Why We Watch Relationships Fall Apart

This article contains spoilers through the third season of Master of None.

Of all the unnerving things I’ve witnessed in the anxiety cauldron that is New York’s Penn Station, one stands out. Back in 2019, I noticed a couple arguing in the middle of the squalid Amtrak waiting area. There was something transfixing about their escalating row—even before one of them stormed off, presumably leaving the other to board a train alone or cancel their trip altogether. I pondered the story that led to the dramatic departure: If that public spectacle was the final straw, what had been the private breakdowns preceding it?

Though it’s likely impossible to replicate the je ne sais quoi of unintentional public theater acted out in transit purgatories, an irresistible lineage of films, TV shows,’s third season, which arrives four years after the last one. Subtitled , the Netflix show shifts its focus from Dev (played by Aziz Ansari) to his friend Denise (Lena Waithe) and her wife, Alicia (Naomi Ackie). After publishing one successful novel, Denise is working on her second in a quaint upstate New York home that Alicia, an aspiring interior decorator, has outfitted with vintage Black collectibles. Dev visits the house for dinner one night with his partner, and they start to argue. This activates Alicia’s anxiety about her own marriage, and she asks Denise about trying to have a child, a pursuit that comes to define much of Alicia’s onscreen time.