Ah, television! It is a many wondrous thing. It gives us stories of love and loss, and home makeovers, and dogs and crime and nerds and competitive vocalists. In the sea of offerings, nestled snugly between shows about fantasy kingdoms battling for dominance and gripping programs about wedding-dress shopping, are shows like Homeland and 24 that trade in terror. They can both be wildly entertaining – except that they might do more to perpetuate stereotypes than offer simple escapism.

We know that using Muslims as terrorists is a tired trope, and yet with Donald Trump in the White House, and hate crimes on the rise, it’s an easy opportunity for that “America, fuck yeah!” moment. We know these are stale and dangerous depictions, we know we need to see Muslims doing literally anything else – and yet TV just can’t seem to help itself. It’s like a kid sitting in front of a plate of cookies. In this case, the cookies are all shows where Muslims are terrorists or, if we’re being really generous, terror-adjacent.

But with shows like Master of None, the TV gods are letting us see a smidgelet of something different. Characters like Aziz Ansari’s Dev are daring to provide something akin to nuance. Muslims, it turns out, don’t come in one violent shape. They’re not born with weapons and beards. Some of them are cute but slight, and in this season, the host of a show about cupcakes.

In one episode, Dev the Muslim eats bacon. Not only that: after years of hiding it, he reveals to his practising Muslim parents that he eats bacon. (He adds: “Don’t worry, I’m a good person.”) Bacon may seem like a silly device – although Jim Gaffigan would disagree – but in this instance it gives Muslims the same sense of spectrum that Christians and Jews have long enjoyed. You can show up to church almost never and still be considered Christian, and you can eat a ham sandwich and still be considered a Jew. We recognize that people from those faiths practise their religions to varying degrees – and some not at all. Yet they continue to identify with those religions. But, if you’re a booze swilling, bacon-breathed Muz, as I am, there is little to no reflection of you in popular media. You either bend down to pray once an episode, or you’re a cab driver and we assume you’re going to pray off screen.

With Fox’s barrage of newsy “danger Muslims” and Homeland’s creepy Muslim montages, we haven’t seen the pork-flavored Muslims. Shonda Rhimes let Latinos be surgeons and Black-ish exists, so I think it’s way past time we saw Muslims covered in bacon bits.

Not only that, but there’s also the bacon-eater’s parents. Dev’s family are definitely not cool with his porcine habits. But, guess what, they’re not wielding AK-47s because of it, either. They’re smiling, loving, ridiculous parents who are, nevertheless, upset that their son isn’t more Muslim. We haven’t seen this storyline on mainstream media, which is shocking, because it’s a tale as old as time: for example, you may pretend to be more Catholic when you are around your mom. Of course you do! There are Muslims who do the same.

Is it possible for a Muslim-hater to see this show and then link Muslims with cupcakes? I think it is. Because we managed to link Muslims to terrorism and that, in part, put a bunch of white supremacists in the White House. So the opposite tactic must also be true.

Beyond what Master of None might overtly be saying about Muslims, in other episodes they’re subtly suggesting that Muslims make up silly jingles with their friends, that they go on horrible first dates, and that they sometimes drunk-text. Because at the end of the day it’s a show about a thirtysomething, and yet most Americans haven’t seen Muslims who are just trying to figure out their very American life.

If Breitbart roused the souls of enough electoral votes – and thankfully not enough popular votes – couldn’t sitcoms rouse souls in the other direction? Because that one episode of Master of None isn’t about bacon, it’s about dimensionality. It’s about insisting that Muslims won’t hurt you, that some of them will play basketball with you, that some of them might pray five times a day, and some of them will do a jillion other things that defy Breitbart, defy Fox News and defy Trump with their curious banality.

Could watching a show about a not-so-practising-Muslim looking for love on Tinder while kvetching to his lesbian best friend be an act of social change? Yes. Let’s hope the TV gods let us see even more of them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I made myself hungry for bacon.

Negin Farsad is a comedian, author of the book How to Make White People Laugh and host of podcast Fake the Nation