Aziz Ansari's 'Master of None' on Netflix

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?)

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.