What I’m Watching: Master of None

Master of None: Season 2, Episode 3 “Religion” (B+)

I liked this episode a lot more than the other installment that can be easily compared to this one, “Parents” from season one. I also found this extremely reminiscent of a forthcoming fantastic film, “The Big Sick,” which stars another famous Muslim-born comic featured on a regular TV show, Kumail Nanjiani of “Silicon Valley,” in his struggles with his family’s religious outlook differing from his own. I can’t remember Dev ever mentioning anything about being a Muslim, though I’m sure it came up in that season one episode, and here he did his very least to convince his more religious relatives that he was in fact a devout Muslim. Encouraging his cousin to try pork while they were out was one thing, but opting to order pork when they were out to dinner together with his aunt and uncle was a much more pointed move that probably wasn’t necessarily. Dev was obviously bothered by the notion that he had to put on a front that wasn’t representative of who he really is, but he crossed a line into disrespectful territory by putting that on display in a way that was evidently going to make them uncomfortable and upset. His father was most concerned with the fact that they weren’t going for seafood, which was his original choice, and less bothered by Dev doing something disrespectful than with his having messed up the calm and made his wife angry. It’s cool that this episode tackled this topic, and I like that one of Aziz Ansari’s inspirations was a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” installment where Larry pretended to be a religious Jew to get his friend a kidney.