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What should a reckoning look like?
Thats not the questionAziz Ansaris new specialRight Nowposes not exactly.
There are other questions Ansaris more interested in asking.
Questions like: What should we do about good art made by bad men?
How should we feel about our own beloved cultural totems that have aged badly?
How do we have conversations about changing cultural values that dont instantly slide into simplistic reductions?
(Parks and Rec!
Yeah, yeah, thats me.
You had that whole thing last year, sexual misconduct?
Its there as he says he hope[s] he has become a better person since then.
The accusation is the springboard Ansari uses to leap into the set.
That set has aged badly, something Ansari readily owns.
Thats the way itssupposedto be, he says.
I dont know this kid!
Ansari yells in mock dismay.
And then Ansari twists the knife: There was no pizza, there was no swastika.
The story is made up.
The implications of that bit are not subtle or hard to parse.
Were all shitty people!
This version of reckoning is less about answers, and more about the process of posing them.
Through it all, Ansari sits on a stool, speaking both casually and directly.
It is sparse and close and intimate and bare.
The guy he used to be, the guy who didnt appreciate it enough?
That guy, Ansari says,is dead.
Goodnight, he tells them, earnestly, and thank you very much.
