Aziz Ansari: Right Now
Season 1 Premiere:
Jun 9, 2019
Metascore
Generally Favorable
72
User score
Generally Favorable
7.7
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
73% Positive
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
27% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Aug 6, 2019
85
The first 20-ish minutes are the most honest work Ansari has done, a litany of observations about the status quo that reveals a hunger and frustration that was buried under his happy-go-lucky persona. ... There’s a bit of flab, especially in the back half. ... But whatever soul-searching or image management that Ansari has gone through since the babe.net story has made him a better performer—one who is more able to dwell in gray areas of comedy.
Jul 9, 2019
80
“Right Now” is otherwise a packed set of punchlines and anecdotes about performative allyship, living in the moment, and how the goalposts of decency keep shifting. Complaining about “wokeness” could easily come off as out of touch and cranky, but Ansari largely avoids that trap by cracking smart, slyly scathing jokes about the “newly woke white people” whose well-meaning indignation can tip the scale into “condescending.”
User score
Generally Favorable
83% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
17% Mixed
1 Rating
1 Rating
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Jul 10, 2019
10
This is a beautiful redemption. As woke as ever he booms back onto the scene, hopefully this is good news for fans of Master Of Non
Jul 21, 2019
8
Post-scandal Ansari's frame of mind is clearly different from pre-scandal Ansari's. I'm so used to Ansari's impish delivery that the heartfelt moments were almost awkward, but I still laughed a lot. I found myself thinking about Bill Maher half way through the show. Aziz is like a funnier, less acerbic version of Maher here. He pokes at the uber-sensitivity of the "woke" crowd (particularly whites) and the ridiculousness of them trying to "out-woke" each other and shame anyone who doesn't meet whatever their personal woke bar is. While Aziz is clearly encouraging people to connect more and live in the moment, the bottom line is he made me LOL quite a few times, and if a comedian doesn't do that, it doesn't really matter what else they say.
Jul 9, 2019
80
It’s intentionally full of contradictions, and Ansari has no interest in trying to resolve them. Right Now feels like a reckoning because it feels like an hour of Ansari, actively and sometimes futilely and often hilariously, attempting to wrestle with what it means to be an artist in the world right now. I’m not sure that it matters much that the result is a tangle of contradictions and generalizations and personal stories; the tangle is carefully choreographed, and the contradictions are intentional. This version of reckoning is less about answers, and more about the process of posing them.
Jul 9, 2019
75
“Right Now” is a check-in, an update, a work-in-progress, and it strains to bring the audience back to Ansari, even while many have already come running.
Jul 10, 2019
70
At points like this [he recalls a “Parks and Rec” episode in which his character, Tom Haverford, installs a nanny cam in a teddy bear, which he then gives Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones)] “Right Now” feels like an intentional comeback-slash-apology — an earnest, if at times clunky, one. It's notable that his reflections on the jokes he would no longer perform today are infinitely more interesting than the jokes Ansari actually delivers.
Jan 3, 2020
60
As a grab-bag of chuckles and amateur philosophy, Right Now is completely serviceable. Anyone hoping for something deeper and darker risks being underwhelmed.
Jul 11, 2019
50
The question becomes how you treat the discomfort—as something to be celebrated, or as something to be denigrated. Ansari’s answer, over a show that has some great jokes and some distinctly less-great ones, is another kind of ellipsis: Can we just talk about something else? ... Another way that Right Now is of its moment: It is a work of winkily manufactured authenticity.
Jul 16, 2019
7
This comedy special seems like an ernest heartfelt apology that transcends into a meditation on subjectivity.
