Netflix's Master of None is revolutionary, and not just because it's the first half-hour comedy filmed in pimptastic 2.35:1 (ask your film nerd friend)

The following contains spoilers for the final two episodes of Master of None.

Asian American men have been so badly stereotyped and emasculated by Hollywood (peep the Long Duk Dong catchphrase montage from "Good Morning Orlando," last week's Fresh Off the Boat episode, for a refresher course) that several Asian American male indie filmmakers have worked to counteract those stereotypes by casting either themselves or much more polished Asian actors as romantic leads, one of many kinds of roles Asian American men only rarely get to play outside the indie world. But to be honest, even though it's nice to see these directors defying stereotypes, too many of these indie flicks--or more commonly these days, YouTube shows--have turned out to be underwhelming or banal in execution. (A rare example of an indie flick with an Asian American guy as a romantic lead that isn't so underwhelming as a movie is 2011's struggling musician comedy Surrogate Valentine, and although it was directed by a white guy, Dave Boyle, it's thoroughly suffused with the creative voice of Surrogate Valentine star and co-writer Goh Nakamura.)

It's not surprising that the similarly conscious-about-race Aziz Ansari and his fellow Parks and Recreation colleague, writer Alan Yang, the creators of Netflix's remarkable new half-hour comedy Master of None, chose to open their show's very first episode with the ultimate in "Hey, I have sex too! I ain't no emasculated dork like how Hollywood likes to portray me!" moments during stories told from Asian American males' perspectives. Master of None's first glimpse of TV commercial actor Dev Shah, Ansari's alter ego, is Dev in the middle of banging Rachel (former SNL featured player Noël Wells), the record label publicist who will become Dev's permanent love interest later on in the season. The opening scene is the first of many figurative middle fingers Ansari and Yang, whose counterpart on the show is Kelvin Yu's Brian, satisfyingly deliver throughout the show to racist power players from Hollywood who either contribute to marginalizing Asian Americans, whether they're Indian or, in the case of Yang and Yu, Taiwanese, or continue to be in doubt about giving them screen roles like "one of the jobs Bradley Cooper's characters do in movies," as Dev says at one point.

Our idea with Brian was to make an Asian character that is portrayed as sexually capable like real Asian people https://t.co/rEyVuhZrTs

— Aziz Ansari (@azizansari) November 9, 2015

But because Ansari isn't such a vain comedy star--you can tell how much vanity a male comedy star has by how often he gets the staff writers to write shirtless bedroom scenes for him, like the bizarre amount of shirtless bedroom scenes that were written for the late Richard Jeni during his short-lived '90s sitcom Platypus Man--Ansari amusingly cuts short his own first-ever on-screen moment of athletic, TV-MA-rated (but without any nudity) lovemaking. He has his own character's condom suddenly break.

The broken condom scare leads to both frantic Googling of fun facts about pre-ejaculate and an emergency Uber ride for both Dev and Rachel to the nearest pharmacy for a Plan B pill and--because Dev is as passionate a foodie/drinkie as Ansari--an irresistible bottle of Martinelli's apple juice. The mishap perfectly kicks off a series of anxieties Dev experiences about children (he doesn't completely hate them, but like Ansari, he doesn't plan on having any), marriage (again, like with Ansari, the idea of it intimidates Dev), texting etiquette (another subject Ansari has been preoccupied with in his stand-up act), accepting certain acting roles that would pay well but could also cause him to be labeled an "Uncle Taj" and various other life choices.



Master of None--which gets its title from a 2006 Beach House song about a person who hops from fuckbuddy to fuckbuddy but winds up being lonely (the tune is featured at the end of the third episode, "Hot Ticket")--is Ansari's first big endeavor into auteurist TV (he also directed two of the 10 episodes that Netflix dropped all at once last Friday). The show interestingly structures itself as a series of mini-movies--hence the "Master of None Presents" logo during the main titles of each episode--and breaks away from both the joke machine rhythms of network TV ("Alan and I didn't want the show to be so cut-y. Sometimes I'd watch Parks and it's so fast-paced," said Ansari to the A.V. Club) and the studio set-bound nature of many network sitcoms like Parks.

