobs still exist in the US?

the funniest character in the whole thing is the colin salmon character.

Is he struggling? He seems pretty successful to me. He notes that residuals from one of the commercials is paying his apartment rent.

I think the only other job for people on TV is in advertising.

He says the Gogurt commercial alone has been paying his rent for years, which is maybe not realistic for that particular apartment but I've heard that residuals from a national advertisement can be shockingly good money.

well hey, who needs black virus movies when you have gogurt money....

Claire Danes best role since the one where she went to a Thai prison for trafficking drugs

"personally, i think dryers are full of shit man"

The opening and closing music choices are so good.

Through the ep after Nashville, curious if they're going to give Rachel any characterization that's not "adorably perfect."

Yes, and it's done very well.

this has good stuff in it. weird that it was so hard for him to find the right asian actor:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/arts/television/aziz-ansari-on-acting-race-and-hollywood.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini-moth®ion=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

lol at his dismissal of the Martian, I skipped it for the same reason

I like the writing, but so far (first 2 episodes) the acting has been pretty awful. Obviously the dialogue isn't super naturalistic, but the cast can't seem to pull it off. Hopefully they get better...?

finished this last night and felt like it got more like GIRLS and less like Louie as it went on (with attendant drop in amount of laffs). good overall though.

In the first few episodes the dialogue does feel quite stilted, reminded me of the adverts I've seen for "scripted reality" things like 'Made in Chelsea'. Gets less so as the episodes pass and the relationship narrative takes over a little more.

not sure i'm gonna be able to handle three so-so episodes of anything starring aziz ansari with the promise of "it gets better"

It's so long since I've seen Short Circuit that it had completely escaped me that the Indian character wasn't Indian.

It's hard to see the parallels w/ Girls since every character on Girls is a horrible person.

the acting has been pretty awful

lol Two of the main actors in the 2nd episode are Aziz's real life parents, who are not actors, but are very charming, so I was able to forgive their transgressions.

i don't think anyone's complaining about them when they talk about the acting. a lot of the scenes with just the main cast members sound like a fucking table read.

the last couple episodes were a bit of a drag, their relationship is the least interesting thing on this show

started this last night, I like it. It feels light, obv, compared to Louie or some other things; and it's more 'thoughtful' than 'LOL' sometimes, but it's pretty good. The bartender woman was hot enough.

It's hard to see the parallels w/ Girls since every character on Girls is a horrible person.

GIRLS in the sense of declining laughs/"serious" relationship nonsense ratio

Ansari would be better off as a cable talk show guy ala Conan than acting, he's just not good. All the OTT movie bad acting lines were indistinguishable from the rest of his performance.

The actress who played Rachel was solid, I thought, despite the one-dimensional character.

I though Ansari was ok. Tim Wareheim is kind of a terrible actor though.

yeah Wareheim is a little distracting, not sure who/what his character is supposed to be exactly (stunted manchild?)

all my actual laughs were from Eric, i think.

i (as usual) didn't mind the stilted dialogue, the only thing that bothered me was the exhausting, cute-sy banter format between Aziz and his girlfriend. it was "i say something sarcastic/faux-mean/clearly untrue, you pretend to take it at face value" over and over, ad nauseum. in the last couple episodes i really expected one of them to say, "hey, can we stop doing that thing?"

but overall this was hugely enjoyable to watch.

Ive only seen the first two eps of this and it doesn't make me laugh but I love it anyway

episodes featuring senior citizens > episodes not featuring senior citizens

if the ep with Dez taking out Rachel's grandmother had been an episode of Louie she would have either a) died, b) had sex with him or c) both

It's a surprisingly earnest show. Not finding it hilarious, but am somehow still hooked. Just saw and much enjoyed the Indians on TV episode.

that not getting a kiss outside the club was a too true for school moment. i liked that. in all its awkwardness. though it did feel a little more like high school....i have no idea how old these people are supposed to be.

I'm guessing in their mid-30s? The flashbacks to Dev playing computer games/watching TV in 1990 make him look about 10.

dev is supposed to be 30

This show is so pedantic

His apartment is rad though and I like the girlfriend character

On episode 3. Thought the Parents episode was sweet, but felt very Filmmaker 101 - stiff acting and poor direction. The first and third episodes were way better (maybe because Aziz didn't direct them?).

Looking forward to the lynn shelton directed one

the acting is def not good in this - i wouldnt have cast the parents, though i loved them anyway, and the dad isnt bad at comic delivery! - and that includes aziz, who cant seem to break out of his usual persona. his co-stars arent great, but they all seem to get better as it goes on. aziz is better as a writer on the whole. weirdly i thought his acting was better when hes auditioning and in the virus movie than when being dev...

funny how the mindy show doesnt get mentioned in his NYT piece.

if the ep with Dez taking out Rachel's grandmother had been an episode of Louie she would have either a) died

Yeah it was such a fucking relief that she didn't die. Damn Louie...

Agree it got more 'Girls but where you keep liking everyone" without getting smug or boring tho (yet).

I just watched the Ladies & Gentlemen episode, and now I am a fan of Condola Rashad.

what have i become
my empire of 'gurt

watched the first 3 episodes. this is a cute and p earnest show, humorous but not really full of belly-laughs. dude playing his friend brian isn't too great an actor. aziz himself is a little limited but not to the extent that it's damaging to the show. decent tv.

I watched a few episodes of this; it was enjoyable, not life-changing, and I don't know if I'm going to go back to finish it.

I will say though that the way the friend group interacts with each other rings very, very true to me and I don't get the complaints about the acting as a result. I do agree that the parents are very stilted but it works with the relationships so... eh.

After watching months of Bobs Burgers I can't deal with H Jon Benjamin talking. All I can think is 'THAT'S NOT YOUR VOICE!!!!!'

Thought that was quite good. Seems like Dev being an actor just an excuse to make a bunch of Go-Gurt and Sickening jokes, but a lot of the latter are pretty funny as is Colin Salmon so forgiven. Comparisons to Girls/Louis don't hold up to me as everyone is fairly likeable and sympathetic here.

i loved the halloween/don't worry be happy walk home. that was great.

My wife started watching this and I caught #2 and #3 last night. I've never really seen anything Ansari has been in and really know nothing about him but I kind of enjoyed it, especially his parents. A couple of my good friends thorough elementary and high school were Indian, and it's shocking how much his parents remind me of theirs - the dads were always sort of happy and goofy and making jokes (my friend Ravi's dad learned english by watching shitloads of 70s TV so he was always using catchphrases like "DYN-O-MITE" and laughing about it) while their moms were relatively dire, humorless and put-upon.

Also I had no idea who Eric Warehiem is (though I've heard the phrase "Tim and Eric" before) but man did I hate that guy. I don't know if it's his shtick or what but he seems like a vague hipster version of Guy Fieiri with all his "YO KICKING DOPE OFF THE HOOK SLANG" bullshit that felt horrifyingly grating.

Tim and Eric are a scourge on comedy culture.

eric wareheim in this show doesn't resemble his tim and eric stuff at all. it's like making a judgment on willie nelson's early 1960s songs based on his latest reggae album

(i agree that eric wareheim's character in this show is annoying as fuck though)

I like eric wareheim's character's built in bookcases made of what looked like salvaged wood

Heidecker is a brilliant actor - Wareheim not so much

i liked him in the grandpa/grandma episode. that's kinda my fave episode so far along with the citizen's arrest episode.

was underwhelmed by the first episode, decided to give it another shot and am glad that i did. the 'indians on tv' episode lives up to the hype.

this show is finely balanced between cloying and wearying

Heidecker is a brilliant actor - Wareheim not so much

― the naive cockney chorus (Simon H.), Saturday, November 14, 2015 1:15 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agreed, but I almost felt like Eric wasn't taking this show seriously, himself. Like he was making sure he kept any sincerity at arms length.

That being said, throughout their career together Tim was always better at selling a character and Eric would always settle into the same schtick.

Dev's friends are not good actors. I don't think aziz is too bad. The dude is like an echo of 90s Comedy Central culture and the woman's lines are delivered so mechanically it's like she hasn't bothered to process what they mean

I like the Claire Danes ep, Indians on tv ep, and parents ep the most (have to see last 2 episodes yet tho)

Aziz himself is mostly ok, but its so thin and the characters so wooden

(the last 2 episodes were the worst ones, especially the penultimate)

the lesbian friend has shockingly poor delivery.

"their moms were relatively dire, humorless and put-upon."

way to generalise.

Agreed, but I almost felt like Eric wasn't taking this show seriously, himself. Like he was making sure he kept any sincerity at arms length.

he also directed a bunch of episodes btw.

(but i agree it felt like his character was from a different show sometimes)

Sorry, to clarify I meant he wasn't specifically taking the performance seriously. His directing is always pretty good!

"their moms were relatively dire, humorless and put-upon."

way to generalise.

