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59 Open Book 60 ­“Class Cluelessness” 60 Off the Shelf 63 Chapter and Verse

Comic License Jaunts to Nashville and Italy aside, stays, and , writing in Hollywood is filmed, in New York City (top). On set in the subway, castmates by sophia nguyen (left) and James Ciccone confer with co-creators and Yang. n the television show Master of None, Though the sons That episode won an Emmy two Asian-American treat their have some explicit Alan Award in 2016, its initial seed parents to dinner. Awkwardly, one an- takeaways from the Yang coming from the family lore of

nounces the purpose of the meal: “We encounter (“What COURTESY OF ALAN YANG series co-creator Alan Yang ’02.

KC BAILEY/UNIVERSALKC TELEVISION/NBCU PHOTO BANK VIA GETTY IMAGES I wanted to learn more about you and how an insane journey! My dad used to bathe in Yang grew up in southern California’s Inland you got here.” But when prompted to share a river, and now he drives a car that talks Empire, and at Harvard found two refuges a story, his father is stoic: “I cannot think to him!”), the episode’s deeper insight is from culture shock. The first was playing in of anything noteworthy.” The son persists. conveyed by inference: how, without out- a punk-rock band in the Boston suburbs; the “Come on—there’s got to be something, ward conflict or obvious angst, the children second was . For many, the right? Like, well, what did you do when of immigrants become deracinated. A gen- campus humor magazine has been a career you were growing up in Taiwan?” “I worked erational gap can become a feature of the chute straight to Hollywood, and he began to very hard.” “Okay, did anything particular- landscape without anyone thinking to ask pursue comedy in earnest while on staff. Still, ly interesting happen?” A long pause. “No.” how or when it opened. Yang maintains that there was a fundamental

56 July - August 2017

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Montage innocence to the activity. “Look, one of the The second season has Dev face greatest things about the Lampoon is, it’s a very both heartbreak (right) and career challenges (below, with pure point in your writing life, where you’re his reality-TV producer-boss, basically writing to please yourself and maybe played by Bobby Cannavale). 10 other 19-year-olds that you’re friends with in that building,” he says. “That’s a very pure In recent years, cable networks and thing to do! You’re not trying to write to sell a online players have thrown money script, or to get famous, or anything like that.” and creative control at promising The friendships formed in the red-brick writers. Such boom times have en- stronghold on Bow Street provided a ready- couraged an exploratory, sometimes made support system throughout Yang’s shaggy, approach to storytelling— postgraduate un- and underemployment especially on streaming-only platforms, in Los Angeles: “That alone gives you the where the series format has found new stamina to stay with it.” The time spent with flexibility. For the new season ofMaster of NETFLIX (2) his college band also came in handy during None, this manifests as a kind of whimsy: one his first substantial staff writing job, on the episode is a black-and-white riff on Italian NBC . Yang played neorealist cinema; another features the Jab- bass guitar in the fictional band of a first- bawockeez, a masked, silent hip-hop dance season guest star, “as basically an in-joke for crew, who help judge a cupcake contest. the writers’ room”; by the sixth season, that One of Yang’s favorite moments in the sea- character had been promoted to a series reg- son arrives in an episode called “The Dinner ular, and Yang got to share the stage with the Party,” when a lovelorn Dev says goodnight likes of Wilco. Starting as Parks’s most junior to a crush, who’s returning home to Italy writer, Yang learned the ropes of TV produc- with her boyfriend the next morning. They tion over its seven-year lifespan. There, he hug goodbye, and minutes later she sends season would have been all about public- also befriended the show’s most junior cast a jokey, flirtatious text message. The cam- ity tours. In the past, he’s described Master member, comedian Aziz Ansari, bonding era stays on Dev for the rest of his solo cab of None as a product of and about its makers’ over shared interests in nightlife and travel. ride—three full minutes of him sitting, glum “dying single years.” “Those single years are When Yang and Ansari struck out to co- and silent—and the episode ends just as he still continuing!” he says now, with a long, create their own series (in which Ansari gets out. “When I first saw that in the cut, I loud, burst of laughter. also stars), those enthusiasms were core to said, ‘Whatever happens, we cannot change Meanwhile, he’s gone on other explora- Master of None. Released by Netflix in 2015, this,’” Yang declares. “We’ve all sat in that tions. A trip to Asia inspired a screenplay it follows a young actor and foodie named cab! We’ve all gotten that text! The fact that he intends one day to produce and direct: Dev, living in New York with a plateauing you see him get out of that Uber is crazy to a country-hopping, intergenerational fam- career and a stalled relationship. If the last me. I love that.” On a traditional network, he ily drama, drawing on anecdotes he heard generation of urbanite were hang- adds, “There’s no way you’d get to do that.” while traveling with his father in Taiwan. out shows, anchored at a bar or apartment Time, and the freedom to spend it, have “He told me these stories that I out and out and offering the cozy feeling of home,Mas - been essential. The show’s looser produc- stole, and put in the movie,” says Yang. As ter of None is a wandering show—a chatty tion calendar allowed the writers to gath- ever, research was halting. “It was a lot of city walk with no particular destination in er new experiences and to hone them into me texting my mom and dad, and them not mind, making pit stops at food trucks and ideas—otherwise, claims Yang, the new answering.” restaurants. It’s stuffed more with incidents than plot turns—auditions for bit parts, weekend trips out of town, babysitting for friends—all cut with observational humor. Though some episodes home in on specific A Postmodern Youth topics, like cultural stereotypes or sexism, the show is most concerned with the para- Tahmima Anam’s Bengal trilogy finds a resting place. dox of choice. Dev maintains an epicurean, cheerfully noncommittal existence—under- by marina bolotnikova written by material security (he’s dining out on a lucrative Go-Gurt commercial), nagged by a creeping existential itch. In one epi- ubaida Haque, narrator of The ing the 1971 War of Independence. People sode, he and his friend tucker themselves Bones of Grace, envies the moral knew what was right and what was wrong out trying to decide where to go get tacos. clarity of her adoptive parents’ then, Zubaida imagines; Bengali national- This relaxed, leisurely air, premised on a Z generation. They grew up in ism had forever animated their lives with a sense of abundance, seems emblematic of Bangladesh when it was still East Pakistan, purpose that hers lacks. Four decades lat- the television industry’s rapid expansion. serving in the national liberation army dur- er, the family has grown wealthy through

Harvard Magazine 57

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746