Aziz Ansari's 'Master of None' on Netflix

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.