5 things you can expect in Master of None season 2 based on Aziz Ansari’s NY mag interview

The much-awaited second season of Master of None drops on Netflix May 12. Here’s what you can expect from Aziz Ansari himself.

It’s hard to believe Master of None, the Netflix comedy (dramedy?) from Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang that took the TV streaming and binging world by storm, did so in November 2015. And at long last, we’re getting a second season and that complete season will be on Netflix Friday May 12.

In anticipation, Ansari has been making the press rounds, including answering 73 questions for Vogue. Turns out, he can say “I’m hungry” in six languages: Spanish, French, Japanese, English, Tamil and Italian. However, it was in an in-depth interview with New York magazine, worth reading in full, that he revealed the most about the upcoming season.

Here are five things you can expect from Master of None season 2.

1. It’s about wanting what you can’t have.

As Ansari told Vogue, “season one is about not knowing what you want. Season two is about wanting what you can’t have.” Specifically, season two includes Dev falling for an unavailable woman and there’s good reason to believe that woman works in pasta shop.

(Ansari added that while much of season 2 was inspired by his own trip to Italy, his time abroad featured no young woman in a pasta shop – only the company of grandma named Angela with whom he had “no sparks.”)

2. Season two leans into the “crazy.”

‘Parents’ and ‘Mornings’ are two of the most acclaimed episodes from the first season of Master of None. The former focused on the experiences of Ansari and Yang’s real life parents, who immigrated from India and Taiwan, respectively. The latter chronicled Dev and Rachel’s relationship exclusively through the mornings they shared. As Ansari and Yang were planning season 2, they wanted to recapture that level of creativity for every episode. Or, as Ansari put it, “we were like, ‘Let’s make every episode that crazy.’”

Which led them to:

• Shoot the first episode in black-and-white and 70 percent in Italian.
• Riff on ‘Mornings’ with an episode charting Dev’s friendship with Denise through 30 years of Thanksgiving dinner with Denise, her mom and a string of terrible girlfriends.
• Follow a doorman, a cab driver and a deaf convenience-store cashier “as they live out their own versions of Master of None” in an episode that barely features the main cast at all.
• Go all in on a plot line about Brian’s dad’s dating life, inspired by Yang’s dad’s dating life. (He’s really on eHarmony.)
• Convince Netflix to let them do a two-part penultimate episode.

3. It won’t be explicitly political, but it will inherently be political.

It’s easy and somewhat necessary to try and contextualize any and all new TV, particularly from creators or casts of color, in light of the 2016 presidential election. Like many shows premiering this spring and summer, the second season Master of None was already written and shooting in November. And yet, while they avoided doing anything overt – “This show is not about, ‘Oh, Aziz is back to give the finger to Trump” – the ‘Religion’ episode still puts “an Indian Muslim doctor who likes Harry Potter and makes dumb jokes about Michael Jordan” on TV. And that is still political. The show is diverse because that is what Ansari and Yang’s lives and friend groups look like. And that is still political.

Ansari is from South Carolina, a red state, and takes offense at the intimation that the show is for “blue staters” because of the dichotomy it sets up:

"Look, don’t say ‘red-staters,’ because when you say ‘red-staters,’ you’re saying, like, ‘dumb, racist people,’ and there are plenty of white people there who are not dumb, racist people. Maybe I’m just very quick to react when, as a culture, we try to paint this whole large group of people as one specific thing. Because that’s what, as a minority, you deal with all the time. It’s just people looking at you and being like, ‘You’re this. I know exactly what you are.’ And you’re like, ‘Shut up! That’s not me. You don’t know me.’"

And that is still political.

4. You’re going to like season two.

Ansari is pretty confident that you’re going to like the second season. To quote:

"He’s proud of it, and he’s confident it won’t be a disaster. “If you liked the first season, maybe you’ll like that season better, but I don’t know how you could watch this season and be like, ‘This is fucking garbage!’"

Excellent.

5. There won’t be a season three for a long time.

Given the year-plus between the first and second season, it’s not surprising to learn that season three might not happen, but it’s still disappointing. And yet, it’s understandable. Master of None is based on Ansari’s life and to write a show like that, one must all spend some time living. Moreover, he wants to have something new to say for a third season: “I’ve got to get married or have a kid or something. I don’t have anything else to say about being a young guy being single in New York eating food around town all the time.”

Everything Ansari does in the meantime – his interview reveal a wildly impressive and envious track record of travel and self-education – bodes well for whatever creative endeavors he has in mind. In the meantime, we’ll look forward to season two.