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master of none

'Master of None' taught us all how to be a bit more grateful.

If there is one show worth watching ahead of the holidays, it's the "Thanksgiving" episode of the critically acclaimed "Master of None" Netflix series.

[rebelmouse-image 19469851 dam="1" original_size="480x199" caption=""Thanksgiving" warmed the hearts and minds of people around the country." expand=1]"Thanksgiving" warmed the hearts and minds of people around the country.

Released this summer, the episode was so touching and thought-provoking that its writer, Lena Waithe, made history in becoming the first black woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing.

Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

The episode follows queer character Denise Watkins (Lena Waithe) and her coming-out story through decades of Thanksgivings with her family.

There are a lot of things that made this episode great. From watching Catherine, Denise's mom (Angela Bassett), capture many familiar aspects of black motherhood to Dev (Aziz Ansari) and Denise’s unbreakable friendship to a rare happy ending for a black queer couple in love, "Master of None" gave us a heartwarming story centered around queer black culture not often seen on screen.

Here are five important lessons from "Thanksgiving" that viewers should take into the holiday season.

1. Friendship is truly the key to life.

Denise and Dev’s decades-long friendship showed the importance of friends who love us through all the highs and lows.

Dev’s annual appearance at the family’s Thanksgiving dinner was an important tradition to the family. It gave Dev an opportunity to see and understand Denise for who she truly was and to be a source of refuge for her as she began dating in front of her family. Without Dev’s support, Denise’s coming-out experience may have been very different, and it’s clear that having Dev as a presence at the house was vital to her feeling comfortable with her family.

2. Queer people fall in love, fall out of love, and love again, just like everyone else.

"Master of None" is one of the few public representations of queer love between two women that isn't overly dramatic, doesn't involve cheating, and didn’t end with one of the characters dying.

These queer female characters have values, jobs, preferences, desires, and, well, you know, human complexities. In "Thanksgiving," Michelle and Denise's breakup (despite still being in love) was representative of an experience many queer women go through on the quest to find their match.

Michelle and Denise were a rare — and necessary — representation of female queer couples of color. Image from "Master of None."

Not all women are the best romantic partners, and queer women do in fact sometimes date women who are ultimately not a good fit. Queer women also sometimes date women who are terrible and hurtful or simply not compatible, just as straight women date men like this. The quest for love is difficult for most people, queer or not, and "Thanksgiving" gave us one of the most authentic representations of that journey.

3. Changing hearts and minds takes time, and that’s OK.

In a perfect world, everyone would be understanding, empathetic to others' experiences, and everyone could be unapologetically themselves.

"Thanksgiving" shows viewers that while this isn’t typically the case initially, change is possible. It appeared Denise may never feel comfortable bringing a committed partner home to the family after her mom and aunt’s didn't react great to her girlfriend, Michelle...

[rebelmouse-image 19469854 dam="1" original_size="480x196" caption="GIF from "Master of None."" expand=1]GIF from "Master of None."

But by the third Thanksgiving after coming out, Michelle was plating cornbread and joking with Denise’s mother. We are all human, and some people take longer than others to adjust to change. In this episode, viewers find that giving people a chance — and a little bit of time — can often change hearts and minds.

4. Our families aren’t perfect, but they are ours.

Families are complicated. Between different views, complex pasts, and relative resentments, family gatherings can be a difficult place, having to engage with all these various components. Still, our family is our family. While we certainly shouldn't exempt hatred and bigotry, nor surround ourselves with problematic people just because we're related by blood, if there's room for growth, embrace it.

A family that works through things together is a gift.

5. Find gratitude — even in the little things.

[rebelmouse-image 19469855 dam="1" original_size="735x306" caption="Image from "Master of None."" expand=1]Image from "Master of None."

Food. Shelter. Friends. Family. A job. A car. That really good coffee you grabbed on the way to Thanksgiving dinner.

It’s no secret that 2017 has been a challenging year. Attacks on LGBTQ people have spiked, public policy decisions have been put in place that undermine policies meant to support the most vulnerable, and immigrants, Muslims, and people of color have been under increased scrutiny in society.

