‘Aziz Ansari: Right Now’ Proves Aziz Is Ready To Move On By Once Again Focusing Completely On Himself

Aziz Ansari’s 2018 began with disastrous revelations about his romantic communication skills and ended with the comedian embarking on a comeback stand-up tour called “Road to Nowhere.”
But what about right now? That road to nowhere led to Aziz Ansari: Right Now, a Netflix concert film directed by Spike Jonze from Ansari’s performances May 16-18, 2019, at BAM’s (Brooklyn Academy of Music) Howard Gilman Opera House. It’s Ansari’s first stand-up special in four years, since 2015’s Live at Madison Square Garden. In between, he wrote a best-selling book (Modern Romance) and won the Golden Globe for acting and two Emmys for writing on his Netflix series, Master of None.
Master of None‘s second season ended in May 2017 with episodes that exposed one of its characters as sexually inappropriate, and another as unrealistic.
In the months that followed, the #MeToo movement went mainstream, and Ansari himself went on a date that — no matter who or what you believe — did not quite follow his “modern romance” advice that had made him rich and famous enough to get a woman in his apartment to submit to his bidding. Ansari apologized to the woman later upon realizing his fault. And after the woman’s anonymous recounting of the date went viral online, Ansari had to apologize on a global scale, and retreated from the public stage for months.
So now he’s dressed down after his own dressing-down, ditching the suits and jackets for a Metallica T-shirt, jeans and sneaks.

Despite what you may have read about his earlier stops on this tour, he’s quick to address the allegations about him, saying: “You know, I haven’t said much about that whole thing, but I’ve talked about it on this tour, because you’re here, and it means a lot to me.”
Ansari said his friends confided that they went back through their own dating histories to examine their behaviors. As for Ansari?

“There’s times I felt scared. There’s times I felt humiliated. There’s times I felt embarrassed. And ultimately, I just felt terrible that this person felt this way. And after a year or so, I just hope it was a step forward. It moved things forward for me and made me think about a lot. I hope I’ve become a better person.”

The Brooklyn audience applauds Ansari for telling us how feels, although, in quite the same manner he displayed in Master of None, it’s still all just about him and his feelings. He’s the protagonist and we’re meant to root for him. No matter what Francesca felt about Dev and Pino or wanted in Master of None; nor what “Grace” wanted that night in Ansari’s apartment.
But Ansari has moved on. He has a Danish girlfriend now, and where he once was the woke comedian, he’s now ready to make us laugh at “newly woke white people” who treat social media as a virtue-signaling video game, earning points by out-woking each other.
Which leads to this bit about white audiences loving Crazy Rich Asians.

Part of the fun here, Ansari acknowledges, is “it’s just fun to make white people feel bad,” and reminding them that Indian-Americans knew The Simpsons‘s Apu was problematic 30 years before they did falls into that category, too.
But Ansari, having time to reflect on his own misdeeds and seeing those of others called out on social media, has gained enough perspective to realize that even some of our own beloved TV shows and movies from the 21st century have included problematic dialogue or plot points. He also has enough sense to lump himself in with the rest, citing a Parks and Recreation episode in which his character gives a woman a teddy bear with a secret camera inside of it.
“You can’t judge everything by 2019 standards,” Ansari argues, adding a few moments later: “Look, we’re all shitty people, OK? And we have our blind spots! And we become aware and we slowly get better.”
Before pointing out our ongoing blind spots —such as neglecting America’s homeless and incarcerating young black men for selling marijuana— Ansari brings the focus back onto himself.
After all, the comedian did close out his first Comedy Central special with a bit about still loving R. Kelly and going to one of his concerts.

“The bit has not aged well!” Ansari confides now.
He’s also not as proud about bits in which he joked about his younger cousin, Harris. “Uh, probably no reason to fat shame my little cousin on a global scale,” he says now. “I just threw little Harris under the bus!”
But Ansari said he didn’t care at 25. Now 36, he’s putting more care into his content. Although he also jokes about how YouTube videos can convince viewers of almost anything, and he’ll also demonstrate how he can convince his live audience of made-up scandals.
His point, ultimately, is that too many of us exist in a place where we’ll believe what we want to believe, and issue proclamations based upon those beliefs. Which also extends to whatever you probably believe about Ansari, too.
Some think-pieces or hot takes on Ansari may have led you to believe that he’s a much different comedian now than when he first burst onto TVs via the MTV and his sketch comedy trio with Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel, Human Giant.
And to be fair, Ansari is far from the energetic Randy he played in Funny People, or even the Tom Haverford in Parks and Rec who had get-rich-quick schemes and urged his Pawnee co-workers to “treat yo self.”

Since making Master of None, Ansari also has developed solid routines here about re-examining the relationships we have with our elders, about dating that’s both interracial and inter-cultural, and about the politics of birth control, all of which work well on their own.
But the title of Ansari’s new Netflix special isn’t wordplay. He hasn’t moved politically or culturally to the right, nor is he claiming himself correct.
He realizes that he could have been “cancelled.” He’s grateful he wasn’t. Going on a “Road To Nowhere” is meaningless; instead, he can cherish still having a platform to tell us how he feels, right now.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Aziz Ansari: Right Now on Netflix