LOVE JONES
Master of None
NETWORK Netflix
AIR DATE All episodes available now
★★★★✰
The first two seasons of Master of None were defined by unpredictability. Episodes were often about the love life of actor Dev (Aziz
Ansari, who co-created the show), but they could just as easily be about his best friend Denise (Lena Waithe) coming out to her family, immigrants coming to America, or even a black-and-white homage to neo-realistic Italian cinema. But this batch, subtitled “Seasons of Love,” is a big departure from what came before, more American Horror
Story than Twilight Zone in approach. Though Ansari directs all five episodes and co-wrote them with Waithe, Dev appears only
briefly, while the story revolves around a crisis in the relationship between Denise and her partner, Alicia (Naomi Ackie). Creatively, this is Ansari and Waithe in Scenes From a Marriage mode, with leisurely vistas of Denise and Alicia’s ramshackle country house and scenes of mundanity that play out at a length designed to immerse the viewer in their domestic bliss and all the ways it’s going awry. At times, the pacing feels self-indulgent, while at others — particularly the fourth episode, an Ackie spotlight where Alicia undergoes fertility treatments — the waiting around begins to feel like the entire extremely emotional point of the thing. It’s a gamble that doesn’t fully pay off, but it’s great to know that after several years apart, Ansari and Waithe were willing to try something so different and yet so true to the larger spirit of what the show was before.