Master of None Season 2 Master of None Season 2 Review

Television

In Season 2, Master of None Goes Bigger and Gets Better

The one-act series' aggressive new episodes take on everything from Italian neorealism to reality TV.

Aziz Ansari and Eric Wareheim in Master of None, Season 2.

Netflix

It'due south an audacious move for a sitcom, no matter how great, to invite comparisons to Vittorio De Sica's bleak neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief. But that's exactly how Chief of None begins its ten-episode 2nd season, which premieres on Netflix on May 12. In the season premiere, "The Thief," which was shot in black and white on location in Italy, Aziz Ansari'south Dev makes plans with a cute, funny British woman he simply met, only to take his phone stolen immediately later they part. Her number is in his telephone, and he doesn't know much about her outside of her start name and the fact that she, too, lives in New York City. What if she's the i he'southward been searching for, the one he could spend the rest of his life eating pasta with? Dev spends the rest of the episode frantically combing the cobblestoned streets alongside the Italian boy who works in the restaurant where he'southward studying as an amateur, agonizing over the daughter that got away and the thief who's come betwixt him and the adult female who could be his truthful love.

Of course, Dev, the well-off actor who tin can beget to study the fine fine art of cuisine in Italian republic for a few months, shares lilliputian in common with De Sica's weary Antonio, a poor human who won't be able to provide for his family unless he recovers his stolen bike. But this loving—if comparatively casual—nod to that mournful 1948 drama is still affecting whether or not yous catch the reference. And information technology's only the first of many choices that show off the grand aspirations of Ansari, his co-creator Alan Yang, and their stable of collaborators, who come back swinging for the fences aesthetically, thematically, and emotionally. From the aerial cinematography that lingers on the gorgeous Italian countryside to the Slacker-esque episode that leaves behind Dev and the prove's other regulars to driblet in on the lives of a series of city dwellers who will never announced again, creative risks abound—and generally, they pay off.

When we last left Dev, he was echoing Carrie Bradshaw'due south unwillingness to settle for anything short of "ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, tin't-live-without-each-other love," declaring his disappointment that his now-ex Rachel estimated their chances of ending up together forever at 70 percent, when friends "seemed like they were at 100." Meanwhile, his career was going nowhere after his scenes were cut from the final version of the fictional schlockfest The Sickening, which he'd hoped might at to the lowest degree give him some exposure. Not much has changed this fourth dimension around. Dev is still looking for that 100 percent feeling, and he's still trying to effigy out where his career is going. But Flavor 2 isn't merely a retread of the Hopeless Romantic and the City. Dev does eventually put down his pasta fork and return to New York, just his romance with food continues—and comes paired with an adventure as the host of a competition testify that allows the second season to skewer the frivolousness of reality television but every bit pointedly as the showtime ane took on ethnic stereotypes in scripted amusement.

Nosotros also get the return of beloved characters like Dev's parents (played one time again by Ansari'southward parents—withal wooden as actors and still delightful to watch), the goofy confidant Arnold (Eric Wareheim), and Denise (Lena Waithe), who is finally given some backstory via a wonderfully conceived episode recounting the many Thanksgivings she and Dev take shared together with her female parent, aunt, and grandmother since they were kids. Her journey of coming out to her family unit strikes but the right notes of humor and sadness, especially since, in an ingenious bit of casting, the ageless Angela Bassett invitee-stars as her barely tolerant mother. (While, as Ansari mentioned in a contempo profile in New York magazine, the prove avoids directly invoking the current administration, this flavour is hardly apolitical. Ansari and co. find a few means to respond to by criticisms, and a major twist in the final episode is practically ripped from the headlines.)

Only over the final few years, information technology's been Ansari'southward curiosity about millennial dating habits that has become his signature in his stand-up, his heavily researched manual for modern dating, and, of course, in this wistful, winning Netflix serial. At its core, the show is a rom-com buoyed by optimism but also laden with the unpleasant realities that back-trail whatever emotional entanglements. The penultimate episode of Season i, "Mornings," told through vignettes chronicling Rachel moving in with Dev, was Season ane's loftier betoken, a brilliant do in tracing the outlines of a budding, passionate romance that fizzles every bit fourth dimension wears on and dull familiarity settles in. Flavor 2's ain penultimate episode is even more than ambitious and sobering. It's an hourlong minimovie that unpeels the layers of Dev's flirtatious human relationship with a woman who's with someone else. Watching the two grow closer over the course of a calendar month reveals Dev's commitment to living intensely, almost painfully, in the discomfort of a potentially heartbreaking dalliance, and Ansari demonstrates a refreshingly restrained side as an actor that clashes fascinatingly with Dev'due south usual openness. The episode is Master of None'southward explicit take on another archetype Italian picture show, the even more than subdued L'Avventura. (The two are shown watching a scene from the 1960 Antonioni drama, and Dev imagines that they're the protagonists.) The homage may not be subtle, merely the prove's willingness to dig and then deep into the center of every subject it explores is and then captivating it doesn't matter.

Read more in Slate nearly Principal of None.

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Source: https://slate.com/culture/2017/05/master-of-none-season-2-reviewed.html

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