Master of None: Season 2 — Blue Fairy Film Blog

Aziz Ansari can do whatever he wants, for the rest of his life, and I won’t judge him. If he wants to take a sabbatical from the entire show and his successful stand-up career and become a child’s party clown, fine. He’ll probably find a way to elevate the craft. Ansari makes the mundane extraordinary, and everything else explosively funny and thoughtful. In the second season of his beautifully created show Master of None, he and co-creator Alan Yang prove that they needed that little extra time to incubate a truly genius piece of television.

If you’re not already impressed by this show’s humor, masterful production, and fluid episodic structure, here’s a crazy fact: Aziz Ansari really did move to Italy and learned how to make pasta for a year. I mean, for realsies you guys. This isn’t completely surprising as Ansari puts almost his entire soul into this show. The first season was its own creation, but you could hear echoes of its genesis from his past stand-up and his book Modern Romance. This season was moored more in the world of adult relationships and their transitory stages between childish and mature. Most of the season is also significantly flavored in Italian culture, food and film influences. The first episode is even an homage to Vittorio de Sica’s masterpiece of Italian neo-realism The Bicycle Thief. From there the main Italian influence is Dev’s friend Francesca (Mastronardi) who flits between Modena and New York City throughout the season.

Taking a hint from Louis CK’s similarly shapeless narrative arcs on Horace and Pete, Ansari and Yang created a season that doesn’t explicitly stick to sitcom episode structure. While some episodes explore Dev’s will-they-won’t-they relationship with Francesca, others cover a variety of characters and issues. One episode shows the trajectory of any one of dozens of dates Dev finds himself going on, through dating apps. The vignette ridden episode “New York, I Love You,” winds between different sets of New Yorkers as they face struggles in work and their personal lives, an episode that is almost completely Dev free. The amazingly put together “Thanksgiving,” covers the evolution of Denise’s sexuality, a subject generously covered in the first season, but given more depth in this episode, which is about family and growing up.

There’s a real maturity and regalness to this season, though it’s still definitely funny. The ending of First Date, sent me into fits of laughter that I don’t remember many other shows eliciting as of late. The episode entitled “Amarsi Un Po,” was fully brilliant and had me on my toes the entire time. The relationship between Dev and Francesca was clearly worth that one episode’s extended length (51 minutes) compared to the others, and created a chest tightening final episode that leaves an ambiguous question for season three. If you are even a little reticent about watching, trust me you will not be disappointed by this artfully done piece of classic television.