Not trying to generalize here, just observing based on the three Indian dads and two moms (one of the families was an Indian father and American mother) that I knew well though my childhood.

The dads all had similar senses of humor, were often making puns and playing pranks and goofing around, generally let their sons do what they wanted, etc. The mothers were both much more strict and formal, were always the parent to tell my friends they weren't allowd do certain things, would call my mom in a panic if they knew were out together and it was a minute past curfew, and were perpetually cleaning and cooking for the households - one of my friends would actually bring both his laundry AND dirty dishes with him when he traveled 500 miles home from college for his mother to do for him.

The dynamic of Ansari's mother and father in the Parents episode reminded me very much of this, especially her "I just sat on the couch and cried" line.

find this a really likeable show that in a few episodes explores really interesting themes (thought Indians on television episode was p great) but the acting is really bad - Claire Danes episode really showed this because her and dude playing her husband really stood out as being actual actors - , and the writing is not quite there at times, as in maybe be a little more time could've been spent on certain lines/scenes - not sure who is involved in the writing room here though I think some parks and rec folks were involved and I suppose I had that issue with that show too.

these complaints don't really mar the show for me, enjoying it and not sitting there on the couch tutting each time there's a wooden line reading or anything, it just seems a shame that I feel like there was the potential for this to be great and it isn't quite there for me.

flavorpill's link bait headline read "the real analogue to master of none is not girls but sex in the city" and that should keep me from watching this for a while longer.

everyone here otm. flavorpill isn't.

that sex in the city analogy is weird. I guess they're both set in NYC and have single people?

great now I can't help seeing "is Master of None really the new Sex in the City?" being typed out on Carrie's laptop

Aziz is such a Miranda.

"wow, I love this!" / Nashville episode / "oh, I hate this"

I wish people would stop thinking couples arguing with each other is a good idea for a TV show.

We've seen the first two eps, and his parents (however cute) are such terrible actors (especially his mom) that my wife could barely take it, though I sort of appreciated it in an endearing B&W low budget indie sort of way. Thank goodness this show is now B&W, btw..

they are terrible, yes. not sure who ISNT a middling actor in this show though. aziz isnt esp good himself, never mind anyone else!

still love it though, ha. hope it comes back soon.

https://twitter.com/AkilahObviously/status/677560296433704960

^that was published in The New Yorker (iirc) before Master of None debuted, and I read it mostly as a rip on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but Master of None definitely fits

you almost gotta think Aziz threw in the kid's birthday party with the bouncy house on purpose after reading this, no? that just seems too crazily specific to be coincidental.

Did he throw away any funny lines from the script on purpose too?

That bugged me, nobody has a bounce house for a first birthday party. Made it seem like nobody who had kids was in the writer's room.

i thought this show was good! maybe not great, but good, very watchable. thought there would be at least one episode that really delivered in terms of hilariousness, which didn't really happen, but that is ok.

ansari's character doesn't strike me as super unhappy. there's also plenty of joke jokes in this, it's way more sitcommy than louie (to it's benefit and detriment). the acting isn't great but i didn't really mind (plenty of ppl irl are bad actors), his dad was a charming enough ham to get past that for me. was mainly happy to see noel wells get another shot and do well w/ it after snl. as netflix shows go i'm never gonna name it as their best (whereas i can think of like four others that i might) but it was profoundly better than i thought an aziz ansari starring vehicle would be.

this show tried to be 3 or 4 shows in the course of 10 episodes and i probably ended up liking about half of it. whoever upthread noted that the episode w/danes and emmerich stood out because they're actual actors was right on--between them and the fact that it was probably the most conventionally plotted that was my fav episode. the season got pretty bad by the end, i thought the relationship stuff was about as facile as it gets.

I didn't even finish an episode of this. In the opening scene, my main thought was "they don't seem very drunk, how did he convince her to have sex with him?"

I think it also suffers from just coming at a time when the terrain of shows about a certain kind of young single *creative* person in NYC is getting a little worn. I think I said somewhere in the Girls thread that there's a certain narcissistic pleasure in just seeing things you recognize portrayed in a show, and MON would get more mileage out of that if it had come earlier.

MON lacks the courage Girls has to present any of its characters as anything other than loveable

plenty of ppl irl are bad actors

what?

omg

I greatly preferred "Difficult People" for aimless and unlovable creative people slacking around in New York. Maybe because the characters are older and don't seem to be coasting so much as in total denial.

lol i couldn't get through ten minutes of difficult people

It's a pretty hard watch! It's like a less lovable Curb Your Enthusiasm.

that sounds kinda good

generally let their sons do what they wanted

I do not think that this is a cultural norm for 'Indian Dads'.

I greatly preferred "Difficult People" for aimless and unlovable creative people slacking around in New York. Maybe because the characters are older and don't seem to be coasting so much as in total denial.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, December 19, 2015 10:00 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

SAME

Difficult White People

"Indians on TV" episode was the only one that stood out as great to me but it was a pleasant time-waster otherwise. The "Parents" ep didn't really click with me (too soft or something) but I liked the Chinese food argument because my parents have similar positions on that subject.

i like difficult people. except for precious who is almost as bad as aziz's parents as far as unfunny goes. any chance for me to see andrea martin is a good time.

Casual is actually a show about horrible people who you are supposed to root for. they are the worst. and the brother and sister on it have some sort of incestuous thing going on because nobody else can stand them. the main guy is like a mix between jeremy piven and ryan reynolds.

Catastrophe is my go-to funny horrible white people show

love difficult people

casual was ok but didn't deliver on the promise. "casual" dating. dating apps. Funny awkward dates etc. There was one funny episode like that, then suddenly there was all this melodrama about the daughter that I didn't buy. Pretty enjoyable show overall but seemed to dive to quickly into heavy stuff and skip all the stuff that might've been more fun.

Transparent is another in the category of Difficult White People, though it, Curb and Difficult People are actually more accurately a subset of post-Seinfeld Difficult Jewish People (with cursing). Heard great things about Catastrophe.

Master of None feels a lot like Chris Rock's Top Five, as far as balancing race and media with a loose Annie Hall style. The whole point of having it be low-key in both cases is a way of saying "just spend a day in this person's shoes" without either softening or overdramatizing that reality.

SPOILER but I really liked how at the end of the season, Aziz's character does all this soul-searching about whether he wants to be in a real long-term relationship with this woman and then when he's decided he really wants to commit to it, bam, she's already decided to move to Tokyo. It's just so typical in that type of scenario to see the dude go through all this emotional hand-wringing while the girl is just idly existing off camera without any agency waiting for him to determine their future. Just a nice little subversion that was in keeping with the general thoughtfulness of the show.

A lot of interest in being the ____ Woody Allen lately, although maybe that's just a press cliche.

i could hear nothing but great things about Catastrophe and would still refuse to watch a show starring fucking Rob Delaney

Catastrophe was pretty good when I was watching it but completely unmemorable

first season of catastrophe was good, second season was a bit of a mess. pilot is one of the best I've ever seen, though.

I liked the second season - took some bigger risks that could have brought it down but it managed to stay afloat

and yeah I guess if you really hate rob delaney maybe don't bother with it, he and horgan are really great together though

huh, I didn't even realize that season 2 had come out.

it finished in the UK a couple of weeks ago. Dunno if it's available in the US yet

Delaney can be irritating (I was only tangentially aware of his Twitter fame prior to watching the show) but he kind of wins you over

I don't think s2 is "officially" available in the US yet

delaney and horgan have incredible chemistry. season 1 end fell really flat for me but i liked it a lot overall.

i had no idea who delaney was when i started it btw (and basically still don't)

I thought with season 2 none of the sub-plots involving anyone other than the couple really worked (especially not the one with his buddy going off the rails, which was so predictable and dramatically pointless), and I didn't buy the 'vengeful obsessed co-worker' twist, and there were numerous scenes where I was just like "hang on, who has the kids right now?".

But I am a grouch about sitcom. I take it too seriously.

wow this penultimate episode about the relationship (mornings) is so deathly dull

"wow, I love this!" / Nashville episode / "oh, I hate this"

yeah, last episode was pretty terrible as well. the grandma episode was ok tho, and the nashville ep itself would have been fine if they just sort of ended the relationship thereish.

can't relate at all to the "oh no i have choices in my life" preciousness

The Wareheim directed episodes are really good; lack of obvious acting chops therefore forgiven.

It's also kind of his comedic style to not take himself or his role seriously. The majority of the time Heidecker was always the one to get really into a character while Wareheim would essentially just be himself in costume.

Watched the first two episodes. It's amiable enough, but it's never more than just a little bit funny is it? And I felt both episodes were kind of working towards making a point which never materialised. Plus a lot of the line readings are very wooden. What am I missing?

watch more than 2, I guess? General feel remains but they vary in quality.

