Master of None (Recap) | Religion (S2 E3)

by Vikram Murthi | via Vulture

The two most discussed episodes of Master of None’s first season were “Parents” and “Indians on TV,” the ones that dealt explicitly with culture clash and personal identity.

Though the quality of those episodes varied — “Indians on TV” remains the best episode of the series, while “Parents” often felt arrhythmic and coasted on the delightful novelty of Aziz Ansari’s real-life parents onscreen — they both sincerely explored ideas crucial to most first-generation immigrants, something that’s still rarely seen on television.

“Religion” operates in the same mold by focusing on Dev’s (and in turn Ansari’s) Muslim faith, or really, lack thereof. In the episode, Dev pretends that he’s a devout Muslim in front of his religious relatives, even though he doesn’t observe prayer, isn’t fasting for Ramadan, and more importantly, he eats pork all the time. After tempting his cousin Navid (Harris Gani) into trying pork, the two skip Eid prayer to attend a barbecue festival, which prompts Dev to admit to his relatives that he’s not religious, offending them as well as his parents.

The episode opens with a sequence featuring kids being dragged against their will to various religious services by their parents. It’s a neat illustration of how religion mostly serves as a burden to kids who can’t quite grasp its cultural or personal value, and it’s also a microcosm of how Dev and his parents Ramesh and Nisha (Shoukath and Fatima Ansari) view religion differently. To Dev, it’s mostly been a prohibitive force and a reminder of his otherness, but to his parents, it’s a symbol of community and a guide to a fulfilling life. Aziz and his brother Aniz Adam Ansari, who co-wrote the episode, appropriately don’t privilege one viewpoint over the other, allowing them both to coexist equally as valid perspectives.

In doing so, “Religion” gets at something fundamentally true about the parent-child divide regarding faith: Many parents just want their children to respect their own beliefs even if they don’t share them. It sounds trite, but it’s a potent idea simply because religion is such a charged issue in America, despite its positive connotations for the majority of practicing people. Nisha takes Dev’s confession especially hard because Islam has been and will always remain a guiding force in her life, and she’s offended by his flagrant disrespect of her own beliefs. He tries to explain that he’s a good person and that abstaining from pork doesn’t negate that, nor does it act in opposition to her, but it’s not enough.

After two weeks of no contact with his mom, Dev finally asks his father why she won’t speak to him. Ramesh tells him that when he acts against his faith to their faces, it feels like they failed him. Of course that’s not actually true, but it still feels that way to them. The kicker comes when Ramesh lays it in easy-to-understand terms: “Look, man. You can drink, you can eat pork, you can smoke Mary Jane, that’s your business. But when you do it in front of mom, it hurts her feelings.” That’s a difficult argument to ignore.

Soon after, Dev picks up his Quran that his parents gave him in college and starts flipping through it. He finds a passage that speaks to him: “To you be your religion, to me my religion.” He texts his mother the passage and they start speaking again, mostly because she’s touched that he read the Quran at all. Crucially, Dev indicates that he understands his mother’s perspective even though he holds a different one.

To read the rest of the recap, “Religion,” click HERE!!!

Le Nozze (S2 E2) | First Date (S2 E4)