Imagine strapping a camera on your typical, working class citizen for a day and following them around. What kinds of issues or obstacles would they face? What would it be like to live their life for a day? In Aziz Ansari’s masterfully crafted episode entitled “New York, I Love You” from the sophomore season of his Netflix show “Master of None,” he pays admiration and homage to those specific people.
An Overburdened and Overlooked Doorman
The episode starts off by featuring Dev and friends for a few seconds. They take the backseat and then the episode encroaches into the daily routine of Eddie, a doorman of a well-to-do apartment building for a few minutes.
We get an inside glimpse of the wild, erratic requests Eddie is faced with and forced to carry out - everything from a married man asking him to help cover up an affair to feeding a tenant’s unusually needy pair of birds. Although these requests may be fictionalized, the viewer obtains a peek of what the overburdened doorman may encounter on a day-to-day basis and how little he is thanked by the regular employee.
A Deaf and Sexless Bodega Cashier
The story shifts to Maya, a deaf employee at a nearby corner store. We are literally put in her shoes for a couple of minutes as the sound completely cuts out. From her encounter to being hit on by a customer to a heated ASL exchange with her boyfriend about their uneventful sex life in a home goods store, the average spectator is almost forced to pay more attention to the story line of Maya’s segment.
Rather than letting the middle portion of the episode aimlessly surf by, every little piece of dialogue and facial expression are observed at a heightened level.
A Cab Driver Looking For A Party
The last and final main character we meet is Samuel, an African immigrant cab driver. His long shift is only made worse by two fashionable, in vogue white women spoiling the chaotic ending to a Nicholas Cage movie while sitting in the backseat of the cab.
We also get a taste of his crammed living situation, where he shares an apartment with a few other African immigrants. Later that night, Samuel and his roommates are turned away from a nightclub and subsequently scammed into going to another one. After befriending a group of ladies and sharing a moment of joy and fun inside a burger joint, they all decide to go see the much talked about Nicholas Cage flick entitled, Death Castle.
It is here we see Dev and friends, along with the deaf couple inside the theater.
This episode leaned on the more unconventional side of the spectrum. However, it triumphantly hit on all cylinders. Ansari and co-creator Alan Yang opened the door to people who aren’t necessarily talked about in everyday television, whether that be due to their occupation, personal issues or setbacks, etc. It’s so easy to get sucked into our own bubble of problems that we often forget our world is full of other people with their own, unique problems that are just as serious and interesting. These are the types of people Ansari and Yang chose to highlight because they are truly what makes New York great.