I'll watch a couple more but I suspect I'm just not into it. It's like Louie but stripped of insight and darkness.

i think you've got the measure of it. just wait until the one where aziz encounters sexism for the very first time ever. I LEARNED A LOT.

yeah i enjoyed this but it's not hugely funny and the acting is bad

^that seems fair. comparison to Louie doesn't make sense as it's intentionally low-key emotionally, and its raison d'être is basically the fact that it is not another show centered around a white man, though imo it has a pretty light touch in that regard.

Yeah it's very spotty and uneven and kinda didactic. But before giving up on it watch the Nashville episode then maybe skip straight to the finale. Both were really great half hours of TV. You don't need to watch the whole thing.

the best one was the one that focused on the parents imo

Reminded me of Chris Rock's Top Five as far as having a relaxed Annie Hall vibe, and is important by not striving to be Important and Symbolic.

man iirc the Nashville one and the finale were my least favorite.

the best one was the one that focused on the parents imo

^^^ this

yeah the finale felt like a different show, it was way too serious. Nashville one was kinda fun though. my fav by far was the Indians on TV one but I'm an Indian-American so I don't know if that ep hits others the same way it hit me

the running Short Circuit gag in that was great, I liked that episode a lot too

also

Chris Rock's Top Five

does not get enough love! great movie

indians on tv was easily the best episode, and the nashville one and the parents one were also stand-outs. I've heard the "not really that funny" critique a lot, and I get it given Ansari's pedigree as a stand-up and sitcom actor. But the whole thing is more like a loose, hang-out indie movie than a Parks&Rec-type thing. Not surprising to see folks like James Ponsoldt and Lynn Shelton directing episodes.

Make a whole episode in Italy in black and white :(

Second one made up for it though.

I bailed on this season halfway through. I got enough of interminable scenes of people eating, Wareheim's awful character, and AA's non-acting

I never picked it back up after the Nashville episode in S1. Many of my qualms are the same as Simon's, so I'm guessing it's safe to leave it at that.

yeah if anything it's worse, it segues into being all-out lifestyle pr0n this time

First ep good/great, 2nd ep gross lifestyle porn, 3rd ep enjoyable cuz parents

Just watched the Death Castle episode. First one that felt completely half-assed.

i like this season. it does seem like lifestyle porn a lot of the time, though. i liked the death castle episode!

i didn't finish the first season, fwiw. i thought this one was much better, but maybe i just experienced the bingewatch lowering of standards?

i also don't like wareheim's character! i felt like such a grinch about that bc i suspect he's supposed to be super-lovable.

if you quit before the denise episode, maybe watch the denise episode?

which one is that? of the first five, only the multi-first-date ep had any flair or laughs

Thanksgiving

Wareheim's character feels really forced and unnatural to me, compared to the naturalistic amiability of the rest of the cast. The first dates episode and the Bourdain parody were both p great imo, esp the former.

one thing I appreciate about this is that it's a comedy where the protagonist is not some mysanthrope w issues, it's a welcome reprieve from that angle

i feel like it goes well with aziz ansari's super-sunny face. that feels like a weird observation to make, but it's true.

loved the tinder episode
loved the pork/muslim parents episode, which is basically my life

thanksgiving episode is really moving and funny and complex

tinder episode is a good idea and mostly well executed but felt kind of like it was making a banal point in the end.

was it making a point?

i think i missed the point if so.

unless you mean the point that dating is hard. which, i guess is banal, but i love montages of dates. i would watch a whole movie that was just the sequence of bad dates in the beginning of kissing jessica stein, for example.

That came off harsher than I intended, since I liked the episode too. I just mean the endless circular purgatory of online dating seemed to be the "point" when I was hoping it would go somewhere more unexpected than the "whoops she's racist" conclusion.

that "mammy" condom jar sequence was insane and excellent

Why? Felt derivatively Seinfeldian to me.

p much everything about this show is derivative - there's a clear line from Woody Allen's peak period through Seinfeld and then Louie and now this (and there's probably a few more dots you could throw in to connect 'em all) - so while yeah this gag in retrospect is like a Seinfeld plot device but it didn't leap out to me as such. It was just unexpected (I certainly didn't see it coming) and it was funny w out being hamfisted.

I loved this then hated it by the s1 Nashville episode. This season is bad so far but I can't resist Aziz himself. That face and smile. He's certainly quite a singular character. Sympatico.

This actual show is a shitshow though. Fucking hell. Why am I talented and broke when this shit gets $$$?

this season is masterful, surprised you aren't are loving it more. it's so much more interesting and varied than the first season, also who would not be in love with that italian woman

I liked the Long Good Friday homage at the end of the Bourdain episode, very well done. This show has obvious antecedents but still feels fresher than anything else on TV right now

yeah I think this is p incredible apart from the ep 2 misstep. Just inventive and clever and oddly compassionate

was that bill murray in the audience of Jon Benjamin Has a Play?

I wonder what Bourdain thinks of Cannavale's impression, it seems p close to the bone

yeah, there were times where, vocally, CAnnavale sounded identical to Bourdain. I imagine he wouldn't be super happy about it IF there are rumors like this about him, which I haven't ever heard.

he did just get divorced but yeah I haven't read anything unsavory related to that

was that supposed to be a Bourdain impression? Cannavale played him a lot pushier and more aggressive than I've seen of Bourdain

it may just be a surface comparison but yeah I thought the vocal delivery especially (vocabulary, intonation, tics etc) was clearly modeled on Bourdain

both cannavale and bourdain are from north jersey, maybe that accounts for some vocal similarities?

I would say sure, some, but not all

I was just thinking an episode parodying Bourdain could be amusing, will have to see how it turned out, until I realized I had already watched this, and no, this did not come off anything like Bourdain whatsoever.

ok I'm glad it's not just me lol

it did come across very much like Cannavale and the other unhinged characters he's played on Boardwalk Empire or the horrific film Daddy's Home, which I watched the other day

still reminds me a lot of louie (which is a big complement)
w/ a bit less edge (which is fine)

this show is slightly more committed to jokes than Louie

louie should wake up one morning in aziz's body.
"oh daaaaaamn, I'm aziz!"
and then he should start binge eating.

i cant decide how much i do or dont like this. it has lots of annoying tics to me, esp w/r/t line readings & the way sometimes characters seem to just be articulating positions instead of being humans

also the italy sequence made me feel very jealous / poor (ive never been)

ummm but i dont know, i keep watching it & i dont even give other shit a shot

its also way way better than like "casual" which i feel actively annoyed by

it also has moments that seem genuinely interesting...i liked following around the taxi drivers

sometimes it seems very relatable (even something like the episode about islam & pork, which i don't at all relate to on a surface level, i can 'relate' to from the dynamic of family & tradition & orthodoxy & empathy, the general dyanmic) and other times it seems to gesture at RELATABILITY [POP CULTURE REFERENCE] in a way that is lame to me. the line about three 6 mafia for ex, where its just like POP CULTURE REF in place of joke stuff

the music supervision feels so insanely specific to old songs i've been attached to over the years that it makes it feel microtargeted to me at some level

the framework is good but the jokes are so barely there it can be frustrating

like it feels like they wrote the script & were like 'we'll fill in the funny parts later'

the line about three 6 mafia for ex, where its just like POP CULTURE REF in place of joke stuff

yeah maybe i'm wrong but i suspect aziz ansari himself wrote lines like this; it smacks of his standup, which i often thought was just being referential instead of funny.

i loved the cabdriver/deaf girl/doorman ep. also loved baby dev singing along to "brown sugar" tbh.

the lifestyle porn/uncritically presenting things only rich people can afford to be drooled over is the worst thing about the season, i think. maybe i'm misreading, but the show seems to present it as evidence of a meaningful life which seems wrong, to say the least. maybe the show wants to present it as evidence of dev's aimlessness instead, but it doesn't read that way.

Good tunes in this charming lifestyle show - Ryan Paris, Patrick Cowley etc. - wonder who picks them if not Aziz himself.

this show is slightly more committed to jokes than Louie

this is weird to me cause Louie is actually frequently v funny, where this elicits a mild chuckle every other ep

Louie is of course frequently very funny (although less so as it went on) but I think it can be blamed for giving lazier comedians the excuse of "well actually, it's not supposed to be funny" when they just couldn't be bothered/weren't able to write any good jokes

That said, I've only watched like three episodes of this because I thought it was rubbish. Maybe it got better, but from the comments in this thread I suspect not

you only wathed 3 episodes of season 1 or season 2? because they're pretty different beasts. At least go watch Thanksgiving.

i cant decide how much i do or dont like this.

Three eps into s2, I think this is how I feel? I don't find it either uproariously funny or especially relatable but I've kept watching this long for some reason, maybe just for the chuckles and relationship stories idk.

loved the pork/muslim parents episode, which is basically my life

Really? I know my experience is far from universal but I found this one especially hard to relate to, both in terms of having this sort of conflict as late as in his 30s and in terms of how easy and pat the resolution seemed. It's the one that's most made me want to check out altogether.

