Scurrying away from an important issue
The show: Master of None, Season 2, Episode 10 The moment: “None of this happened”
Dev (Aziz Ansari, the show’s co-creator) just learned that Chef Jeff (Bobby Cannavale), his co-star on their new cooking show, has been accused of sexual harassment by 14 female coworkers. “I’m setting up a conference call with my PR team; we’re going to give you some talking points,” Jeff tells Dev. “Don’t worry, this will blow over.”
“I don’t want to be involved with this,” Dev says.
“You don’t really think I did this, do you?” Jeff asks.
“People on our crew have said you’ve been inappropriate with them,” Dev replies. “You’re telling me none of this happened?” “None of this happened,” Jeff insists. “That’s hard for me to buy,” Dev says. “Why would these people make it up?”
“What are you, naive?” Jeff spits. “They want their 15 minutes. They want money.” He glares. “Get out of here, man.” “All right,” Dev says, and leaves. So far, so promising. Ansari directed this episode, so it must be important to him. The dilemma is a juicy one: Will Dev choose his career over his morals? But in the next scene, Dev mentions that the show is cancelled and this whole plot . . . stops.
It isn’t the first time in this series that Dev is more reactive than active. But this example is perplexing. Ansari has a chance to address something important here: How do non-harassing men feel about harassing ones? What should a guy do when he sees another dude being a jerk?
But raising it, only to scurry away from it? Not good enough. Master of None streams on Netflix. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.