Instead, it embraces the commercial-free pacing of Netflix and favors long single takes during street conversations or hallway exchanges like Dev's amusing exchange with his friend Arnold (Eric Wareheim) about the frustration of being unable to tell if Eminem's 8 Mile theme "Lose Yourself" is being rapped from the point of view of Em or his 8 Mile alter ego B-Rabbit ("[Linklater] has been a huge influence on me, and he has been for a few years," said Ansari in that same A.V. Club interview, while discussing his love for the long takes during Linklater's Before trilogy). The show also favors location shooting in New York (and, for one episode, Nashville) and, in what has to be a first for a half-hour comedy, cinematography shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. That's the same aspect ratio all the Star Wars movies and Bond flicks (except Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun) are filmed in.

Master of None cinematographer Mark Schwartzbard makes beautiful use of the ultra-widescreen frame. At first, the Scope aspect ratio seems like a bizarre choice for a half-hour comedy. But when Schwartzbard continually composes shots as clever and playful as the one where Brian and his laconic immigrant dad Peter (Clem Cheung) finally bond while reading The Economist, but due to Peter's Ron Swanson-like discomfort with expressing any kind of emotion, they're sitting far apart and at the edges of the frame rather than shoulder to shoulder (or when Schwartzbard sometimes composes shots that are just plain gorgeous), the aspect ratio suits the show.

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Bob's Burgers, "Father of the Bob"

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

One of my old day jobs was writing for a weekly newspaper, and I was assigned to write really hard-hitting stuff: a series of short profiles of restaurateurs in one of San Jose's gazillion Camazotz-esque suburbs. One week, I chose a matzo ball soup place to be the paper's local eatery of the week, and the discussion of the opening of that old restaurant reopened a rift between the two brothers who ran the joint. Yeah, I really enjoyed being the cause of two family members beefing over who played a bigger role in the family business.

The conflict between Bob and his estranged restaurateur dad Big Bob in "Father of the Bob," this year's Bob's Burgers Christmas episode, brings back memories of that matzo ball soup feud I somehow reignited. Except this conflict is way more entertaining and headed towards some sort of resolution. Big Bob sort of appeared on Bob's Burgers before, but he was kept off-screen in a flashback and voiced by H. Jon Benjamin; in his first full appearance, Big Bob--now voiced quite convincingly by a young guy who's had plenty of experience portraying old, cantankerous men, Bill Hader--is alive and well and still running Big Bob's Diner, a far more popular local eatery than Bob's Burgers. The diner, which had previously appeared in pictures on the Belchers' apartment walls, is also the place where the younger Bob honed his skills as a craftsman of gourmet burgers with puntastic names--before a grill-side argument with his dad led Bob Jr. to go into business for himself.

This half-hour Christmas present from episode co-writers Steven Davis and Kelvin Yu comes wrapped in the form of both a nifty mini-origin story for Bob Jr.'s restaurant and a father/son reconciliation story that carries some echoes of the reunion between Krusty the Clown and Jackie Mason's Rabbi Krustofsky, who, like Big Bob, was embarrassed by his son's comedic approach to things (in Big Bob's case, his son's interest in inventing what he dismisses as "gimmick burgers" was what he objected to most strongly). But as much as I adore the classic-era Simpsons episode "Like Father, Like Clown," I always found its closing "O Mein Papa" sing-along between Krusty and his dad to be a bit schmaltzy for my tastes. Bob's Burgers is much more restrained when it comes to heartfelt moments, which is more effective to me than teary renditions of sappy German oldies, and that perhaps is due to the input of co-executive producer Jim Dauterive, who seems to have emulated that restrained approach to heartfelt moments from his previous show King of the Hill.

When "Father of the Bob" finally does arrive at that reconciliation between Bob and his dad, it brilliantly places it in one of the least likely settings for a serious heart-to-heart about raising kids, remorse for having been an inflexible parent and coping with an absent wife: a crowded country/western line dance. I just love how Bob awkwardly tries to keep up with the rest of the dancers while the much less awkward Big Bob--who's learned to line-dance in his off-hours--finally opens up to him and makes the very first reference on the show to Bob's mom (it's not specified if she's dead or alive). It's one of many ways that Bob's Burgers gets playful with the obligatory emotional scene towards the end of most family sitcoms: by burying the emotion under music (or a scene location) that's all tonally wrong, like in the line-dancing scene, or by having the Belchers say "I love you" to each other so many times in the same sentence that it pisses off a bystander.