Agree about the lifestyle porn aspect; this is a guy who acts in commericals and pays rent in NYC, right? Also, are dudes in the acting world all overgrown theatre kids who click their heels and do singalongs with their bros? I can believe it.

I do find it refreshing to see male friendships on screen that aren't defined by insults and ball-busting. not that there's anything inherently wrong with that dynamic in reality but it's pretty much the only thing you ever see on TV

only watched 6 episodes of this, but it is overall better written and acted than the last series. it is less of a comedy this time, than it is an indie drama series, with people acting comedically, but not actually saying anything that funny. which is not a bad thing really. it still has issues where the acting/writing gets a bit shakey. there is something odd about the interplay between AA and denise and arnold, neither of whom seem believable as their characters. everyone in this is sort of half acting, half just being themselves, but not in a fluid CYT kind of way. so some of it is very ambitious (ep 6 is like a rahmin bahrani movie, but funnier thanks to the deaf lesbian girl), and some of it is just a bit on the lazy side. its an odd mix. but i love it. i think it will get better if he keeps it going. but for anyone saying it is derivative, it is basically ny post-woody comedy/dramedy, like desiree akhvan, maybe, more so than CYT. people are still getting used to seeing/being minority comics who arent black/white. i see it as growing pains.

loved the pork/muslim parents episode, which is basically my life

Really? I know my experience is far from universal but I found this one especially hard to relate to, both in terms of having this sort of conflict as late as in his 30s and in terms of how easy and pat the resolution seemed. It's the one that's most made me want to check out altogether.

i mean...yes. i don't know what to tell you--i guess i'm particularly stunted?

i do think the resolution is weird, but i attribute that to different families being different. that resolution would not fly in my family, but i don't think i can demand that the show be about my family.

also i have specific nitpicky muslim teachings reasons why i think the resolution is weird, but i gather that's not why you think it's weird.

the way the cousin was convinced so easily to eat pork was truly ridiculous and unbelievable. all those years of being taught not to, then in 2 seconds, his mind is changed! wtf.

tbh i think religion is something AA hasnt really been able to tackle properly, neither in his work, nor in his interviews. but then maybe he doesnt have to.

here is a gloss on that episode that i will advance, at the risk of embarrassing myself and also being overly pedantic.

muslim american identity is going through some interesting changes as children of immigrants get older. when i was growing up, eating pork was considered the "final frontier" of muslim identity (in the particular desi immigrant community i grew up in, i hasten to specify), because it was viewed as not that hard to refrain from and it was a way to be minimally observant. it is weird, once that frontier is crossed, to figure out how you are muslim exactly, if you still feel muslim in some way, especially because muslims are kind of an embattled and misrepresented group in the american imagination. i eat pork, i don't believe in god anymore, i still want to "represent" because i feel connected to other muslims even though many of them might not recognize me as one of them. i guess i feel like that episode to me spoke to how contested the lines of identity can be, especially when religion is laid atop culture and frankly, race.

i believe ansari and yang would probably say for the vast majority of viewers who don't share ansari's identity to the degree that i do, the episode is about navigating how to deal with your parents or whatever.

there is also the issue, that most non-asian ppl prob wont recognise, that dev's name is not typically a muslim one. and bhis parents names arent what you would recognise as muslim names either. and then here we are in season 2 with his religion suddenly given some attention.

when i saw that episode i had that 'HEY AZIZ!' line from his stand up in my head.

the way the cousin was convinced so easily to eat pork was truly ridiculous and unbelievable. all those years of being taught not to, then in 2 seconds, his mind is changed! wtf.

― StillAdvance, Wednesday, May 17, 2017 11:15 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didn't think this was weird. being raised in a religion affects different people differently! i was deeply religious as a kid, my middle sister internalized some of the prohibitions but was kind of wild in a lot of ways, my youngest sister never really believed in anything and as soon as she was in a position to eat pork with no family around, she did. i figured dev's cousin was kind of default muslim but didn't have a deep investment in not eating pork; it's not a spiritually rounded prohibition, unlike staying away from alcohol, I'd argue.

religious identity is both a matter of what's in your heart and how you appear to others, which can produce friction, which is part of what made the episode interesting to me.

i almost wish the episode hadn't defused the moment dev says, being muslim for me isn't positive; it's about being surveilled in airports, with a joke, because i think that gets at something too. much as i like to think i lost my religion in an authentic and self-directed fashion, being muslim in america post-9/11 probably played a role.

but i thought that joke was funny, so i'm glad it was there.

yeah but there was no convincing. it was just 'hey heres some pork, ever tried it? no?' *cousin eats pork with no visible reservation whatsoever* yes i am projecting my own ideas on to it but thinking about myself and other mildly observant ppl i know, i wouldnt gobble up a forbidden meat in less than a minute without even thinking about it.

they didnt really explore that moment he says the line about terrorists. a big missed opportunity. you can tell this is not a show that has been polished by a room of writers. or at least does not appear that way.

eh. i think that was more about the principle of condensation--the episode doesn't have time to build a plausible amount of time into the cousin's acceptance of the notion of eating pork. and possibly not enough time to be both funny and serious about how being part of a hated minority might make the identity less attractive to you. it struck me as a really well-written episode tbh.

maybe. you say it doesnt have enough time. i say it just wasnt given enough thought.

there are points in this where it feels like multiple characters are all written with Aziz's voice - as D-40 notes joeks/refs that seem straight out of his standup, sometimes delivered by non-Aziz characters.

this is a minor quibble for me though. I am v much entertained by the show's general amiability and unpredictability, its willingness to just kind of wander

def the kind of show that would never have been made, or def never been made in the way it has been, pre-netflix

v true

I'm glad a more diverse set of shows get to get made thanks to Netflix's insane production budget, I just wish they went through a bit more of a development process. Their quality control is pretty abysmal. (MON is actually one of their better shows)

their QC is dire. that 'hot girls' docu series is so lame (at least the one episode i saw was)

its a bit like a huffpost for broadcasting.

lol that is a perfect comparison

idk they seem to be like any other network - cranking out inexpensive garbage, with the occasional gem sneaking through

and even those gems tend to have really glaring flaws (Orange is the New Black springs to mind)

re Netflix—high throughput low QC is obviously their business model. they put a lot of bottom-feeder stuff in there, on purpose.

HBO does the opposite, buying only a few scripts from bigger names, then spending more time in development.

I think, from a consumer standpoint, this makes sense, as one can subscribe to both without feeling cheated

yeah, just different models

when I said "any other network" I was referring to broadcast TV networks

you know, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, basic cable shit that kind of stuff

i was trying to think what bothered me about the terrorist line in that episode, and i think its that he comes out with something quite important, that is an articulation of a doubt that prob a lot of kids feel, esp if you grow up in a white area, or area with no muslim community, and there is no real counter argument to what he says about the terrorism suspicion/self consciousness, nor really about 'attitudes to women', just his dad saying 'but we are not like that'. we are not like what? that reply works for the women part of what he says, but not the first part. idk, it might seem more 'realistic' but 'realistic' doesnt really cut it when youre getting a chance to look at something that isnt often looked at on TV.

i feel like even though his mom undercuts that line with a joke, the observation still stands, though. like it got me to think about the role feeling like being muslim was a handicap played in my own religious life.

also the joke works because it reflects the gap between his worldview and experience and his mom's.

I totally missed whatever joke/line you guys are talking about, must have gone right by me

i am not sure i follow your criticism completely, though.

dev says something kind of muddled about how islam is this positive cultural thing for his mom, and what it means to him is getting pulled out of lines by the TSA. and she says, that only happened because you lost your passport three times.

the specific gap i feel like that reflects is a gap in privilege for lack of a better word. american children of immigrants have a whole rights discourse we feel entitled to (as we should) and our parents are like, you're spoiled as fuck.

they're not wrong.

well no, but wanting equality = wanting to be as equally spoilt as everyone else.

(though ofc whether thats a good thing or not is another discussion.. in fact one of the best lines in that ep was when he says 'but im still a good person' which i think is something a lot of non western kids struggle with somewhat, cos western culture does not really encourage that)

StillAdvance, if you mean to say that you wish the episode had been more critical of Islam as a system of beliefs, i think that would be a totally different episode and one Aziz Ansari would not be qualified to/interested in writing.

(that was in response to your earlier post)

neither he nor his mom is wrong in that conversation, though. they just see religious identity differently.

"StillAdvance, if you mean to say that you wish the episode had been more critical of Islam as a system of beliefs, i think that would be a totally different episode and one Aziz Ansari would not be qualified to/interested in writing."

that totally NOT what i wanted.
no idea how you got that.

i just don't really understand your critique.

i was in fact saying his parents should have mounted a better defence against him coming up only with negative associations with islam.

right, but i guess i think there's one of two possibilities

1) they're religious in a p chill way; it's what they were raised with but they're unaccustomed to defending it against attackers because they're not particularly ideologically oriented (a mode of religious identity that is pretty common, i think.)

