How Aziz Ansari’s comedy changed

He whips out the “millennial” voice in his new Netflix standup special but has also transformed prematurely into an older, ‘wise owl’ persona

Aziz Ansari

As a comedian, one of Aziz Ansari’s biggest strengths has always been his ability to skewer the hypocrisies of both millennials and boomers — often during the same routine. He does this fast-paced, high-pitched voice for millennials and a suitably faux-gruff one for their parents. At the delivery level, it’s not as skillful as, say, (Dave) Chappelle, but the writing is generally excellent. In Ansari’s latest Netflix standup special, Nightclub Comedian (filmed a few months ago in New York’s Comedy Cellar in front of a very small audience), one such routine talks about how a lot of working-class Americans are leaving their oppressive industrial jobs because of poor working conditions and wages that have been stagnant for over a decade. And as Ansari points out, Covid-19 has only made things worse.

Linking avocados and TikTok

“Have you ever been to a Chipotle in Pennsylvania right now? It’s intense! It’s like the Chipotle’s got Covid (…),” Ansari says, before launching into a hilarious parody of a hassled Chipotle manager. “We don’t have any guacamole! There’s an avocado shortage and our guacamole guy quit last week and now he makes $50,000 making guacamole videos on TikTok.”

SANTA MONICA, CA - JANUARY 11: (EDITORS NOTE: Image was converted to black and white.) Aziz Ansari attends The 23rd Annual Critics' Choice Awards at Barker Hangar on January 11, 2018 in Santa Monica, California. (Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for The Critics' Choice Awards )

Observe how Ansari, 38, uses avocados and TikTok in this joke: they’re narrative emblems, almost, for millennials. Scratch the surface of the joke and you’ll see that it’s actually dense with meaning — the vagaries of the ‘influencer economy’, the decay of old American manufacturing hubs, the very real economic distress that Covid has caused and so on. This is Ansari’s strength: writing asymmetrical routines that incorporate wildly disparate themes in contemporary America. His Netflix show Master of None remains one of the smartest, funniest takes on contemporary dating mores.

He’s become edgier and noticeably less fidgety and visibly lower on energy—this was a comedian who was bouncing off every stage he performed at, practically. There were lots of hand gestures and silly voices and visual humour, earlier—not so much anymore.

Ansari pulls off a similar sleight-of-hand while critiquing the ‘sustainability’ and ‘wellness’ ecosystems — spaces where, all too often, buzzwords cloak an absence of original thought or innovation. In this routine Ansari once again whips out his “millennial” voice and this time, accelerates steadily until it all becomes one confusing ball of jargon.

“Maybe I should invest more in crypto? Matthias, are you going to the event tonight? There’s going to be, like, a new pop-up for this collaboration that Travis Scott is doing with, like, Citibank and Chips Ahoy and they’re selling these limited edition Chips Ahoy designed by, like, emerging artists and whenever you go you get this limited edition tote bag with this limited edition T-shirt designed by these, like, eco-friendly emerging streetwear brands and when you come home, the tote bag, like turns into an NFT and, like, the NFT starts deejaying… and it’s ALL sustainable.”

Quieter, with a disdain for online culture

In 2018, Ansari was accused of sexual misconduct by an anonymous woman who was interviewed bybabe.net. It’s fair to say that these allegations, some of which he addressed during his last special The Road to Nowhere , have changed Ansari’s comedy style considerably, and not all of the changes have been for the better. He’s become edgier and noticeably less fidgety and visibly lower on energy—this was a comedian who was bouncing off every stage he performed at, practically. There were lots of hand gestures and silly voices and visual humour, earlier—not so much anymore. Instead, there’s a certain bruised-and-battered wisdom to his jokes now, as though he has transformed prematurely into an older, ‘wise owl’ persona.

Ansari kept cracking joke after joke about how we’re all trying to “out-woke” each other and it was increasingly difficult to see these jokes as anything other than vindictive. At one point he even went down the “how can you believe anything on the Internet” garden path, adding, for good measure, “this is the era of ‘alternative facts’”.

In Nightclub Comedian , there is an extended bit about Ansari not trusting technology anymore, since the wave of criticism he received on social media in 2018. He now uses a flip phone: “If I want to text somebody, I have to really want to say something specific to them!” He also says: “It works… I got my mind back, y’know?”

A step up from 2019

These are mildly bitter sentiments, expressed by a man who feels hard-done in the court of public opinion. This bitterness spoiled The Road to Nowhere for me when I saw the show live in New Delhi in May 2019 (Hannibal Buress was opening for Ansari in a largely packed house). Ansari kept cracking joke after joke about how we’re all trying to “out-woke” each other and it was increasingly difficult to see these jokes as anything other than vindictive. At one point he even went down the “how can you believe anything on the Internet” garden path, adding, for good measure, “this is the era of ‘alternative facts’”, referring to an Orwellian neologism generally attributed to Kellyanne Conway, once senior counselor at Trump’s White House.

Luckily, Nightclub Comedian , at just about 30 minutes of runtime, is too short to accommodate pettiness like this. Therefore, it counts as among Ansari’s better works of late. One hopes that moving forward, he keeps the bitterness and the pettiness to a minimum and channelises more of that ‘wise owl’ energy.