Master of None arrived on Netflix on November 6, 2015, with a title that reads like a shrug and a first season that does not behave like one. Created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, the comedy drama stars Ansari as Dev Shah, a 30-year-old New York actor. His best-known credit, per the show, is a Go-Gurt commercial. That is the joke the series starts from, and it is not the joke it ends on.
Over three seasons and 25 episodes, Master of None moves from dating misadventures in New York to a season set largely in Italy, then hands the lead to Lena Waithe for a five-episode third season called Moments in Love. The final episode aired May 23, 2021. This is one of the defining television works of its decade, and it earns the score at the bottom of this review.
Trailer, via moviemaniacsDE.
Dev Shah and the Go-Gurt Commercial
The first season is ten episodes set in New York City. It follows Dev through the pillars of adulthood: the first big job, a serious relationship, and, in one episode, the pursuit of sex offenders on the subway. Ansari plays him as a man who is funny about his own aimlessness without ever being honest about it. The show’s structure is loose, almost essayistic.
Episodes drift into tangents — an acting gig, a parents’ dinner, a night out — and the drift is the point. Dev’s parents are played by Ansari’s real parents, Shoukath and Fatima Ansari, a casting choice that gives the family scenes a texture no scripted family could fake.
Noël Wells plays Rachel Silva, a music publicist and Dev’s primary romantic interest in season one. Their arc is the season’s spine, and it avoids the usual television shortcuts. Kelvin Yu plays Brian Chang, Dev’s friend and the son of Taiwanese immigrants. Eric Wareheim plays Arnold Baumheiser, described by Ansari as the “token white friend.” The role was originally set for Harris Wittels before his death in February 2015, and the season carries that absence quietly.
Italy, Francesca, and the Second Season
The second season, ten episodes released May 12, 2017, opens in Italy and then returns to New York. Alessandra Mastronardi joins as Francesca, an Italian woman Dev befriends and later falls in love with; she eventually visits him in New York. The Italy stretch is the show’s most visually confident run, and it is also where the series takes its biggest swing at tone. Ansari and Yang let the season sit in silence and in subtitles, and the result is warmer and sadder than season one.
The second season also brings in Leonard Ouzts as Lawrence, producer of Clash of the Cupcakes. Todd Barry appears as a movie director named Todd, Colin Salmon plays a fictionalized version of himself, and H. Jon Benjamin plays Benjamin, an acting colleague on the film The Sickening. These are small parts, but they keep the show’s world populated with working actors rather than types.
In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Waithe said that her character was not originally intended to be African-American or gay but that Ansari wanted Denise’s personality to reflect Waithe’s own, so they rewrote her part.
Denise Takes the Lead in Moments in Love
The third season, Moments in Love, premiered May 23, 2021, and consists of five episodes. It stars Lena Waithe as Denise, a 37-year-old lesbian novelist, with Naomi Ackie as Alicia Jackson, Denise’s wife. Ansari’s Dev becomes a recurring presence rather than the center. This is the season that split the audience, and the split is understandable. The show changes its lead, its rhythm and its subject, and it does not apologize for any of it.
What the third season does well is refuse to make Denise’s marriage a lesson. The five episodes sit inside a relationship as it strains, and they trust the viewer to keep up. What it loses is the comic engine that made the first two seasons move. Dev’s narration-by-misadventure is gone, and the season is more patient, more interior, and at times more static. That is a trade, not a failure.
Why the Score Holds
Master of None won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe, appeared on multiple year-end top ten lists, and drew multiple awards and nominations. Those honors are not the reason to watch it. The reason is that the show kept changing shape. A lesser series would have run Dev’s New York dating life for five seasons. This one went to Italy, then handed the lead to Waithe, then ended.
The casting is the show’s strongest argument. Ansari’s real parents as Dev’s parents. Waithe’s Denise rewritten around her own personality. Wareheim’s Arnold built on a real friendship and a shared love of eating. The series treats identity as a fact of the characters rather than a thesis about them, and it does so without a single speech explaining itself.
The weak point is the third season’s pace. Five episodes is a short runway for a new lead, and the season spends much of that runway on atmosphere. Viewers who came for the comedy of season one will find a different show here. That is the risk the creators took, and it is the reason the series still reads as ambitious rather than safe.
Master of None is a comedy drama that earned its reputation by refusing to stay in one lane. The first season is the funniest, the second is the most beautiful, and the third is the most daring. Taken together, they are 25 episodes of a show that trusted its audience more than its formula.
Key facts
- Score: 9.1/10
- Metacritic: 91/100
- Created by: Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang
- Network: Netflix
- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 25
- First aired: November 6, 2015
- Last aired: May 23, 2021
- Season 2 release: May 12, 2017
- Season 3 premiere: May 23, 2021
- Genres: Comedy, Drama
- Emmy Awards: 3
- Golden Globe: 1
Verdict: 9.1 of 10.
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