2) aziz ansari doesn't know much about islam as such or is relatively unfamiliar with the defenses a more devout parent would make in that situation.

i incline to believe it is the former, because i suspect ansari's family is somewhat like the characters his parents play.

because, you don't have to be, like, a sheikh to think eating pork is beyond the pale--most muslims i grew up with found it pretty shocking behavior.

i guess i think you're critiquing the episode on the grounds of implausibility for a couple of moments, but not crediting it for the larger observation it's making about a real thing while maintaining humor and a light touch.

i thought the thrust of that scene was his parents don't really care about that so much as his lack of respect by not maintaining some shared fiction for sake of family (as reiterated in the angela bassett scenes).

right the other piece of that is the importance of keeping up appearances.

but i think it's inaccurate to say they don't care whether dev is muslim or not "for real," just that they read religious identity in large part through those external markers.

tbf his dad doesn't seem to care that much

yeah his dad seems p chill

nah man, he was livid they didn't get to go to that other restaurant.

he cares a lot about food

haha runs in the family

FWIW this is what he said in the vulture piece -

Ansari is not personally religious, and he feels uncomfortable being pointed to as a model Muslim-American, not, he says, because he’s ashamed but because “religious people deserve a better representative than a guy who’s doing a show about fucking and drinking and eating pork all the time.”

....now Ansari finds himself in the tricky position of achieving his peak visibility, after so many years avoiding being typecast, at a time when half of America is thirsting for its Katniss Everdeen — and Ansari, as arguably the most famous Indian guy in the country, and someone whose family is personally affected every time an anti-Muslim screed comes out of the White House, looks the part, whether he wants it or not.

The one everyone will likely be talking about in season two is “Religion,” a lighthearted look at Dev’s efforts to hide his pork-eating habits from his Muslim parents. He’d gotten the idea from watching his dad pretend to be more religious around devout relatives. “It reminded me of that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry David pretends to be super-religious so he can get Richard Lewis a kidney,” says Ansari. “I was like, ‘There is a version of that with Islam and no one would believe me.’ ”

Ansari’s own relationship to religion has been complicated. The family practiced Islam at home in South Carolina, but there wasn’t a mosque close by until their father helped build one, after both of his sons were out of the house. The kids learned the tenets in the Quran of being a good person, his parents took them to Mecca as teenagers, but Ansari stopped practicing in college. Everything in the “Religion” episode is based on things that happened in the Ansari family, pre-Trump. “I’m so glad we didn’t say anything (overt),” says Ansari. The better statement, he felt, was to just put his dad, an Indian Muslim doctor who likes Harry Potter and makes dumb jokes about Michael Jordan, on TV. “If every time you see a Muslim person, it’s the fucking guy from 24 or Homeland, yeah, it’s going to shape your opinion of all these people,” he says. “If every time you saw a Muslim person on TV, and it’s my dad, you’ll be like, ‘These goofy people! They’re probably gonna ask me for a bite of my sandwich.’ I don’t think Islamophobic people have hate in their heart. I’m not saying it’s justified, but representation is part of the problem.”

okay i hate aziz ansari's acommodationist tendencies when it comes to bigotry, but i do really appreciate his contribution to the fullness of Muslim identity on tv.

“If every time you saw a Muslim person on TV, and it’s my dad, you’ll be like, ‘These goofy people! They’re probably gonna ask me for a bite of my sandwich.’

Kumail Nanjiani says p much exactly the same thing

giving his dad the best comedic line in the season—the one about things not being where they're supposed to be—was a nice touch

X post - he is a big hearted accommodationist to a fault. It gets a little tiresome.

yeah, I wish this light-hearted comedian spent more time scolding people

the mammy-condom-jar scolding was funny, mostly cuz it was undercut by him waiting until *after* they had sex

I don't think the show is accommodationist! Just his SNL monologue

dev's name is not typically a muslim one. and bhis parents names arent what you would recognise as muslim names either.

I knew Ansari is Muslim but, until the pork episode, I had assumed that Dev Shah came from a Hindu family.

Btw, thanks, horseshoe. That actually helped.

you're welcome! sorry if i sounded defensive and snippy upthread.

wow I did not like the last two episodes of this season at all. Endlessly stretching out that romantic plotline was suuuuuper-tiresome, made me actively irritated by the characters. Bringing Bourdain/Canavalle for the v end distracted a little bit but still oof, not a good way to go out.

i was irritated by the promise of pasta but very little pasta and pasta-making.
less tinder, more tagliatelle!

baffled that anyone would think Chef Jeff is not based on Bourdain - that opening to his show and the voiceover were clearly a direct homage

also, like bourdain, he looms over aziz with drooping arms.

i didn't like the last two episodes, either, but i couldn't tell if i was just being a grump. i just think, though it's a very real thing that we've all experienced, dev's fixation on francesca is a bad idea, and the fact that that storyline is going to continue wearies me. the woman who plays her is great, but i just don't care enough

also the kissing each other through the glass was so cringey--i guess it was supposed to be, but yikes

haha yeah I hated that too. just made me think how silly/melodramatic both were being. Arnold's estimation (that even if it had worked out it "would've been a shitshow") should've been brought up and stressed earlier and saved us 30 minutes of predictable shit.

not watched the whole series yet but ep7 confirms that brian's dad is a better, funnier actor than aziz's dad. seriously, he should be the star of a new jarmusch movie. also BFFS? that sounded like a good show pitch?! it would have been funnier if his idea was worse, and got shot down.

brian's dad is played by an actual actor, while aziz's dad is actually aziz's dad.

clem cheung's been good in a lot of small roles

ah i thought it was all neo-parent-realism

nah he's shown up in Orange is the New Black, Boardwalk Empire, some other stuff

Luke Cage, I think?

high maintenance, the first season of this show

he could be a parent in real life maybe?

you're welcome! sorry if i sounded defensive and snippy upthread.

Np. If you were, I probably deserved it.

I do find it refreshing to see male friendships on screen that aren't defined by insults and ball-busting. not that there's anything inherently wrong with that dynamic in reality but it's pretty much the only thing you ever see on TV

― evol j, Wednesday, 17 May 2017 13:57 (two days ago) Permalink

Good point, I agree

I enjoy this show and will keep watching it but any time o read someone be over reverent I just kinda roll my eyes, it's hit this weird sweet spot of being in the style of prestige tv but with a 90s network drama level depth, but one of the good ones

Me: I like master of none

Friend: yeah it's so great!

Me: I guess

Anyway I feel like the relatability of the last few eps was cool but if they keep a romantic entanglement between them going I'm gonna be mad

There were lots of well done moments tho like when he runs into Rachel and It feels like she's talking to a different person & he can't register

Also I was in Brooklyn when the snowstorm happened a few years ago & stayed at a partner's house early in the dating process so it was like wow I know this

i do Keep wanting it to make a deeper point about that kind of connection though and I'm not sure it's going to: it's left kind of ambiguous what he's trying to say about these situations and I'm really afraid it's gonna end up being as idealized as it is in his head

Ah this was a mixed bag. The show in general lurches so much all over the place. The lols from devs shouting at grandma were funny. But the series really overstretched itself. Even if it was making a point about representation and truths about who constitutes modern new york/American society. Denise is a shockingly poor actress. Arnold has improved a bit. Brian is probably a bit better but we barely saw him sadly. it's odd to say but for all that dev or aziz gets right in talking about the casual racism like francesca saying curry person I feel like he does all he can to make this a show about being brown/muslim. He is more comfortable being an all-minority person than just an indian/Muslim person. The romance was very woody allen but thankfully less self pitying. she's obv very hot and cool but I'm more interested in seeing if dev/aziz can own up to his white woman obsession/difficulty with brown women outside of his mother. This show looked like it was hitting on something new for western Asian's in the first series. This series seemed to back down from that to much broader sort of 'lemme tackle every big SJW concern going' focus.

*All he can to AVOID making this a show about being brown/muslim

this season is masterful, surprised you aren't are loving it more. it's so much more interesting and varied than the first season, also who would not be in love with that italian woman

agree with this. i was really cold towards the first season - the nashville episode was appalling, rachel wasn't great, etc. This was stronger throughout - funnier, better written, and i thought the romantic plot was good, and i was glad that in the final episode ansari wasn't afraid to make dev seem like a dick. it seemed honest in a way a lot of the first season didn't.

also the way they filmed new york during the helicopter ride was wonderful. also i can't take my eyes off his amplifier whenever its onscreen.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2017/may/24/master-of-none-aziz-ansari-sitcom-many-flaws

i don't agree with everything in this and it's not a great piece - imo - but it sort of generally captures some of my thoughts about the show.

i actually haven't even gotten round to finishing the season yet, not compulsive viewing for me

i actually haven't even gotten round to finishing the season yet, not compulsive viewing for me

its interesting how platform/release impacts how one thinks of it, & i dont disagree. i just finished s2. i think if it was weekly, say as louie was, id def anticipate new 1s and watch it quickly & maybe would think more highly of it, altho i did mostly really like this season

also that outdoor sculpture park looks dope im going

^^^yes!

