JP

ok so overall i did love it!!!

as i said in my other post, this series was definitely less funny than the first but that made sense since this one felt a lot more serious, and the emotional moments were by far the strongest imo!!!

the music was great OBVIOUSLY! 'villain era' is an instant classic, and i WILL be listening to the whole soundtrack on repeat lol!

i also really adored so many of the character moments in this series! bisma trying to find her identity as a black muslim woman (and the whole 'don't let me be misunderstood' scene made me bawl! genuinely one of the best bits of tv i've seen in ages!), ayesha's struggle with her relationship to the idea of coming out (which i'm SO happy they went the direction they did! it also really did make me cry too lol... also laura was hot as fuck) and saira's whole censorship thing was SO fucking powerful! (the other characters had great moments too btw, but those definitely stood out to me!)

also ALSO i loveddd how so many scenes had this unique surreal feel to them! like we definitely saw this in the first series, but i love how they really played around with it in this one (the whole pausing people thing, saira being physically censored, etc)

also ALSO ALSO loved that we got some more momtaz scenes! it genuinely broke my heart when they decided to ditch her for the contract tbh and i was so SO happy where they went with her arc!

but ok so despite all that, i did have some Problems...

overall the first half of the series was definitely weaker than the latter half, and like i get that a part of that is cos they ofc needed to set up plots for the latter part to make sense, but it also meant that the first few eps kinda dragged a lil :///

connected to this, i really didn't get why the whole 'second wife' bit was there lol other than to create some 'lady parts are millennial and don't understand gen z' but it all just came across kinda cringey to me soz... (also the fanfiction plot could have been interesting but they handled it in a kinda weird way ??? idk lol...)

my biggest complaint, though, was with what they did with amina.

look, i ADORE her as a character and anjana is an absolute QUEEN. buuuuuuut.... they really couldn't have had something more interesting for her character other than a (kinda boring) romantic storyline?! idk... just with everything else happening with the other characters, it was the part that felt least developed imo...

and it's not like i have anything against ahsan and her being together, i really like their chemistry and def rooted for them in the first series, but the whole white guy thing (i cant be bothered to go look up that guy's name lol) & ahsan's jealousy was just a lil tedious to me idk...

even her scenes with noor and her mum, which i did like, just felt kinda disjointed from everything else... i guess they wanted to include it so the series still felt lighthearted with all the slightly more heavy subject matters this series went into, but it just didn't work for me...

and especially with her saying she's in her 'villain era' i was really hoping for some interesting and dynamic moments with her character but we got like... literally nothing that wasn't already in the first series lol??? also, and this is a small complaint, but i feel like her relationship with saira was a large part of the first series and yet we hardly saw them interact in the second series??? (and i'm not even saying this from a shipping context, even though i do like the idea of them being together lol... it was just odd that their dynamic was so important for the first series but completely ignored for the 2nd ??? idk idk)