Last night the 29th annual GLAAD Media Awards were held in Los Angeles, and along with fulfilling the salutary purpose of presumably irritating the shit out of Mike Huckabee (frankly, it’s odd he didn’t try out one of his signature painful-joke tweets—“I’ll be GLAAD when this show is over,” or some such—during the…
Lena Waithe was no doubt booked on Tuesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! to plug Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Ready Player One (she plays Aech). But the conversation between Waithe and Kimmel quickly revealed how much more the Chicago native has going on right now. Sure, a meaty role in a likely Spielberg blockbuster is nothing…
Television provides so many units in which to appreciate the medium’s annual output. A series can leap to the forefront on the strengths of a single great season; if it’s running as part of the traditional broadcast calendar, those accolades might have two halves of separate seasons. Try as streaming services and…
While the people behind the Emmys would probably tell you that every award is special, three awards at tonight’s ceremony have extra historical significance.
The A.V. Club is counting down the days leading up to the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, September 17, with an examination of this year’s major categories. Each day, TV editor Erik Adams is breaking down a category and giving us his picks for who should win, and who will win. Today we’re looking at the nominees…
To the protagonists go the TV spoils: The spotlight scenes, the attention of award-giving bodies, the premium paychecks. And while a well-realized main character might hook you in to a TV show, that show isn’t worth sticking with unless its world is also populated by equally well-realized characters who support,…
Thomas Golubić, a music supervisor for series like Better Call Saul and Halt And Catch Fire who describes his job as “byzantine,” might be up for an Emmy this year. When nominations are announced on July 13, they will include the debut of a category dedicated to the people who help put songs in shows.
From a business prospective, the forecast for TV in 2017 isn’t the brightest: While ratings continue to erode for the broadcast networks, several cable outlets that joined the original-programming gold rush are now backing out, with cash-flush digital competitors like Facebook and Snap poised to stake those abandoned…
The Netflix series Master Of None is largely based on wacky and/or touching moments from co-creator Aziz Ansari’s real life, but as anyone who has been following the misadventures of the Trump administration can attest, some things happen in real life that would be too absurd for fiction. Apparently, Ansari runs into…
Master Of None’s season two finale sees Dev through personal and professional crises, as his new business venture with Chef Jeff and his romantic month with Francesca both come crashing to their ends. At times, it’s a difficult episode to watch. But “Buona Notte” touches on the season’s central theme of what it means…
Here’s what’s up in the world of television for Monday, May 29. All times are Eastern.
Even though it’s one of the season’s central ongoing storylines, Dev and Francesca’s unfurling romance hasn’t been as well developed as some of the other narratives that make up this ambitious and varied season. “Amarsi Un Po’,” at least, develops Dev’s attraction to Francesca beyond surface-level details. There’s an…
Thanksgiving is a loaded holiday for a lot of queer folks. For some, it means going back into the closet entirely. For others, it means going partially back in the closet. Maybe your family knows you’re gay, but they don’t want you to be “too gay” at the dinner table. Maybe only some family members know because it…
The religion-focused third episode of this season of Master Of None introduces Navid, who learns about the world of pork products from his cousin Dev, played by series creator Aziz Ansari. Harris Gani is the actor tasked with portraying Navid, but he’s not just any old “Harris.” Rather he’s Ansari’s “chubby cousin…
It’s easy to oversimplify life’s big choices, to view decision-making as a process of choosing between this and that. But as the title of this episode of Master Of None suggests, there’s usually a “Door #3.” Television often presents characters with clear-cut choices between doors one and two. Master Of None digs…
Crafting a love letter to New York City certainly isn’t a groundbreaking concept in art, and yet Master Of None—with a story by Cord Jefferson and a teleplay from Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang—has written a striking love letter that soars above so much of television’s depictions of the city. Even its title reflects the…
Being in the TV business means always fielding questions about what’s next, but Aziz Ansari is fed up with being asked about a third season of Master Of None. Ansari explained at Vulture Festival over the weekend that he feels like he needs to “live [his] life a little bit” before coming up with more episodes of the…
For three episodes in a row now, Master Of None has really dazzled me with its final shot. The sequence at the end of “Religion” that draws parallels between Dev and his father’s preferred rituals and the final shot of Dev alone on his couch at the end of “First Date,” which captures the strange solitude dating apps…
Master Of None has been subtly fucking around with storytelling this season, departing even more from traditional narrative structures than the first season does. Each episode this season has been a loosely structured but evocative and charming vignette, and “First Date” is a vignette made up of smaller vignettes.…
“Religion” opens with a montage of resistant kids being dragged by their parents to their respective places of worship. Including a diverse array of religions (including Scientology, which heightens the humor a little too much), the montage suggests a widely relatable concept. But as it zooms in on Dev, starting with…