Was it the nj grounds for sculpture? I love that place

It was Storm King in NY

is there a picnic scene in "she's gotta have it" at this sculpture park? (maybe not this one, it's years since saw it SGHI: but it really rang a bell when i watched this scene)

anyway i just completed my bingewatch (both series): i really enjoyed it, for the same reasons shakey and others have indicated -- its meandering stroll, its lightness, its likeability

it does something indie films do now and then, not often, and have since the 60s and early 70s, and TV sometimes used to do when programmes were madein-house to fill a schedule --- which is make the piece feel like this little thrown-off no-big-deal fragment, which usually the sense of budgets and deadlines and getting a pitch accepted and multiple people together to make a production renders impossible, bcz all this makes it already too big a deal so it has to Justify Itself with lesson to impart or big comedy (or insight) pay-off

obviously -- as ppl have said -- it's netflix approach to commissioning that's enabled this try-it-and-see let's-have-fun no-pressure, and it's quite hit-and-miss (i enjoyed the playfulness of doing each ep as if it were part of a different type of series but clearly plenty of ppl didn't and plenty were also offput by the low level of professional sheen in everything except the look) (sand i liked all the different registers of approach to acting technique in friction with one another, but i'm always interested in this kind of stuff, which conventions we decide are "good" and which don't seem to work…) (i didn't think lena waithe as denise was a bad actor at all, tho i did think her approach and timing didn't really gel with the others, which is a slightly different thing)

i loved AA speaking italian: his take-the-plunge energy which bordered on a cartoon of italian and actually meant he sounded like he spoke it better than his character was meant to, and i loved his interplay w/alessandra mastronardi, so relaxed that it felt that they were just improvising, and were actually two chums having a good time laughing about the quirks of the two languages they didn't quite speak properly -- and i also loved the way it would lurch from silly and cartoonish stuff into quite serious or heavy (or melodramatic) subject ,atter and back… they didn't always get the mix of this right, the relationship stuff was probably over-dwelt on, but it kinda came nailed to their decision abt how to treat each episode apparoach as stand-alone

i finished this.

i found the relationship stuff literally painfully bad. didn't feel like they have any chemistry, felt like the writing was a bit cheesy, and don't think ansari necessarily has the acting chops.

i basically enjoyed most of the stuff that wasn't the relationship with the thanksgiving episode being one of the stronger ones.

one of the flashback lil' aziz actors does a pretty good aziz impression "whoaaaaa bacon is AWE-summmm. i better save some for later just kidding i'll eat it all nowwwwww!"

yeah, I liked little Aziz. Was less impressed by teenaged Aziz.

There are a lot of clues that huge portions of the relationship stuff was pure fantasy, and I don't just mean the whole heart-ripped-out bit -- the entire L'Avventura night didn't actually happen (check out his text messages from a later ep) -- and I think the flash ending may also have been just a fantasy, maybe hers. I like that this show is ambitious. I also read an interview with Mastronardi where she was shocked to learn towards the end of the series that Aziz didn't think Francesca loved Dev, and he was equally surprised to learn that her entire performance was based on the idea that Francesca did love Dev, so he changed the ending,

Going for it with the Italian accent I found fantastic -- and as white English native speakers are fairly notorious for not even trying to get the accent right in foreign language learning (but still holding proper accents in English out as a sign of assimilation) I think the choice for the character to push hard on the accent was deliberate and not just for comedy.

I was super impressed by the accent too. As someone who has been trying the learn Italian on and off for a few years now there is no way I could sound that good.

Chef Jeff is much more Mario Batali than Bourdain IMO

Batali doesn't talk or look like that tho

Chef Jeff was a pastiche

The backslapping gladhanding sort-of-douche stuff reads just like Bill Buford's nights out with Batali in Heat.

Which I would guarantee Aziz has read a couple of times (since you can also just replace pasta-making grandma with sausage making family).

Chef Jeff was a pastiche

― dan selzer, Tuesday, June 13, 2017 1:24 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this...ive heard numerous ppl credulously wonder if bourdain had some sexual assault past they were commenting on cuz of this show, rmde

ugh just slogged through the final two episodes of this
thought the interminably long 'oh noes it's a snowstorm welp you better stay over' storyline was at least going to have some kind of twist, like it's a play on the godawful cliched cheesey romantic nonsense but nope, they really meant it. (Real or not? It still sucked)

Shame cos the rest of the series was sweet enough. I dunno. Not getting many laughs from it tbh and too much food envy.

that Graun article otm although SH's wife keeps popping up in the comments to say he's right actually and she should know because she's a minority

(that reads as far more unkind than I meant)

From Bourdain interview:

Were you pissed when a sexually harassing chef character showed up on the Aziz Ansari show, Master of None, and people surmised it was based on you?

No. No, no. Look, I make fun of a lot of people in my career and I think it is entirely appropriate if others make fun of me. I’m friends with Aziz. I haven’t seen it, but I hear it’s very funny. I think I am totally fair game, and I’m completely cool with it. I hear it was great actually.

Building an entire career on being 'The Woke Guy' and then pivoting to 'Our Culture Is Too Woke' once it comes for you is honestly kind of incredible pic.twitter.com/GDmQuBnQfU

— Alana Hope Levinson (@alanalevinson) October 5, 2018

new Netflix special is great, set is very smartly put together and def the best handling of the "comedian navigating strange new woke culture" type material that people have been trafficking in recently (Chappelle, uh, Louis CK I guess...)

It sounds like a brutal proposition on paper

true of most standup

Also opens and closes w the Velvets, a touch that works v well

I liked this too. He's way more likeable than Chappelle or Louis (even before the creepy perv stuff came to light), plus seems genuinely reflective and empathetic.

yeah my wife went in all prepared to hate it (I guess she'd read some negative things beforehand) but her reaction turned out to be v much the opposite to what she expected. I think his genuine contrition and self-criticism go a long way, and are also interesting to see worked out on-stage. And it's funny!

agree. i was always a lukewarm fan at best but he did a good job with this.

might his best thing yet...? I've liked his other stuff ok, incl the series in the thread title, but with reservations. I didn't really have any reservations with this, it seemed like a leap forward.

heh just remembered that i saw him close out a big comedy festival tour like 5 years ago... preceded by Chris Hardwick and Louis CK

ew

looking forward to this as some fairly reactionary people I know seem to have liked it. It helps that his infraction was pretty grey area; hard to imagine Louis CK being able to rebound in the same way. I'm not saying he never could, but it would take some monumental effort on his part and he doesn't seem to have bothered even starting.

yeah the big difference is that its apparent that Aziz *made an effort* (part of which is this special) - Louis basically dgaf

the weird thing about Louis in that sense is that just from a standup comedy purist POV - like, what makes for great/interesting performances - Louis doesn't realize what a goldmine this is as a performer, what a rich vein it is to mine. you wanna hold up standup as this venue for examining the unspoken and going deep into the truth maaaaaaan and then yr given this golden opportunity to do that (by virtue of your own massive, public errors, tbf) and you *don't take it*?! Instead you just run away from it? That's crazy.

partic when your whole usp is that you're a shabby fuckup who's nevertheless trying to figure it out

feel like this finally came back to bite lck at the exact moment that he'd finished successfully convincing himself he actually wasn't a shabby fuckup and was in fact god's gift to humanity. bad timing

xp. i think it's fairly clear he has no intention of really examining that stuff in public, i also am not sure that he could pull of having such a show and it being successful

"i habitually masturbated in front of women unprompted for decades" is a hard thing to bring the audience along with you for i would guess

one thing that was jarring was a) how many MJ fans there still were in the audience and b) the offhand realization that both of the biggest American pop culture icons of the 80s - MJ and Cosby - which were huge parts of my childhood, were also huge sexual predators hiding in plain sight.

""i habitually masturbated in front of women unprompted for decades" is a hard thing to bring the audience along with you for i would guess"

it is, but, it's not like he denies it happened or people dont' know about it. So fucking own it and find some way to recover.

we have a rich history of forgiving all kinds of monsters tbh

we generally forgive by just pretending it didn't happen though

I liked the Danish gf bit. The way it was shot was kind of annoying.

And I didn't like the intro and outro with Pale Blue Eyes. Too much crying clown mood setting.

feel like this finally came back to bite lck at the exact moment that he'd finished successfully convincing himself he actually wasn't a shabby fuckup and was in fact god's gift to humanity. bad timing

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, July 11, 2019 4:13 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is it exactly. Or, it must be. His stand up career was built off of his "brutal honesty" and self-deprecation and if he wasn't so (recently) full of himself he would have probably approached this the way he'd approached most of the material that made him so popular in the first place.

yes but it all came with this sheen of "you can't be that bad, you say smart things and you're obviously very self-aware" which I think is how he came off likeable? and obviously that's pretty well shattered now

the exact moment that he'd finished successfully convincing himself he actually wasn't a shabby fuckup and was in fact god's gift to humanity.

