Aziz Ansari: Right Now

It’s the most organic and tactically nimble post-#MeToo comeback thus far ... His crackerjack flash is starkly subdued. Ansari probably makes about three too many earnest appeals to our better nature and the need to live in the present. But this is still the work of a comedy veteran who channels righteous fed-up-ness and critiques obliviousness with relatable flair.

“Right Now” is otherwise a packed set of punchlines and anecdotes about performative allyship, living in the moment, and how the goalposts of decency keep shifting. Complaining about “wokeness” could easily come off as out of touch and cranky, but Ansari largely avoids that trap by cracking smart, slyly scathing jokes about the “newly woke white people” whose well-meaning indignation can tip the scale into “condescending.”

It’s intentionally full of contradictions, and Ansari has no interest in trying to resolve them. Right Now feels like a reckoning because it feels like an hour of Ansari, actively and sometimes futilely and often hilariously, attempting to wrestle with what it means to be an artist in the world right now. I’m not sure that it matters much that the result is a tangle of contradictions and generalizations and personal stories; the tangle is carefully choreographed, and the contradictions are intentional. This version of reckoning is less about answers, and more about the process of posing them.

Everything about the production of Right Now is incredibly well considered, from the special’s more intimate setting (at least, compared to MSG) to Ansari’s casual wardrobe to Jonze’s choice to remain onstage with the comedian, where he personally captures even the briefest of pauses. His energy shifts up and down, but his act-outs—which run the gamut from impersonating performers of “wokeness” to succinct racists to his 25-year-old self—remain a reliable source of humor.

“Right Now” is a check-in, an update, a work-in-progress, and it strains to bring the audience back to Ansari, even while many have already come running.

There is no apology, though hardly no remorse. ... From there, "Right Now" becomes, in a comically inverted way, a plea for tolerance,for perspective shift, for a check-out-the-world (from where I stand) riff. ... Risky show, risky strategy and both pay off.

At points like this [he recalls a “Parks and Rec” episode in which his character, Tom Haverford, installs a nanny cam in a teddy bear, which he then gives Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones)] “Right Now” feels like an intentional comeback-slash-apology — an earnest, if at times clunky, one. It's notable that his reflections on the jokes he would no longer perform today are infinitely more interesting than the jokes Ansari actually delivers.

As a grab-bag of chuckles and amateur philosophy, Right Now is completely serviceable. Anyone hoping for something deeper and darker risks being underwhelmed.

His small rebellion is the implicit insistence that, even as purity politics increasingly govern the lives of anyone who isn’t an out-and-proud bigot, he’s only as flawed as every other human being. Ansari might not be entirely wrong. I just hope he’ll be funnier—and more original—the next time around.