The New Season Of "Master Of None" Offers Glimpses Into Holding A Minority Status In America

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

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With the success of the first season of MoN, the expectations for the newest one were, unsurprisingly, much higher. The second season elaborated on oft-overlooked aspects of being a minority in America, referencing race, ability, immigrant status, and sexual orientation.

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Towards the beginning of Episode 3, “Religion,” we see little Dev going against his very religious Muslim parents by eating bacon for the first time, a privilege the average American child most likely takes for granted. In the background, “Only God Can Judge Me” by Tupac is playing, a song that has nothing to do with bacon, but still somehow works.

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Episode 4, “First Date” is all about hookup culture, and what it’s like to use dating apps as a racial minority. Dev goes on dates with what seems like women of every ethnic backgrounds, even referencing how race plays a role in romantic relationships during a few dates. He finally manages to “get lucky” with one of his many dates, who seems to be a perfect match, until he realizes that she’s actually pretty racist. The situation is further complicated by the fact that he sleeps with her anyway, bringing up an interesting moral dilemma that only a PoC would ever have to deal with.

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Episode 6 is titled “New York, I Love You” and narrates life in the Big Apple from multiple different perspectives. One narrator is a young deaf woman, who is frustrated with her and her partner's sex life. They end up fighting in a very public place, which appears to be an Ikea, reasonably expecting that no one around can understand what they are signing to one another. However, it is soon revealed in a hilariously uncomfortable encounter by an angry mother that her kids can read ASL and had begun signing some of the more inappropriate words they’d been using.

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In the same episode we meet a few African cabbies that have been waiting to spend a big portion of their hard-earned money on a night out. Based on their apparent lack of inexperience with night life in America, the three are rejected from possibly the cheesiest club in town, leaving audiences empathetic for the way that the American experience treats some of its most hardworking members.

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In Episode 8, “Thanksgiving,” we see 30 years of Dev’s thanksgivings with his best friend Denise, who identifies as an openly gay black woman. During their first Thanksgiving together, Denise’s mom tells her that she will have a lot of trouble in the future because she already has two “strikes” against her: being black and being a woman (purposely foreshadowing that after she comes out she will actually have a third social disadvantage). In this same scene, it’s revealed that Denise thinks Dev is black, and probably thinks that all brown and black people are “black,” showing the moment that Denise became aware of her race.

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Aziz makes many references to his own culture in the new season, which is critical considering that a large portion of his fanbase shares at least one of his cultural identities as an Indian-Muslim man. “Religion” is where we get the essence of what it’s like growing up in a Muslim household within a Western country, and takes on the role of exposing Ansari’s own personal experiences that “Parents” did in the first season

Unlike many of the shows we see on TV (or, let’s be real, our computers) "Master of None" succeeds in its ability to attract audiences by purposely not generalizing. Let’s hope that another season is in the works, retaining more of the perfectly complicated and unexpected stories we were given in this one.