Disagree. I think CK's flaw as a comic from the very beginning (OK, not from the VERY beginning, but once he started doing the shabby fuckup bits) was that he was ALWAYS hedging it with this kind of "aren't people like me rotten (but not actually me, deep down I'm good, love me)" shtick.

Oh I somehow typed that without reading frogbs's post so really I'm mostly just 2nding frogbs

also remember Louis had just premiered a new feature film at the time he finally got briefly shamed off the stage, about how hot teenage girls want to fuck old bald auteurs and we shouldn't suppress that healthy growth and curiosity by spreading bad gossip about the old bald auteurs being creeps, but it's much better if the old bald auteurs want to fuck women half their age instead of 1/3

so he'd reached a pretty strong new level of galaxy brain at the time he announced he was going to go away and think about things

NARRATOR: ... he did not think about things

on factchecking myself it turns out that Rose Byrne has somehow managed to become 40 in the last 25 years? so is in fact safely within CK's half-plus-seven zone

Chloe Grace Moretz is still one-third of a Malkovich though

CK’s standup and talk show interviews kind of had a flawed sinning preacher sensibility when he got “real” and also like a preacher he had a cult who believed in his truth and the truth aspect coupled with his self-acknowledged fallibility (a fallibility he was very meta and aware of) sold it more, though primarily I guess his schtick worked bc he was often extremely funny.

"it turns out that Rose Byrne has somehow managed to become 40 in the last 25 years" . she did that by aging one year since she was 15.

That still leaves 24 unaccounted for. Something fishy definitely going on there.

A year every year, I meant.

Back to Ansari's special: it's excellent. is this the same stuff he took on the road last year? presumably. weirdly I saw no reports of the show he did here in SF, and a lot of people were aghast he was going out on the road though it obviously sold well; and a lot of heat generated that he was going half-MAGA and railing on the woke. which, of course, he is; but also, he's kinda right. I feel for that guy who answered all his questions about the swastika pizza.

the woke can def benefit from having a sense of humor about themselves

aziz ansari was kind of "the woke" until that article

yes he addresses all of this in his set.

aziz ansari scared straight

CK’s standup and talk show interviews kind of had a flawed sinning preacher sensibility when he got “real” and also like a preacher he had a cult who believed in his truth and the truth aspect coupled with his self-acknowledged fallibility (a fallibility he was very meta and aware of) sold it more, though primarily I guess his schtick worked bc he was often extremely funny.

right and one thing I noticed was that he was starting to get less funny, both Louie & his standup sets began to feel like those NBA seasons where Shaq would skip training camp and play himself into shape over the season. like...his last Netflix special had this 10-minute routine about Magic Mike that had no actual jokes in it. that last season of Louie wasn't funny at all. it was almost as if that was the whole point. like Prince in the 90's where he was like, "oh I'll do an instrumental sax album" or whatever

Aziz did a special that was just him repeating an R Kelly show he went to

for the last segment iirc

NYT review of special said he did not address the scandal at all on last year's tour

Ansari totally talks about the R. Kelly thing from his past special in this one. It's pretty funny.

I forgot how bad that last Louis CK special was too. I don't remember laughing once.

NYT in inaccurate reporting shockah

No, I remember hearing about shows he did here over the past year, where he apparently did not address it at all (certainly not in depth)

he clearly addressed it on the tour because he does so in the film that was shot while on tour

or is the argument here that the special was somehow not part of the tour? I am confused

I wouldn't really say he addresses it "in depth" here either, but he does address it and use it as a jumping-off point to a broader conversation that is very well thought out and delivered

I meant that maybe that stuff was only part of the special (not the tour), but idk, I think the date he played here was one of his very first shows back (and it was on a Sunday night, no publicity, announced day-of via the club's mailing list).

Critic said he saw him on tour last year; he did not address it. So this material had been created later.

show filmed is probably from a later part of the tour then

Comedians usually film specials once the material is developed, not often while they are still writing it. If the NYT critic didn’t go to, say, three shows at different stages of the tour, it’s idiotic to assume they know what they’re talking about if they claim to have knowledge of “the tour.”

ok so we've established that at some point earlier in the tour he did not include that particular section. got it. can we move on lol

the special was filmed at the BAM this year in May.

I can share my password to google.

tour started in February 2019

The part about the alternate universe where Osama Bin Laden made an incredible jazz album pre 9/11 was great.

this is from 2/12/19 - NYT:

Aziz Ansari has spent much of his recent stand-up comedy tour only peripherally referencing the accusation of sexual misconduct early last year that took him out of the public eye.

That changed on Monday night, when he took the stage in New York City at the Village Underground, an offshoot of the Comedy Cellar. It was one of a string of small “pop-up shows” where Ansari has been testing out material for an upcoming tour that will take him around the United States and Europe this spring.

According to Vulture’s Jesse David Fox, who was in the audience for the set, Ansari said he had delayed discussing the accusation because “it’s a terrifying thing to talk about” and he wanted to take time to process what he wanted to say. He added, according to Fox: “There were times I felt really upset and humiliated and embarrassed, and ultimately I just felt terrible this person felt this way.”

Ansari continued: “But you know, after a year, how I feel about it is, I hope it was a step forward. It made me think about a lot, and I hope I’ve become a better person.”

so Jason Zinoman's review today was not inaccurate

idgaf cuz i saw AA's shit early on and it wasnt funny (like 99.5% of standups)

NYT's most recent review subhead: When our critic saw his show in December, the comic didn’t bring up the scandal. In his Netflix special, he rectifies that mistake with his finest work yet.

basically the NYT is trying to make it look like he didn't address it fast enough...? I guess?

(like 99.5% of standups)

generous of you to set aside 0.5% for yourself

I laughed out loud at it but that asking your mom if she fucked a black guy joke...that joke likely will expire very soon.

(I absolutely was not a funny standup, except for fleeting moments)

what was your best joke/bit?

i've had it erased from my mind Eternal Sunshine-style

Wait, Morbs had a spell as a stand-up comedian?

approx '88-91. I passed the audition and performed for awhile at the Original Improv, whose owner was in the process of running into the ground.

Brett Butler, later of the sitcom "Grace Under Fire" and one of the very best comics I ever saw, was very nice to me.

*running the club into the ground

can we have a morbz late-80s NYC standup scene reminiscence thread

also remember Louis had just premiered a new feature film at the time he finally got briefly shamed off the stage, about how hot teenage girls want to fuck old bald auteurs and we shouldn't suppress that healthy growth and curiosity by spreading bad gossip about the old bald auteurs being creeps, but it's much better if the old bald auteurs want to fuck women half their age instead of 1/3

thought the "1/3" was a twitter thread parody joke at first

In an alternate world, Morbs took over as season 3 host of Remote Control.

new aziz special is transformative pic.twitter.com/nfOOa1fLKF

— melissa lozada-oliva (@ellomelissa) July 12, 2019

some of the most interesting threads are the ones you stumble upon

lol at that twitter vid. tried the new special (as much for spike as anything) and made it in ten minutes or so. he is not good.

yeah, finding the praise here fairly baffling

think I made it 15

I made it all the way through halfway paying attention... the last bit (dying grandma is so thankful, as we should all be blah blah blah) was enraging.

Enraging? Ok

Facebook motivational memes are not good comedy.

I wouldnt know

all of the sentimental family stuff just came off as a hedge against the other stuff he doesn't want to really talk about.

Finding these reactions bizarre (esp the rage) but whatever. Cant argue ppl into finding things funny or moving

yeah, I did definitely say aloud "oh, 60 more times of seeing my parents is waaaaaay too much."

Lol

I don’t think you paid attention to the grandma part of that was your takeaway

My actual takeaway (and the part that was annoying) was that it was a shield to cover his primary sentiment of "I'm so thankful my cancellation for being a creep was only temporary."

Should he not be thankful about that?

Full disclosure - i found the “accusations” against him p weak sauce, publicized by a questionable outlet

Essentially if u think he shouldnt be onstage at all because of his “crimes” then i would think there’s nothing he could say onstage that will alter that

yeah, I did definitely say aloud "oh, 60 more times of seeing my parents is waaaaaay too much."

looooool

I don't particularly care about him being onstage - cool scare quotes around crimes though.

All the #blessed shit just felt like the worst of self-serving Louis CK "comedy but real talk" as discussed earlier in the thread. Preachy comedy sucks.