We can't ignore these realities, but we must take stock of all the good things that have happened and will continue to happen. Activists are continuing to fight for equality, minorities are continuing to shine in the face of oppression, and people are continuing to live their best lives on their own terms.

A grateful heart can do a lot more than an ungrateful one.

This Thanksgiving, follow the Watkins family and enjoy good food, good laughs, and a good holiday.

Lena Waithe's Emmys acceptance speech is the LGBTQ battle cry of 2017.

It happened. It really, really happened.

Lena Waithe and Aziz Ansari took home the award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for their work on "Master of None," at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards.

The duo won for the episode "Thanksgiving," from the critically acclaimed Netflix series.

Aziz Ansari (L) and Lena Waithe accept Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for 'Master of None' Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

"Thanksgiving" chronicles the coming out journey of Denise (played by Waithe) over years of Thanksgiving dinners. From realizing she might be queer to bringing home a girlfriend and the many complicated and awkward moments in between, much of the deeply personal episode was pulled directly from Waithe's own experience as a black lesbian woman.

"This is probably the most autobiographical thing I’ve ever written," Waithe said in an interview with Vulture earlier this year. "But it is about a ten-year difference from when I came out to making this episode, so I have a lot of space and distance from it, which I think is the best way to tell the story. It’s like, 'Okay, in hindsight this happened,' and to see the progression I thought was really important."

Waithe's acceptance speech was an inspiring battle cry to LGBTQIA people everywhere.

Ansari stood to the side as Waithe did all the talking for the award-winning duo, thanking Netflix, her family, and professional collaborators before taking a moment to lift up and celebrate the LGBTQIA community.

— (@)

"And last but certainly not least my LGBQTIA family, I see each and every one of you. The things that make us different, those are our superpowers. Every day we walk out the door, put on your imaginary cape and go out there and conquer the world. Because the world would not be as beautiful as it is if we weren't in it."

With her Emmy win, Waithe becomes the first black woman to win the Emmy for comedy writing.

Yes, in 2017 there are still plenty of firsts, landmark moments, and milestones to hit when it comes to black and queer history.

Here's to Waithe, Ansari, and all of the people of color putting in work to improve representation and tell heartfelt, funny, authentic stories.

Actors Kelvin Yu, Aziz Ansari, Lena Waithe and executive producer Alan Yang. Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images.

If you're going to paint everyone from the southern United States with a broad, red brush, don't do it around Aziz Ansari.

Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP.

The comedian, who grew up in South Carolina, recently sat down with New York magazine's Jada Yuan to promote the second season of his critically acclaimed Netflix series "Master of None."

The interview went well — except, Yuan admitted, for one moment: when she made an off-the-cuff remark suggesting Ansari's series — which follows Dev Shah, a son of Indian immigrants, and his diverse set of friends living in liberal New York City — is a love letter to the "blue states."

Her comment didn't sit well with Ansari.

Ansari doesn't like when the term "red state" is used to mean people who are backward or ignorant.

It's been his experiences as an Indian-American who grew up in South Carolina — one of the very "red states" often cited that way — that shaped his viewpoint.

As he explained to Yuan (emphasis added):

“Look, don’t say ‘red-staters,’ because when you say ‘red-staters,’ you’re saying, like, ‘dumb, racist people,’ and there are plenty of white people there who are not dumb, racist people. Maybe I’m just very quick to react when, as a culture, we try to paint this whole large group of people as one specific thing. Because that’s what, as a minority, you deal with all the time. It’s just people looking at you and being like, ‘You’re this. I know exactly what you are.’ And you’re like, ‘Shut up! That’s not me. You don’t know me.’”

Ansari's point may be obvious, but it's one we often forget in this politically charged time: simply living in a red (or blue) state says nothing more about your values than your shirt size does. Just because a state swings red or blue in an election doesn't mean that everyone living in that state or district automatically adopts the majority viewpoint.

Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP.

Don't mistake the comedian's soft spot for red America as excusing harmful, dangerous rhetoric though — Ansari's been among President Trump's toughest critics in Hollywood for months.

Ansari never wanted his comedy to get political. But in the era of Trump, he couldn't stay silent.

With every anti-Muslim speech or policy proposal from the president, Ansari's own Muslim family is personally affected.

