Here’s how Aziz Ansari could use “Master of None” to rebuild his image
“Master of None” often dwells in romantic uncertainty. The characters in the Netflix comedy series have pondered: How sure are you — put a percentage on it! — that your significant other is your soul mate? And if you spend lots of time with a woman who happens to be engaged, is that the beginning of your against-all-odds-love story or a road map to heartache?
Now that Aziz Ansari is caught in a real-life situation that is quite unclear — a first date of his says their night together wasn’t consensual, while he says it was — the “Master of None” star and co-creator (with Alan Yang) has an opening to explore the difference between romantic pursuit and coercion.
As far as we know, this was an isolated incident that probably won’t end Ansari’s career or kill his popular series; the allegations against Ansari are not in Harvey Weinstein or Matt Lauer territory. But his reputation will need some rebuilding. And since “Master of None” already deals with dating dilemmas, Ansari could use his popular series to explore how courtship could be more consensual.
Even before the #MeToo movement, journalists and researchers have called attention to the ways in which entertainment casts a man’s aggressive or coercive pursuit of a woman as “romantic.” In romantic comedies, for example, a man pursuing a woman despite her protestations is seen as proof of his devotion, not cause for a restraining order. A 2015 study found that, if a viewer thinks a romantic comedy is realistic, they’re more likely to agree with myths such as: “Many alleged stalking victims are actually people who played hard to get and changed their minds afterward.”
“Master of None” has played with that paradox. In Season 1, the episode “Ladies and Gentleman” shows Diana (Condola Rashad) being followed home by a man she’d already turned down at a bar. He bangs on her front door, screaming: “Come on. Give a nice guy a shot.” When she asks him to leave, and he won’t, she calls 911. Meanwhile, the worst thing that happens to Ansari’s character, Dev Shah, on his walk home from the same bar is that he accidentally steps in dog poop.
That episode ends with Dev getting into an argument with his girlfriend, Rachel, about his failure to recognize the sexism in an interaction she has with a male director right in front of him. “There are a lot of subtle little things that happen to me and all women, even in our little progressive world,” she says. “When somebody, especially my boyfriend, tells me that I’m wrong without having any way of knowing my personal experience, it’s insulting.”
Dev accedes that Rachel has a point. “I guess there’s no way I’ll ever really know what it’s like to be in your shoes,” he says. “So I’ll try and do a better job of listening.”
Now Ansari has some more listening to do, and the results are likely to up in the series. “Those two seasons are really personal,” Ansari told GQ magazine last year. “Now I need a minute to refill my notebook. My life has not progressed enough for me to write Season 3 yet.”
Now that his life has progressed, perhaps differently as he would have scripted it, how might Ansari’s date with Grace — and the controversy that has followed — figure into to Season 3? Here are some ideas.
First, a listening tour. When we left off in Season 2, several women who had worked with Dev’s TV co-host, Chef Jeff, accused Jeff of harassing them; it’s a #MeToo story line before the movement took off.
A self-reflective man like Ansari might wonder: Is Grace the first of my hookups to feel coerced and uncomfortable, or have there been others? It’s all the rage right now among men, including famous ones, to call old girlfriends and inquire about their past behavior. In Season 3, the allegations against Jeff might lead Dev to do his own listening tour. He could reach out to ex-girlfriends like Rachel (Noel Wells) but also more casushow al encounters to ask, as tactfully as possible, how they felt. “Master of None” is largely told from Dev’s point of view, but it could show an encounter from the woman’s perspective, much like the perspective flip of that Season 1 walking-home episode.
The funny and charming Netflix show “Lovesick,” now in its third season, is built all around calls like these. When the protagonist Dylan (Johnny Flynn) learns he has chlamydia, he makes a list of the women he’s slept with, informs them of his diagnosis and suggests they get tested. The calls become a device to revisit these past relationships.
Second, bring on the self-reflection. Season 2 opened with travel to Modena, Italy, where Dev learned to make pasta. In Season 3, how about a trip to the Netherlands or Sweden, where sex education is far more comprehensive than in the United States? This is a comedy, so play it for laughs, sure — put Dev in a Dutch kindergarten class, which is where sex education starts there.
And then go more serious by plopping Dev in a sex therapist’s office back in New York, where he can learn to cultivate his “sex esteem,” also known as expressing his desire in a way that gives his partner a chance to say yes or no.