The Baby You Can Chive My Car Burger (Photo source: The Bob's Burger Experiment)

But before that truce at the line dance, the two Bobs reignite their longtime disagreements over cuisine and customers' preferences. I also love the episode's implication that every restaurant in the show's unnamed town has a Teddy--a meek guinea pig for the chef's culinary experiments--and at Big Bob's Diner, that would be Henry (Carl Reiner), who isn't a relative of Teddy's, but the character's nose design is similar to his. (It's like how several of the Acme Looniversity students on Tiny Toon Adventures had similar facial and behaviorial attributes to teachers like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, but they weren't relatives or offspring of the faculty.) At his latest reluctant Christmastime visit to Big Bob's Diner, Bob tries to prove wrong his dad's opinions about gimmicky burgers and culinary experimentation by getting Henry to enjoy his Baby You Can Chive My Car Burger, one of many "jokey burger specials" that Big Bob expressed his disdain for during the grill-side argument that drove away--no pun intended--20-something Bob from his diner. Meanwhile, Big Bob tries to lure Henry away from Bob's burger with a simple tuna melt.

The competitive nature of the A-story (mirrored in the B-story of the kids competing to create the best present for Bob out of stuff in their grandpa's basement) is, to me, the most Christmassy part of "Father of the Bob," even more so than father and son putting aside their differences just in time for the holiday. Because Christmas isn't really "chestnuts roasting on an open fire," like Madison Avenue would rather have you believe. Often, it's more like "chumps trampling each other in a Walmart." Or two brothers embroiled in an old matzo ball soup feud.

Memorable quotes:

* Teddy: "Hey, father issues--we all got 'em. I've got mother issues too. I've even got cousin issues. Beautiful blond cousin issues."
Tina, channeling Annie and Shirley: "Aw..."
Bob: "Ew."
Teddy: "What?"

* Bob discovers that his dad kept in his basement a copy of the first review of Bob's Burgers: "Unique burgers. Good prices. Service leaves something to be desired. But worth the trip." That sounds a lot like many of the reviews the show first received when it premiered on Fox.

* Pete (Nick Offerman), Big Bob's best friend, to Bob: "Your dad's in my bar. We're gonna go see him."
Tina: "Yeah, Dad. When a mysterious cowboy/Santa says, 'Come with me,' you climb on that horse and ride."

* Bob: "I thought this was a disco."
Pete: "That's Wednesdays. Thursdays, we watch Scandal."

* Bob, regarding the line-dancing thing: "You guys are really good at this."
Big Bob: "I'm here every Friday night. And Thursdays. I love Scandal."

* The following is from an ad-libbed scene between Bob, Big Bob and Linda that wasn't included in "Father of the Bob" for obvious reasons:
Bob: "You used to drink so much Baileys."
Big Bob: "I would smell it from across the room. There was a very nice restaurant, or, uh, like more like a dessert place across the street, and it would waft across the street, and it would come in, and the next thing I know, I'd be strangling your mother, every fucking scent in the whole place..."
Bob: "You were the only drunk who exclusively drank Baileys."

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Bob's Burgers, "Tina and the Real Ghost"

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

The funniest line in "Tina and the Real Ghost," this year's Bob's Burgers Halloween episode, takes place when Louise unveils her Halloween costume, which simply consists of her regular clothes combined with a toothpick, a pair of leather driving gloves and a certain white satin scorpion jacket. She says, "I'm Ryan Gosling from the major motion picture trailer Drive."

The moment is also emblematic of the beautiful efficiency of the writing on Bob's Burgers. On Family Guy, this would have been an excuse for the show to do another cutaway gag and pointlessly probe into why the girl said "major motion picture trailer." Bob's Burgers doesn't feel the need to do that. It rarely opts for cutaway gags (there have been flashbacks though, to either Bob as a kid or Tina as a baby, and we get occasional glimpses into Tina's elaborate fantasies about male classmates, either human or zombie). Louise's line is already funny enough as it is that it doesn't need to be embellished with a cutaway gag. We're left to imagine Linda and Bob trying their damnedest to prevent their most mischievous and conniving kid from watching the ultraviolent Drive in its entirety, and letting us picture that in our heads is funnier than actually depicting it. That's smart writing.