The day after Trump's inauguration, Ansari hosted "Saturday Night Live," hilariously slamming white supremacy and providing the comic relief so many of us desperately needed in that moment. Last summer, he penned a blistering takedown of then-candidate Trump's harmful immigration policies in the New York Times, in which he's quoted as discouraging his mother from going to a mosque for her own safety.

Donald Trump wants to ban Muslim immigrants like my parents, so I wrote a piece for the @NYTimes telling him to go fuck himself. Link in bio.
Posted by Aziz Ansari on Friday, June 24, 2016

Ansari is not afraid to go on the offensive and address racism, sexism, and Islamophobia in his comedy. However, the butt of Ansari's jokes are, specifically, dangerous people and ideas that are helping to keep xenophobia afloat — not every single person who happened to live in a state that went red for Trump in November.

To assume or imply that every person living in a red state embodies the stereotype of being backward or ignorant erases the work of people like Scott Shaffer, in deep-red Texas, who's been laser-focused on stopping harmful bills from passing through Congress. It ignores the people who turned out in droves in Wyoming last week wearing colorful tutus to support LGBTQ equality. It forgets the thousands of women who marched in places like Cincinnati and Tucson the day after Trump's inauguration in defiance of misogyny and discrimination of any kind.

These people of the resistance are red-staters, too — just like Ansari. That's a crucial and often overlooked point to remember.

Aziz Ansari thanked Netflix for getting 'what diversity really is' in a candid speech.

'Let's have a show where there's a token white guy.'

Aziz Ansari is the co-creator and star of "Master of None," a show that's pretty revolutionary for a sad reason: It actually reflects the diversity of the real world.

Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images.

"Master of None" has a diverse cast in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation.

And that's not as common as it should be in Hollywood.

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images.

So when Ansari was honored at the Peabody Awards on May 21, 2016, he gave thanks where thanks was due.

"I want to thank Netflix and Universal for believing in us and letting us tell our stories," he said.

"I think they really seem to get what diversity really is. It's not, 'Hey, let's give this white protagonist a brown friend!' No. It's, 'Let's have a show where there's a token white guy.' And that's what [our show] is."

Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Peabody.

In an entertainment landscape still embarrassingly homogenous (behind and in front of the camera) Ansari is right: Netflix stands out.

Hollywood tends to create content that's overwhelming white, heterosexual, and told through the male perspective (didn't you watch the Oscars this year?). In Netflix's original programming, however, you'll find quite a few projects that buck the trend.

The cast of "Orange Is the New Black." Photo by Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images.

Series like "Orange Is the New Black," "Narcos," and "Master of None" prove TV can certainly be successful, sans-white leads. Superheroine "Jessica Jones" is breaking down gender stereotypes when it comes to action series. "Sense8" is piling on awards for its groundbreaking inclusion of LGBT characters and themes. And it says a lot that the company's first original theatrical film — "Beasts of No Nation," starring Idris Elba — featured an all-black cast.

"We’re programming for diverse and eclectic tastes and for an increasingly global audience," Cindy Holland, Netflix's vice president of original content,told Variety. "So the folks working on those titles and the folks here at Netflix serving those consumers have to increasingly be more reflective of the audience we serve and the programs we make. It’s something we’re very focused on."

Idris Elba at the 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images.

It's not just Netflix, either. Other streaming services — namely, Hulu and Amazon Prime — can boast relatively diverse original content as well, with hits like "Transparent,""The Mindy Project," and "Difficult People" breaking the mold.

Still, across virtually all platforms (streaming or not), there's ample room for improvement.

Thankfully, diversity in television is, slowly but surely, getting better (to Ansari's delight, I'm sure).

Although streaming companies have largely led the push for change, network TV is beginning to come around.

But could this desire for diversity simply be a hot trend that'll surely fade?

That's a firm, "no" from Holland, who said Netflix is "absolutely" committed to making its programming even more diverse. It seems like they're not alone.

Diversity on TV shouldn't be all that revolutionary. But until it isn't, at least we have Ansari's candid acceptance speeches to look forward to.

Photo by Jonathan Leibson/Getty Images for Variety.

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