Comedian Aziz Ansari gets hilarious and personal about pasta, parents, and women in his new Netflix series.
By Matt Fowler
The new Netflix comedy series Master of None, created by and starring Aziz Ansari, premieres with all 10 Season 1 episodes on Friday, November 6th at 12:01am PT. I’ve watched the entire season and so this review will be representing the whole shebang. It won’t, however, go into any deep spoilers.
When it was announced that Aziz Ansari’s next TV project, post-Parks and Rec, would be a Netflix Original, I immediately thought “This totally fits.” After all, it’s through Netflix that I (and I’m assuming many others) experienced Ansari’s assorted stand-up specials. In fact, his last two were specifically released as Netflix specials. So there’s definitely a part of Ansari’s own personal brand that just feels more at home on Netflix than perhaps anywhere else.
But Master of None is no mic and stool showcase, though it is infused with some of the comedian’s more recent routines. Master of None is a funny, heartfelt, very enjoyable series that refreshingly takes more than a few unexpected dramatic turns. Yes, the art of turning a comedian’s stage shtick into a sitcom is old hat at this point. And there aren’t very many new ways to go about it. Louis CK and Jerry Seinfeld have probably cornered the market when it comes to the two “opposite end of the spectrum” ways to tackle this transition. But Ansari, who manages to contain a very significant and specific comedic voice, proves that there’s still plenty of room in the middle to do it well.
Now keep in mind, Master of None contains more than a few traditional, familiar “single man” neuroses. Commitment issues ranging from being in a long term relationship, to possibly getting married, to even having kids. It’s all well-traveled anxiety. In fact, the first episode out of the gate, “Plan B,” had me nervous (and was ultimately my least favorite of the 10). “Plan B,” while introducing us to most of the revolving cast, found Ansari’s Dev — an “I got a commercial once so I may as well be an actor” type in New York — discovering that his married friend was miserable and that his other friend, with kids, made the kind of sacrifices in her life that he himself would never be willing to make. It wasn’t the best outing. It felt like a weird straw man episode created to support Ansari’s own insecurities about kids.
But with the second episode, “Parents,” featuring Ansari’s own mom and dad playing Dev’s parents, the show takes off. And stops, essentially, coddling the Dev character’s millennial-adjacent concerns. It contrasts Dev’s modern minuscule problems to the past struggles of his immigrant parents in a very funny way. Dev and his friend Brian (Kelvin Yu), who also had a hard time relating to his immigrant father, decide to learn more about their parents’ lives and the hilarious results really help shape the series moving forward.
Because from there, Dev is free to be both selfish and charming. He can be the sort of guy who spends 45 minutes trying to find the absolute best place to eat lunch while also being an advocate for feminism, a guy who’s kind to the elderly, and an actor who refuses to do a stereotypical Indian accent in auditions. A man with principals, but also flaws. Flaws that, as the season progresses, get drawn out a bit more and analyzed. Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” is even used toward the end to help shine a spotlight on Dev’s fear of choosing one thing in life. Or at least, more concrete paths. Definitive choices about life that his own parents had to do many times over.
And while no generation has the market cornered when it comes to “uncertainty about the future,” Master of None does a great job of re-shaping it for today’s young men and women. A generation who now has so many choices, that the prospect of settling on anything is very daunting. Because the pressure is there to only choose the very best thing. Or, maybe even more accurately, to not miss out on the very best thing. The best concert, the best restaurant, the best movie, etc. And choosing one path may mean you’re not available or ready when something better and fresher arrives. Ansari even tackled this idea once in his stand-up while talking about how hard it is to make concrete plans with anyone anymore because everyone just leaves their schedule open and only does things last minute.
Adding to the proceedings greatly here are the aforementioned Kelvin Yu, Tim & Eric’s Eric Wareheim (as the “oddball” friend), Archer’s H. Jon Benjamin (as Dev’s on-set acting pal), Bones writer Lena Waithe (as Dev’s lesbian buddy), and – last but not least – Noël Wells (as Dev’s love interest Rachel). And while all provide excellent moments throughout, it’s Wells who shines brightest as Dev’s first taste of/go at a serious, long term relationship. Which leads me to one of the season’s other standout episodes, “Mornings.” Which quickly and poignantly chronicles the life of a new couple for the better part of a year – from them moving in together to them teetering on the edge of a break up. It features tremendous work from both Ansari and Wells.
On the guest star front, there’s Arrow’s Colin Salmon doing a heightened cat-mourning version of himself (a seasonal throughline involves Dev working on a “black virus” movie called The Sickening) while Claire Danes, The Americans’ Noah Emmerich, and Hannibal’s Nina Arianda play outrageous and effective other characters (and not themselves). It’s a fun universe that Ansari and co-creator Alan Yang (another Parks and Rec alum, with Parks co-creator Michael Schur also executive producing) have made here, though not one that’s totally reliant on a supporting cast. Master of None does quite a few pared-down, hyper-focused episodes, like following Dev and Rachel on a weekend trip to Nashville or Dev taking Rachel’s grandmother out for a nice Italian meal, so the guests and supporting cast serve the story and not vice-versa.
The humor can be quite broad here, like Dev imagining nightmare future children scenarios set to Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy,” or it can play super minuscule and nerdy, like Dev and Arnold (Wareheim) trying to figure out what the line “There’s no Mekhi Phifer” means in the Eminem song “Lose Yourself” if the second verse is not from the viewpoint of 8-Mile character B-Rabbit. So whatever your taste, Master of None’s got you covered.
Master of None maybe doesn’t hit the right notes right away, but by the second episode it takes flight and offers up a very funny, unique take on food, dating, relationships, etc (the usual suspects). Ansari’s is a smart and engaging presence and his perspective on things lends itself very well to this type of single-camera comedy. And his supporting cast, particularly Wells, is on point. A few episodes may have fizzled out right at the finish (“Indians on TV”, “The Other Guy”), but there’s no denying Master of None’s success overall.
