Alan Yang and Aziz Ansari, two Asian American writers, set out to to give their very real life experiences as people of color a stage in their Netflix Original TV series Masters of None.
As Hollywood turns toward a future of more diversity including actors of all colors, ethnicities, and orientations opening up an opportunity for Masters to explore new story lines that have never seen light on a broadcasted television show.
The Peabody awards for entertainment and children’s programming were just announced, announcing Master of None as one of 11 honorees of the award.
The Peabody awards were created as a way to honor broadcasted programs with something equivalent to a Pulitzer Prize.
“By turns profound and mundane, ridiculous and deadly serious, this imaginative, shape-shifting comedy chronicles the misadventures of Dev (series creator, Ansari), a 30-year-old Indian-American, who’s still trying to figure out what to do with his life. To say it resonates with young-adult viewers is an understatement,” as summarized by the Peabody award website .
The main character Dev Patel an actor who struggles to find acting jobs that don’t include a heavy exaggerated Indian accent or that includes him acting out an overplayed caricature of a Indian-American [think cab driver, convenience store clerk, IT rep..].
Which makes you think, have we seen an indian person play a non indian role?
Patel’s parents on and off the screen are Immigrants from India and touch on their journey to America in Episode two of season one.
Patel’s dad was very poor growing up in India, he went to school to become a doctor and now while in America he struggles to keep in contact with his only son that he made the American dream possible for.
Patel is really busy with things like finding love, the best tacos, and learning how to make pasta accompanied which makes his struggle compared to his parents a comedy.
Episode seven: Ladies and gentlemen, gives you an inside look of the contrast of a woman who walks alone from a bar vs. men walking alone from a bar. Your first thought may be whats the big deal about walking alone?
The contrast of the two experiences shows the fear a woman has walking alone can be very real. A very short conversation with a man lead him to follow her home and into her apartment building. The men walking home (Dev and Arnold) walked slowly and only feared running out of things to say to each other.
Another character that we see in the show is an African American lesbian woman, a character we have only seen a handful of times in entertainemt in recent years.
All around the board Masters of None is a fresh comedy about modern life, love and family.
