Master of None

These long, beguiling sequences don’t merely resonate with tension and emotion, they positively ache. ... Some early reviews have dismissed the season as overly slow and meandering. Don’t listen to them. It may take its time, but good things come to those who Waithe.

While the ending isn’t perfect, it doesn’t need to be. Moments In Love burrows into mundanity, discomfort, and grief and still finds humor and joy along the way. It’s beautifully captured but also messy. The only perfect marriage here is the one between the show’s aesthetics and its narrative.

It asks us to understand the flaws in these people we've been spending time with and forgive their frailties. Interpret that message as you will, but it doesn't take away from this season's accomplishment as legitimately inspired art.

Waithe’s performance is not as conventionally accomplished as Naomi Ackie, who co-stars as her wife and lights up the screen with each aptly chosen facial expression and line reading. ... Ansari is also masterful (pardon the pun) at capturing Waithe’s groundbreaking portrayal of queer romance and heartache by returning as director, and bringing auteuristic flourishes.

Waithe and Ansari ruefully ponder everything from complacency to the inevitable fate of all things. Which is to say that the third season of Master of None is consistent with its predecessors for so easily entwining us in what feels like a free-floating polyphony of life.

By shifting its focus from Dev to Denise, Master Of None gives us a third season that’s fresh and poignant and makes us want to see more after its first episode. Does it trip over its own pretentiousness at times? Sure. But that’s not a deterrent for us.

It’s sometimes too languorous for its own good, especially in its midsection, but it builds to a powerful pair of final episodes that really elevate Ackie, who gives a phenomenal performance.

It’s incredibly moving at times as it traces the arc of the two women’s relationship over a series of years and rocky moments, with Dev only popping in occasionally to help tether these installments to those that came before.

It’s in the final two episodes that this season becomes an essential chapter of the show, first by illustrating, with a warm and grounded intimacy, the lengths Alicia will go for the kind of love she craves in her life. But it’s the last episode that truly dazzles, pushing Master of None out of its comfort zone of lovelorn pining into emotional and ethical complexities that never lose their sense of headlong romance. Master of None has, finally and indisputably, grown up.

‘Moments in Love’ is well-paced and well-shot, even if its characters don’t always seem fully considered. In terms of characters and performances, Waithe’s version of Denise is noticeably more settled and self-assured.

The 55-minute opening episode effectively sets a mood and the state of the marriage, but can feel self-indulgent next to the second and third episodes, which both clock in at less than 30 minutes (albeit at times feeling longer than that). But those viewers willing to be patient will find reward in the penultimate episode. ... “Moments in Love” is a gamble that doesn’t fully pay off, but it’s great to know that after years apart, Ansari and Waithe were willing to try something both so different and yet so true to the larger spirit of what the show was before.

Season 3 tries to forge new ground and ends up on a familiar path instead. It’s a de-evolution of the series’ wide-ranging ethos, trading dozens of unexpected moments in order to refashion just one.

The slowness of Moments in Love is likely to frustrate a lot of viewers, especially those more attuned to the breezier, more life-affirming seasons that preceded it. But by paying such adoring attention to the mundane, Ansari and Waithe argue that it’s those small moments of connection, however fleeting, that matter more than the big, sweeping gestures we associate with romance.

While it's easy to see how that works out for both parties, the reward for viewers is more nebulous, one that feels more compelling in individual moments, as advertised, than its impact as a whole.

The new season of Master of None is so committed to exploring every element of Denise and Alicia’s distance that it moves at a glacial pace—most of its five episodes come in at around 30 minutes; two are nearly an hour long. Much of the dialogue is stilted and heavy-handed. ... The season is strongest when subtly communicating the betrayals that can present uniquely in queer relationships.

The season struck me as too artistically conservative in many places. In particular, Moments in Love requires you to be all in on Denise and Alicia’s marriage early on for the later strife they face throughout the fertility treatment process to land. ... The tight frames of this season don’t imprison the characters. They imprison the show itself.