Master of None is known for being a show which tries to show multiple perspectives on numerous issues, from personal and relationship problems, to widespread social issues. An episode from Season 2 titled New York, I Love You shows off how capable the creators of the show are of exploring this perspectives, as the episode moves between numerous characters all living in New York, living very different lives.
What really stood out to me in this episode, is the way they transition from one character to another. The first new characters we meet in this episode is Eddie, a door man working in fairly lavish apartment building, where the residents ask a lot of him. While administering medicine for one resident’s pet bird, Mr Strickland’s wife comes home to find him with another woman and starts throwing his clothes out onto the street, after the man asked Eddie to warn him if she came into the building. This event leads us to the transition from Eddie’s story to Maya’s.
When Eddie’s friend comes back in from the street showing off Mr Strickland’s jacket he picked up off the street, we can see how happy Eddie is with his decision to stand up for Mr Strickland. His friend, who like Eddie, is often treated poorly by the upper class residents who they work for, as ended up with a rare win from the situation.
As his friend leaves the building, the camera slowly zooms in on Eddie, communicating to the audience Eddie’s feeling of content, as well as a sense of closure to his story.
The camera then cuts to Eddie’s friend as he crosses the street, clothes still falling from the apartment above. The yelling we can hear from the couple also reminds us that there is still more to this story, and that the current happiness we’re seeing on screen is oddly enough a direct result of Mr. Strickland’s affair.
The camera then follows the man as he works down the street and into the store where Maya works, suggesting that Eddie and Maya are working a relatively close distance to one another. As the camera pans over to the counter to focus on Maya, the sound fades out to complete silence. The lack of sound at first feels strange and uncomfortable, but it’s a powerful way of quickly communicating to the audience how Maya experiences the world, as we soon see from her interaction with a customer that Maya is deaf.
While this is clearly an important part of Maya’s character, it doesn’t define her, as we see in the subsequent scenes, however it has clearly shaped who she is due to how it changes her everyday experiences. By cutting out audio entirely in her scenes, the show is able to immerse its audience in her perspective, and it encourages us to consider how others may experience the world differently to ourselves.
The transitions in this episode really reinforce its core message: “We need to consider other people’s perspective, because we are all connected more closely than we may realise.” Like many other moments in the series, it reminds us how we need to show respect one another and try harder to understand one another, rather than jumping to conclusions.