Master of None

In 2017, I was glued to my TV watching the Critics Choice awards. “ And the award goes to...Master of None!” A round of applause follows suit as the creators of the show, Alex Yang and Aziz Ansari, walk up to the stage. They are joined by other members of the cast including Lena Waithe.

Alex Yang accepts the award and thanks a rather unlikely group of people: “Thank you to all the straight white men who dominated the industry for so long that stories like ours seemed refreshing”. Throughout the awards cycle, the creators made a never-ending joke about how they didn’t feel like the stories they told were particularly interesting; the only reason why they had won whichever award was because of their diverse casting.

Master None was one of the most diverse TV shows you could have watched in 2015(when it started airing). It featured people with identities who would have otherwise been relegated to background characters. A Pakistani man as the lead character( Dev played by Aziz Ansari); a black lesbian character(Denise played by Lena Waithe); a Jewish man(Arnold played by Eric Wareheim), and the list goes on. These were just the first two seasons though.

Master of None perfects its craft in its third and seemingly final season. It takes a bold move to focus on the most unlikely character of them all, Denise. Season 3 is an intimate look into Denise and her partner’s, Alicia (played by Naomi Ackie), marriage.

There are many things to love about this third installment. It takes place at an unknown time in the future where Denise is now a New York Times best-selling author. The couple live in a quiet, remote estate in the country which is overwhelmed by the sprawling green landscape for miles. They are, depending on how you look at it, essentially trapped in this mellow world. This mellow tone is applied to the show’s scenes as well, they are long and slow and overbearing. But, it all draws your attention. The score comprises mostly classical music but there’s actually barely any music even present, mostly always silence. Each episode is calm and self-indulgent, making them feel evermore immersive. The loudest thing on the show -asides the couple’s one explosive argument- is its set design. Alicia is pointed out to be an antique collector. The show is intentional in showing her tastes. Their home is ornately decorated with many artifacts. It truly is a beautiful show.

As each scene went about its languid pace, either with Alicia taking walks across the couples’ farm estate or Denise silently struggling to write, I would also soliloquize and wonder exactly why I was so drawn to this? Honestly, “drawn”, at times, felt like an understatement; I was terribly excited. But they were doing their laundry, inviting friends over, and having fights about whether or not to have children. I had watched many iterations of this kind of story: a film or show trying to show some sort of “behind closed doors” of a marriage and its internal affairs(Marriage Story, Malcolm & Marie, Scenes from a Marriage, need I list more ?), so why was this so different?

From the top of my head, I can’t make a list of things I have seen in which a couple, queer and black, were put in the most typical of situations. Maybe that is what brought my fascination with the show and with this third season particularly. It was not so much about representation or having well written characters, or even an interesting plot. It was about putting unseeming characters in seeming places.

After we follow the couple through their day to day, they break up, and Alicia ventures out on her own. This is where my initial conclusion begins to take more nuance as Alicia, fresh out of a gut wrenching divorce, decides that she wants to have kids on her own with no partner and barely any help from other people, while juggling a new job in a new city.

A single queer woman, she begins to explore her options of what she might do to start a family. Naomi Ackie’s performance is immersive and enchanting. She fully carries us through the ups and downs of her character’s journey. As I watched this, I kept thinking to myself, “I have never seen anything quite like this”. Such thoughts complicated the initial feelings I had earlier cemented watching the first half of the season, namely that it was interesting to see unfamiliar characters living essentially tepid lives. But this wasn’t what was happening, I can’t recall a film or show I have seen of a single woman’s intentional journey to motherhood( the 2016 rom-com, How to Be Single, barely counts). There was always a partner involved somehow. A single queer black woman was pushing it.

I have revisited the title of this essay multiple times, trying to figure out if the word “simple” still holds true. Perhaps ultimately, both formulae work. Perhaps unfamiliar characters in familiar as well as unfamiliar situations still ultimately drive a story because of simply being, as Alex Yang said, refreshing.

A note that doesn't feel like it goes anywhere but I think is important to discuss.

Master of None is not without its faults.

Aziz Ansari, one of the show’s creators and the lead actor in the first two seasons, was one of many men called out for sexual harassment allegations during the MeToo movement. I am staring at my laptop trying to figure out how I feel about this. I skipped the last episodes of season two when I found out. It is still at the back of my mind when I reflect on the show. It feels like the pleasant memory I want of this truly beautiful show has been marred.

I sometimes wonder if the decision to focus on Denise was all but a way to take the spotlight off himself. Here I was watching a show that gave voices to characters I would have never heard, created by a man who didn’t listen to a voice himself. Dev, Ansari’s character, appears once or twice at most in Season three. He is no longer the successful actor he once was in the first two seasons. He is in what seems to be an unhappy, resentful relationship. Despondent and out of luck, he wonders if things will ever return to how they once were.