The same could be said about the rest of the episode, which was written by Steven Davis and Kelvin Yu and centers on Tina's crush on what she's led to believe is a ghost in a shoebox named Jeff ("I'm pretty sure that's his handwriting. It's girlie, but it's just because he's sensitive," says Tina about a message on a girls' room mirror that she thinks was written by her spectral boyfriend). Once again, Bob's Burgers does terrific and funny work exploring the imaginative and romantic sides of Tina, who's somehow a more fully realized character than most girl characters on live-action sitcoms who are about the same age as her. As Katie Schenkel once said over at The Mary Sue, "the show took what could have been a cheap running gag of 'let's laugh at the weird girl' and turned her into the best character on the whole damn show."

It helps that the show doesn't punish Tina for being her libidinous, erotic fanfic-writing self like the Griffins cruelly do with Meg for being awkward and unpopular on Family Guy; Bob's Burgers always takes Bob's or Louise's position that "Sure, Tina's weird, but let's not be a dick to her about it." In the case of Louise in "Tina and the Real Ghost," she quickly realizes the cruelty of her Ouija board prank of tricking Tina into thinking Jeff is real and attempts to undo it. Louise's remorse exemplifies another thing I appreciate about Bob's Burgers: the support the Belchers have for each other, without having to get goopy and '80s sitcom huggy about it, expressive and affectionate Linda aside (if Louise wound up on Full House or Family Ties and she had to experience one of those shows' hugging scenes, she'd punch Bob Saget in the face or light Michael Gross' beard on fire). On Bob's Burgers, there's no time to be goopy and huggy. They've got burgers and side orders of puns that need to be cranked out.

Stray observations:
* There wasn't even enough time for the opening titles. "Tina and the Real Ghost" is the fourth consecutive Bob's Burgers episode to go without opening titles. The absence of the titles is making me wonder if the Bob's Burgers writing staff is running out of puns for the names on the exterminator vans and the failed businesses next door to Bob's. I remember watching an interview where the late Stephen J. Cannell talked about how the Rockford Files writing staff used to have problems coming up with new humorous messages for the answering machine gag at the start of Rockford's opening titles.

* Those alien noises that come out of special guest star Jenny Slate--whether they're Tammy's horror movie screams during this Bob's Burgers Halloween episode or whatever this is during Kroll Show--never lose their funniness.

* Gene's costume as half-Turner, half-Hooch makes me realize there aren't enough Tom Hanks project-inspired costumes out there on Halloween or at cons. Bosom Buddies, The 'Burbs, A League of Their Own and Apollo 13 are long overdue for the cosplay treatment (but definitely not Cloud Atlas; keep that yellowface/brownface/redface/blackface shit away from Halloween next year or any other year, white people, or prepare to get stabbed).

* It's funny that this episode where Louise cosplays Drive premiered immediately after BBC Three aired a rescored version of Drive, which was music-supervised by Zane Lowe. The Radio 1 DJ recruited artists like The 1975, Baauer of "Harlem Shake" infamy and L.A. R&B singer Banks to record new original tracks for the movie, and the results were lukewarmly received (Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn is one of the few who likes the rescore). I really like "Get Away" by Chvrches, which was chosen to replace Kavinsky's 2010 song "Nightcall" in Drive's opening titles, but thematically and tonally, it doesn't really fit with the establishing of Ryan Gosling's nighttime activities as a getaway driver during the opening titles, despite the song being called "Get Away" (the romantically minded "Get Away" would have been better suited for any of the later scenes where Gosling bonds with Carey Mulligan). The Drive rescore is an interesting experiment for about a track or two, but it's otherwise unnecessary because the music that was used in the final cut is so irreplaceable. Okay, maybe I'd rescore that hammer-to-the-hand moment at the strip club with Black Sheep's "U Mean I'm Not" because that tune is life.

* Once again, co-composer and series creator Loren Bouchard and the duo known as the Elegant Too excel in the music department. The episode's silly song about Jeff is like a cross between the ballads of Serge Gainsbourg and Nelson Riddle's "Lolita Ya Ya" from the Stanley Kubrick version of Lolita.