Aziz Ansari's 'Master of None' on Netflix

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)