Even TV Is Struggling to Connect

A few unspoken subjects hang over the third season of Netflix’s , as inescapable as air. One is the sidelining of Aziz Ansari’s character, Dev, for reasons that I can only assume relate to Ansari’s desire to be less conspicuous . Another is the fact that the series, set in New York City and the vague hinterland of “upstate,” was filmed in the U.K., a feint that provoked a sense of inauthenticity I couldn’t shake. The most crucial invisible element, though, is the reality of the past year. Denise (Lena Waithe) and her wife, Alicia (Naomi Ackie), live on a blissfully coronavirus-free plane, and yet the pandemic inflects everything: the characters’ isolation, their feelings of entrapment, the tedious repetition of their routines, the prominence of health-care workers. This third season is presented as a spin-off and subtitled , but its most dominant feeling is