He was not charged w a crime, thats why the scarequotes

There shouldn't even be scare quotes around "crimes" because his actions weren't criminal. His behaviour wasn't even tortious. I am surprised that this is even still an issue, I thought that consensus was clearly on Aziz's side? Juliana Escabedo Shepherd wrote that Jezebel piece? I myself went so far as to agree with Caitlin Flanagan's take (i.e. that it was actually racist?) https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/the-humiliation-of-aziz-ansari/550541/

Exactly

Literally no one had referred to him as doing anything remotely heinous or criminal - which is why bringing them up in scare quotes as if someone had was weird.

“being a creep”

should've named the special "Aziz Ansari: Too Horny for TV"

i don't doubt that he was being a creep in ways that are basically at the micro aggression level and ones that women are probably sick of dealing with, but i think if this piece was less a piece which seemed centered on him being a creepy celeb that needed to be called out but rather a story about a date with someone unnamed (maybe going as far as an "unnamed celebrity") and what a woman might deal with on a date with men, things that the guy might think are cool but women are kind of bothered and pressured by, it might be better. i say this though based on my memory of the piece from just a single read and i'm not a woman let alone this particular woman so idk...

master of shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQqh6yZaRNI

Damn, looks hilarious, the king is back

Prefer the Art of Noise myself

new season centers on lena waithe's character and the disintegration of her marriage. i thought this was a bold and interesting decision and found the writing and acting painfully realistic, especially the (deserved but still searing) hostility of lena's ex once she decided she was "done." the farmhouse setting was great, how quaintness slides into claustrophobia, like the built space was putting pressure on the relationship.

anyway, apparently people don't like lena waithe because they find her work "Black trauma porn." the tweet from the official slate account was even harsher than this, stating "From sensationalizing Black trauma to coddling alleged harassers, Lena Waithe has a lot to answer for."

https://slate.com/culture/2021/05/lena-waithe-controversy-master-of-none.html

is this remotely fair? the core critique seems interesting -- looking at, you know, what kinds of stories get told, how something that tries to be a representation of something painful and true can end up inadvertantly reproducing a harmful stereotype -- but literally if you search 'lena waithe' on twitter people are using words like "accountability" to describe what seem to be artistic differences between her and certain members of her audience.

what kind of culture is this we are building?

i get ppl's suspicions of her writing. i saw queen & slim in the theater and really enjoyed it until i thought harder about a few tropes it employs without really interrogating them (cf. the scene of the good black cop letting them get away)

fundamentally down with cord jefferson getting more work even though i do not like this show and am unlikely to watch this (admittedly intriguing) season

i haven't seen queen and slim or them, but the critique presented seemed plausible. my problem was with the rhetoric of the piece, like especially the implication that she should "answer for" failing to "uplift" her audience in certain ways. also, those critiques aren't really salient to this season, which isn't about violence or trauma, so the piece felt like a drive-by character assassination.

this kind of passage:

Of course Lena Waithe, purveyor of failing to protect Black bodies on-screen and off, would be cool with having a Black character’s life ruined for being Black, and in such an unflinchingly awful way.

like, the way she handled misconduct allegations on the set of the chi is a real issue about real behavior in the world. i don't know enough about that to speak to it, but it's weird to mix up that kind of thing with fictional events in her movies.

i think the piece is both unfair and fair, by which i mean that sentence rankled for me as well. i didn't know about the chi stuff and idk it pretty blatantly sucks

but that seems more indicative of how the industry protects abusers than it does a strain of anti-blackness running through waithe's work

really original opinion i'm dropping here but i also just really hate it whenever anyone refers to themselves or others as a "creative"

I’ll take “a creative” over “a creator” 10 times out of 10

a creator has a master plan

I haven’t read slate since maybe the GWB administration, is it just a hot take “this person is terrible and here’s why” factory now?

honestly its reputation for the past 15 years has been “a hot take factory” cf. there’s probably a “invent a fake slate headline” thread on here

I'm not really going to talk to any of that apart from to say that the sentence treeship quoted is gross, in my opinion, and is designed to attract more attention to the writer than to the subject, so to speak. Thanks for linking that, though.

As someone with very mixed feelings about MoN (s1, s2) occasionally liking it, often hating it, I have to say that this series is STUNNING. It's not faultless but it's an incredible achievement and is so skilled. If I had to pick it apart for slight niggles I could but I shan't, at this point. There are a lot of quietly great things in here and I'd recommend it even if you had not liked the show before. It's interesting to watch as parenthesis to what's gone before because it bears little relation to what's gone before stylistically or subjectively. I'm surprised at how deeply felt it was, how closely observed it was and how rigorous it was.

Thanks for linking that, though.

That wasn't sarcasm, btw.

I agree. This season is better than most of the reviews seem to suggest. The “fly on the wall” filming style, with the camera sometimes seeming to be outside a doorframe, was very effective, encouraging close observation of the characters. And the performances of the two leads were both great.

The performances are really great, particularly Naomi Ackie. There are some beautiful photographic tableaus as inserts. I dare say someone who knows more than I do could tell us that that doorframe framing device comes from Bergaman, or whatever.

I was really very moved by the performance of the nurse, Cordelia, at the clinic, who seems to be a real nurse, as far as I can tell. I doubt a nurse at an IVF clinic would be allowed to tell a patient that it was "really going to work" tho but I can forgive that.

I mean the nurse, Codelia, really does stand out. Cordelia talking about Alicia's socks seems to me to be *the eye of the duck* of this series.

Oh, and I meant to say that I agreed with your initial post/revive, treeship, I just got caught up in the horrible slate thing.

Also, there's an "oh, fuck" at the end of this which is so casual that it's impressive.

I am reading that Slate piece right now and that "offensive" line was a (somewhat glib) characterization of the online reaction to Waithe's involvement in "Them" and not a direct description of her and her work, particularly given the context in which it appears.

My main takeaway is that some of you read for outrage rather than comprehension.

around the time Them was about to launch on Amazon I saw a lot of slms against Waithe on Twitter circulating around two main areas: 1) claims that she was no longer very original and 2) the 'black torture porn' aspect of something that happens in Them (which I didn't watch, in part because of the description of that scene). But she was responsible for one of the best half hours of TV in recent memory (the thanksgiving episode of MoN) and I really liked Queen and Slim. I only saw season 1 of the Chi which I thought was good. So I'm willing to cut her some slack and I don't know that she is to blame for how Amazon decided to market Them (which made it look like a mockbuster of Us).

have not read that article. Have tried watching Master of None, The Chi and Twenties and didn't like any of them; deduced from that experience that Waithe's work is not for me.

I seem to be in the minority as someone who greatly enjoyed the two first seasons of MoN (especially the second one). Wasnt expecting this type of depth from Aziz Ansari. Does his character even take part in this new season?

2 scenes only, and the first one is a real barn-burner.

watched the first three of this last night, I agree it is very good. I can see why some people are disappointed; it does draw things out, you get very very long scenes of, basically, nothing happening (folding laundry, eating a sandwich), but if you have tolerance for that sort of thing its worth it.

We watched ep 2 last night and immediately started fast forwarding, knowing that the opening scene would consist of the entire song + entire sandwich

the only thing I remember about s2 was wishing eric wareheim would stick to directing

I absolutely cannot relate to this impatience people are expressing with scenes that unfold slowly and carefully. Life is already much, much too fast and most shows are unwatchable because they move even more quickly.

Also the unimportant details in ep2 made no sense. Doesn't matter for the story I guess but it was driving me crazy.

-Denise's friend/hook-up said she was too drunk to drive home, implying that she had driven there. So was Denise driving her home in the friend's car? How did she plan to get home?

-Also the car accident was staged extremely randomly. And the friend was on the passenger side, where the other car plowed into. No word about what happened to her?

-Why would she have left her underwear lying on the floor...like, they showed her getting dressed, you would think she would notice that when she put on her jeans?

-This is silly but Denise offers her cookies, the friend eventually says 'sure, go put them in the oven', and then makes fun of her for having Tollhouse dough. Wtf who assumes that when someone offers them cookies, they're talking about (homemade) dough that they are about to go bake, as opposed to already baked or bought cookies?!

So far I keep going back and forth about whether this is deeply felt & observed material or bullshit that deeply wishes it was serious art.

The disappearance of the “friend” was weird to me too. I guess a Femme Fatale can never really die.

lol

(oops, sorry about messing up my spoiler text, oh well)

They also never dealt with who naomi ackie’s character had slept with. I wonder if she even cheated or just made it up to even the score—resist casting herself as the more innocent, sensitive one...

Just saw that that actress is only 28. She does a good job playing someone a decade older. Very emotionally plausible

i don't really remember a huge amount about season 2 other than that I liked it and I got sick of Aziz saying "allora" and there was a pretty Italian woman.

finished this last night. Its very good but I can see how people would be disappointed at lack of firm resolution. It does wind up being a study of Naomi Acker's character more than anything else; I could have done with one more episode focused on Denise.

the IVF episode is incredible.