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Just finished this newest season and I'm a bit perplexed about the huge amounts of love it's getting. I liked but didn't love the first season and was excited to watch this newest one. I thought it was really mixed in quality. I love the aesthetic of the show - the music, the clothing, the stylistic choices - but the acting is often stilted and the whole Italy and Francesca storyline was pretty bad and left me feeling unsatisfied in a way that the romance of the first season didn't. OTOH, I thought that Thanksgiving, First Dates, and New York, I Love You were all excellent and made me realize that what I really want from Ansari and Yang is an anthology-type show that deals with being a young person in New York from multiple different perspectives. More than anything what bothered me this season was how the Francesca storyline came off as poorly written wish fulfilment for Ansari. Dev is the good guy who just wants to make a meaningful romantic connection in the big city. Francesca is the gorgeous Manic Pixie Dream Girl whose sole purpose in the show is to fall for Dev. Pino is the fiance who is just obnoxious enough to make him unlikeable. The whole thing in retrospect was just uninspired melodrama with shallow, uninteresting characters. Love Eric as Arnie and wish we had more of him, though.
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May 28, 2017 16:22
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 05:26 |
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Xealot posted:These are my biggest complaints. Francesca is clearly this fantasy fulfillment character who's beautiful and funny and empathic. But also she's never once noticed her fiancé is a negligent moron until our shoegazing hero forces the issue. It's nonsense. I guess the one point in favour of their relationship is that they're from a small town, and oftentimes these kinds of relationships of convenience can happen. The problem is that the show doesn't actually do anything to develop that premise over the season, despite having plenty of room to do it in. So many of the issues I have with the characters in this season being shallow could easily have been solved by adding a little extra depth. How about instead of just being an obnoxious, negligent partner Pino is a nice guy from whom Francesca has grown apart? How about instead of being a quirky dream girl Francesca is kind of obnoxious herself but Dev is just willing to ignore it because he's smitten? It really wouldn't have been that hard to slap an extra dimension on each of them over the course of a full season.
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May 29, 2017 06:52
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