• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, December 2, 2015

Consumers now assign personal attributes to brands they use. On Facebook, it is possible to “friend” Walmart. Roto-Rooter, the friendly drain unclogger, that has over 15,000 “likes.”

We bond with brands. Users want authenticity and I’m thinking about that now because after binge-watching Aziz Ansari’s “Master of None” on Netflix,  a comedy he created with collaborator Alan Yang.

It’s the first one I can think of that isn’t some routine fish-out-of-water laughfest about a non-white person coping in what is still a pretty white culture. Indeed, “Master of None” is specifically about an Indian-American actor, (Ansari, playing a character named Dev Shah) who is fighting not to be typecast that stereotypical way, even though that’s the avenue that is most open to him. In ten parts, “Master of None” also avoids stereotypes of Asians, lesbians, nerdy guys and even old people.This might be the most respectful sitcom ever. 

Except for the first episode, and a few scenes in others that are far more sexual than commercial TV gets, this is a series that could have been green-lit by any network.

Except TV would lose the heart of the show. Ansari’s Shah could keep his integrity, but not be adamant about it, and there’d also be an appealing Indian character who loves the 7-Eleven clerk jokes. “America,” of the sort ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox think they know so well, would eat it up, or so the thinking would go. The series would be turned into Wonder Bread. It would be  blanditized, the way Arby’s horsey sauce is a nice, safe version of real, kickier horseradish.

Netflix, and HBO before it, don’t pull those punches, and for that, consumers love them.

People don’t watch networks, they watch programs, goes the industry axiom. But people do watch Netflix, separate and distinct from other content providers, online on on-screen, because as it’s gotten into original programming, it’s set itself up as an alternative culture to establishment television.

Somehow, millions of viewers can handle some challenging confrontation; somehow, Netflix has also realized that the demographic make-up is changing so that balance of power between the offended and the offender is all new territory that has been defined as streaming video. The fascinating extra layer is that Netflix has stacks of research about their viewers, right down to where in a piece of content they quit watching, where they fast forward, where they pause, and when the credits roll

Explains data-crunchers Kissmetrics, “Why does Netflix want to know when the credits roll? They probably want to see what users do afterward. Do they leave the app or go back to browsing? Notice how Netflix now offers movie recommendations (they have personalization algorithms that aim to accurately predict what users will watch next) soon after credits start (or, for television shows, they automatically play the next episode). Because if users leave the app after watching a show, that may mean they are more likely to cancel.”

Armed with that kind of fine-grain information, it’s apparent that what Netflix programming allows is also what Netflix knows its customers want to handle, using tools conventional TV networks don’t have yet. “Master of None” however, benefits from old style TV. Aziz Ansari’s comic rebellion against the Hollywood stereotypes couldn’t exist if the content power brokers hadn’t perpetuated the context. Too late now.