Master of None: The Thief

May 13, 2017 7:43 AM - Season 2, Episode 1

While studying pasta making in Italy, Dev makes a serendipitous connection on his birthday, only to have his plans upended by a thief.
posted by The Gooch (11 comments total)

I kept pointing out the Bicycle Thief stuff to my partner and she kept not caring. :(:(:(
posted by tobascodagama at 8:14 PM on May 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

missmerrymack: THANK YOU! That's what I thought. The restaurant said she had a reservation the following month, and they must have her phone number. It would have been really easy to get. Also I figured there would be a chance she'd come back a month later when her reservation was, but Dev didn't think of that either.

Good episode nonetheless.
posted by mmoncur at 4:46 AM on May 14, 2017

I was thinking, "didn't he add her to his google contacts when he put her number in his phone?"

But anyway, really happy that Master of None is back. Such a great show, so clever and innovative for a pretty small form. My one beef last season was his unexplained wealth (who can take months off to live in Italy and make pasta???!!), but the show's other charms overcome for me.

The Bicycle Thieves thing was a delicious delight. It didn't take itself too seriously, but it showed real love. Plus the music was, as always really great.
posted by latkes at 7:11 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]

I love this show but that is something I think about too.

Dev doesn't just have unexplained wealth, he has unexplained luck, especially this season. I'm sure any aspiring actor watching would go nuts as Dev gets opportunity after opportunity handed to him.

But I love the positivity. Dev's a nice guy who does nice things, and all of his friends are nice too, and pretty much everyone else is nice. It's a happy show about happy people doing happy things... generally. If Donald Trump is president in their universe, they certainly don't mention it. It's a great escape. And it's intelligent, slow-paced storytelling that is willing to do weird things (like have an episode almost entirely in Italian, and in black-and-white, or to focus on different characters) to keep things interesting.
posted by mmoncur at 4:58 AM on May 15, 2017 [4 favorites]

There was a recent interview with Aziz where it was confirmed it doesn't take place in Trump-verse, which is nice.

Re: his wealth, I figure that that he makes a solid living as an actor doing commercial and made-for-TV work and has a solid nest egg built up from residuals from his gogurt commercial and whatnot? "blue collar" actors who are consistently taking on these kinds of small rolls aren't swimming in hollywood megabucks or anything but I assume you can afford a nice lifestyle if you have no kids, no debt, a good agent, etc. Anyway I think about this stuff too, also wtf does Arnold do for a living.
posted by windbox at 10:05 AM on May 15, 2017 [3 favorites]

Do we know what his parents do, for that matter? I could see his trajectory being that his parents have high-paying jobs, they paid off his college with minimal use of loans, and then he got a lucky gig or two that gave him enough money to do the pasta internship. (Though I don't remember last season that well. Was there a big job that he got right before the end?)

He probably rented out his old apartment as an AirBnB while he was gone, too, so he wouldn't have to worry about moving his stuff in/out of storage or finding a new place when he gets back, and that's also a pretty nice income stream. The AirBnB profits from a nice NYC apartment probably more than covered his daily expenses in Italy.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:15 AM on May 15, 2017 [1 favorite]

I thought dad was a doctor but maybe I'm confusing with Ansari's actual dad (which hey, since he's played by his actual dad...)

So yeah, I guess the implication is rich kid with a trust fund which makes the character somewhat less appealing to me.

Mostly I just feel like on a show that is very thoughtful about creating real people that reflect real New York, it's weird to just have the magical wealth like previous shows like Friends, which were really dumb about making everyone in NY mysteriously white. Like, I thought this show was smart, and that seems like a blind spot. But really, it's a thing that bugs me, but I still love the show.
posted by latkes at 11:22 AM on May 15, 2017

Yeah, Dev's dad is a doctor in the show; they show some of his early experiences practicing in the US in the Parents episode last season.
posted by Itaxpica at 9:58 PM on May 15, 2017 [2 favorites]

I was thinking he might have been able to locate her via Airbnb.
posted by larrybob at 1:14 PM on May 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Perhaps it's odd but I never expect a TV show or movie to be particularly realistic. In fact, if anything I'm surprised when it is realistic--which figures into a later episode in this season. So glad this show and this season are being discussed. Thanks, original OP!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:58 PM on May 21, 2017

I'm very late to watching this show but enjoying it a lot. This episode is such an interesting stylistic shift. Black and white, set in actual Italy with actual Italian actors, half the dialogue in Italian. (I watched it without subtitles by accident, which was pretty disorienting but it worked.) It's a very odd direction for an American comedy show to go in and it works really well. I also thought it notable that Ansari directed this episode himself, most of the first season is Wareheim directing.
posted by Nelson at 7:50 AM on August 27, 2017 [2 favorites]