Where to Stream: Master Of None

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I liked Aziz Ansari’s Masters Of None. The episode about casting Indian actors was legitimately eye opening, not to mention very clever, and the stuff about immigrant parents extremely charming and fresh. Also, who among us now doesn’t want to own a robot seal?

But I also found myself frustrated with all the wacky millennial antics, which left me smacking my balding, cynical Gen-X head, grumbling into my beer and coffee. The pathetic, mumbly grasping at relationships, the seeming unwillingness to go out for the evening in a group smaller than six people, the bland, normcore tweeness of it all: This wasn’t the diverse, inexpensive, uncrowded, and genuinely weird world I knew in my 20s. Why do these children chirp so endlessly? I thought. Don’t they know it’s already all gone to hell?

You might be tempted to think that Ansari and his co-writer Alan Yang are more or less aware of their generational quirks; the hangout scenes, for one, feel almost documentary-like, which is at least partially why this show is resonating with the kids. Yet they remain oblivious to one staggering generational parallel regarding the characters they’ve created to inhabit this world: namely, that these particular millennials are as narcissistic and annoying as baby boomers.

Ansari’s character Dev certainly doesn’t lack for career neuroses and setbacks. He’s still living off residuals from a five-year-old Gogurt commercial and his big movie break ends up on the cutting-room floor. His manic pixie dream girlfriend Rachel (Noel Wells) hates her stupid job doing publicity for bands she doesn’t like. These aren’t high-end people, yet their complete lack of financial worry only further puffs up their overinflated sense of self-worth.

As long as there have been television programs set in New York City, people have complained that the shows don’t properly represent the true cost of living in the city. But Master Of None‘s creative emphasis on vérité opens it up to closer inspection of its protagonist’s finances than those of traditional sitcoms like Friends. In this slice of closely-observed reality, everyone lives pretty well. Their apartments may not be exactly fancy, but they are nicely located on the best blocks of Brooklyn. Dev’s weird friend Arnold (Eric Wareheim), who appears to only exist in hangout form, lives in some sort of idealized hipster media man cave within easy reach of an endless carnival of bars, nightclubs, and expensive restaurants. You could almost excuse Arnold, who serves as the show’s magical-realist Kramer archetype, but what about the rest? The full bounty of New York City spreads before Dev and his multicultural gang of marginally employed friends. These are people who can do whatever they want.

An entire life pursuing whims and dreams and food trucks–without even a thought to practical concession–just doesn’t ring true to me. I know plenty of people in their 20s and 30s who either work all day and then go home to their families, or struggle like hell to pay the bills in neighborhoods they can no longer afford, or both. I can’t tell whether or not Ansari acknowledges that this reality exists. For his first date with Rachel, he takes her to Nashville for the weekend, paying an unrealistic-sounding $65 for last-second plane tickets and staying in a very nice boutique hotel. At minimum, that date cost the dude $500, and the real costs probably inched closer to a grand.

Even Ansari’s minor characters, like the guy who sells Rachel the couch on Craigslist, blithely gallivant around the globe, getting awesome jobs. With a shrug and a half-embarrassed grin, they’re off to Switzerland, or wherever. I found myself wondering: Is Ansari merely playing to his core audience’s wishes, or is he indulging in some sort of unintentional humblebrag, shielded from the rays of financial reality by his own personal massive wealth and fame?

In the last episode, which I’ll now spoil for you, Dev and Rachel’s relationship break-up felt very real and well-earned, but the aftermath was just ridiculous. Rachel dyes her hair reddish-orange and announces her plans to move to Tokyo without a job. Ten minutes later, Dev chucks it all to go study pasta making in Italy. This is a show about people who can, on a moment’s notice, afford to do things that get written up in Conde Nast Traveler. According to Master Of None, if your relationship and career are suffering, then just pack your roller bag and head to JFK’s gleaming international terminal, in search of your greater destiny.

The finale brought to mind one of my least-favorite moments in pop-culture history, when, in the ultimate expression of Boomer narcissism, Billy Crystal’s wife in City Slickers sends him off to the dude ranch, telling him to “find his smile.” He had a good job, a hot wife, and the wherewithal to take a luxury vacation. Who cared if he found his smile? Why was he frowning to begin with?

For the too-brief years that my people were marginally in charge of content creation, that attitude of yuppie entitlement faded from the culture, replaced with a stoner’s shrug and a grim realization that the rainbow doesn’t lead to a pot of gold. But now, with the millennial masters of none, it’s back. Money is no object, or subject. Even if they have to go all the way to Japan or Italy or someplace even more magical and awesome, they are going to find their smiles.

Neal Pollack (@nealpollack) is the author of ten bestselling books of fiction and nonfiction. His latest novel is the sci-fi satire Keep Mars Weird. He lives in Austin, Texas.