Kudos to Aziz Ansari and his new show Master of None for giving us a New York that looks like a city of immigrants full of the children of immigrants making their way through the double life of most immigrant children. Ansari has finally given television viewers, well Netflix viewers at least, an America that looks like America. He gets so much right that it’s a pity there’s still one small thing wrong….but first we’ll focus on what’s right, becuase it is soooo right.

This successful, more realistic America on his show was particular noticeable to me as I mulled the writing of this article while sitting in my pretty typical Los Angeles Catholic church listening to a Homily delivered by an Indian-American priest being served by Latino altar servers and serenaded by an African-American cantor. This is the blend that IS America but that IS not often, if ever, seen on mainstream television. Granted, this show is on Netflix, which is and is not mainstream. It IS mainstream in that its low fee has allowed many people of varying class levels to sign up, often after cutting the cord to their bloated cable bills. And Netflix is NOT mainstream in that it is still a paid service so some viewers are not able to see its shows.

I especially agreed with and appreciated the review given by Caroline Framke on the Vox Culture site because so much of the review was devoted to how it is the writer/creators — Ansari and Alan Yang — who make it special. Yes, one of the writers is also the star, but it is his writing that stands the show apart moreso than his acting. Ansari the writer is saying things that are fresh and true to the world in which we live in 2015 — but were also true to different immigrants in 1915.

Ansari and Yang have created a character not unlike the iconic character created by Jerry Seinfeld — an performer in New York. And not unlike Seinfeld, Ansari has surrounded himself with an all-American Irish stew of friends. Historians have gone from calling America a melting pot to calling it a stew because, as you can see, if you melt a bunch of different cheeses into one fondue, you can’t tell the Monterey Jack from the Cheddar. But if you blend potatoes and carrots and celery and beef into a stew, you can always tell which is which. Yet the flavor of them all together makes something far better than when each ingredient stands alone. Hence — stew.

And in Ansari’s universe, in his collection of truly New York “Friends”, only one is of European descent. The other two friends people of color, one a lesbian women of color and the other an American man of Chinese descent. And they worry about the same things ANY 30-something in America worries about — will they find someone to spend the rest of their lives with and will they be happy?

While the cast may sound exotic to some, their universal life experiences or not. Issues with immigrant parents who have yet to assimilate to all the ways of modern Americans are issues that have been shared by generations of the children of Irish immigrants and Italian immigrants and Korean immigrants and by today’s modern day Middle Eastern immigrants.

This is all to be praised. I loved the second episode, which I contend might have actually been the first one he had in mind when he and Alan Yang created the show because it involved the two men coming to terms with their immigrant fathers. That episode was in turns silly, sad and sentimental all in one short half an hour. I laughed deeply and loudly at some points and sighed sadly at others. The Chinese father’s pet chicken montage was particularly poignant and full of pathos. Ansari spoke of how moved he was by the reception of this episode online recently: Anyway, this show and my experiences with my parents while working on it have been very important in many ways and I thank for you the part you all have played in it.” THAT tells me that the story of learning to love your immigrant parents was paramount to him in the creation of the show.

What bummed me out was that that was the second episode whereas the first one, the pilot — the one that sold Netflix on the show or perhaps the one Netflix chose to air first in order — was chalk full of what I found to be dumb sex mistakes and attitudes that seemed to be created merely to sell the show to a non-broadcast element. They even focused on this dumb sex mistake in the trailer they released. It happens to lots of pilots. They all end up including either some version of sex yet seen on television or some shocking moment of unexpected violence that makes executives jump on a pilot. Nowadays it seems to be dumb sex — such as in the pilot to Master of None called “Plan B”. Watching two hipsters in the midst of having sex stop to check out on Google if what they had done so far could result in pregnancy was pricelessly funny in one way, but made me think they were both way too stupid for my time. Then they decided to be safe and go acquire the Plan B pill — hence the episode title — and that was played for laughs with the pharmacist, but seemed such an unreal experience.

The Netlix blurb under the title of the show reflects this point. It reads

“New Yorker Dev takes on such pillars of maturity as the first big job, a serious relationship, and busting sex offenders on the subway.”

They had to get ‘sex’ in there somehow.

It seems so many shows do such a thing to get sold. For Sean Ryan on The Shield and Russell T. Davies on Torchwood it was including some unexpected violence in their pilots to get on the air. Ryan had his lead character blatantly shoot a friend cop in order to salvage his illegal operations. Davies put one of the cast in the opening credits only to kill her along the way of that Torchwood pilot and totally take the audience by surprise. Davies I could forgive because it was a pillar of storytelling to catch the audience by surprise and the violence was not wildly graphic. And I just love his work (in all transparency).

So Master of None is quite wonderful, which makes me bummed that such small flaws still exist. Much was made of the fact that the episode titled “Ladies and Gentlemen” was written by women and directed by a woman and so their point of view was honored. Daily irritations in the life of females were given an airing.

But a few episodes later, in episode 9 — titled “Mornings” — Dev’s girlfriend Rachel actually ASKED Dev if she could go to an interview for a job that would require her to live in Chicago or six months. Not move there forever — just go for six months to advance her career and make it more fulfilling. She ASKED. For permission. From a boyfriend who hadn’t made any further promises to her about their future and who had earlier referred to how SHE was living in HIS apartment, not their shared apartment. And after a year of living together he had still not told his parents that she existed. Granted, that stems from cultural differences, or so the character said. Yet when he tried to use that excuse with his parents, his father said, “We have been living in this country for 40 years!”. So why hadn’t he told his parents about Rachel?

As that episode unfolded we learned that Rachel did not get the job that would require her to live in Chicago or six months. I was about to throw something through the glass if she had turned it down — but she conveniently didn’t get it, thereby keeping her from having to make a decision between her man or her career. But by going to the interview, her employers learned of her disinterest in some of her assignments and made plans to adjust — so hopefully the message was never to turn down an opportunity. By attending the interview she helped her current career and work satisfaction. But she still ASKED him for permission to do that. That really urks me. Especially from a show promising to bust so many cultural, racial and gender-based norms. The writers even address agism when Dev goes to meet Rachel’s grandmother in an assisted living facility.

So how did that moment of asking permission slip by their ‘too cool for old school TV’ censors? Beats me.

While I urge you to watch Master of None for all its wonderfully fresh offerings, be aware that lurking behind all that are still some annoying male fantasies about how females should behave. I’m hoping those get erased in the second season.

If you have any comments or ideas to share, let me know via the comments, email at Mindfull@3rdpass.media or via Twitter @MindfullMedia & we’ll develop your ideas as we go.

— This Article was written by — Dr. Rosanne Welch

Mindful(l) Media with Dr Rosanne Welch

Episode 16: Aziz Ansari’s Master of None + Pat Verducci Pt1

Listen as Dr Rosanne Welch helps teach the audience to think critically about the Media we both create and consume as it relates to the portrayal of Gender, Diversity, and Equality.

Mindful(l) Media is Hosted by Dr. Rosanne Welch, ScreenWriter and Film & Gender Studies Professor in Los Angeles

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