#altbalaji

..... and I’d say it’s the AltBalaji show I’ve liked most so far.

If you’ve watched A Few Good Men, there’s going to be absolutely nothing surprising for you in this one. It’s quite easy to guess what’s coming up plot-wise. But it’s worth watching anyway, to see how they adapted it to the current Indian socio-political climate (unintentional, I’m sure since it was filmed before the whole NRC/CAA thing, but quite serendipitous in their release timing.)

Okay, some quick pros and cons....

Pros:

The characters are strong and competent. All the main players are credibly written and performed well. What I really liked is that Jen’s character (Monica) was a badass, take-no-shit type, but not at the cost of her femininity or being a kind, empathetic person. I hate when “strong” female characters are written like men, just macho and brash and obnoxious. Monica is an excited bride-to-be (in 2 weeks!), but when duty calls, she’s fully committed to the thing that is most important to her: her career. She does have her emotions in taxing situations, but as an officer of the army AND a lawyer, we see her keep them in check until she has a moment alone. Multiple men try to push her around (personally and professionally) and she just does NOT give a single fuck, and does what she thinks is right. Overall, I really really liked her character.

I also appreciate that the pacing of the show is really good; there’s no extra scenes just lying around for drama and pathos. It’s very tightly scripted and edited. I really liked that we didn’t waste time dawdling with B-plots like Monica’s impending shaadi and all, as if the wedding was a priority at a time like this.

The leads deliver competent performances. Jennifer really delivers on her strongly written character. A good, measured performance, and a testament to her talents when she’s freed form the bounds of crappy tellywood histrionics. I haven’t watched Tanuj in anything before (I just realized that he’s the lead of Inside Edge, which I haven’t watched; what I actually knew him from was the Ijaazat song from that Sunny Leone movie) but I quite liked him in this show. His is a straightforward character with not much nuance or challenge to it, but he plays it nice and likable. The two accused characters were decent as well (one of them being a guy I’m used to watching in these Filtercopy, RVCJ type videos.)

I’m meh on Rajat Kapoor since the #MeToo allegations against him so, whatever. Seema Biswas was utterly wasted in a blink-and-miss appearance that could have been played by any woman of that age, really.

Good chemistry and camaraderie between Jen and Tanuj. Their characters are exes and I was kinda dreading two possible cliche scenarios; that either they would constantly be at each other throats over non-issues, or there’d be unresolved feelings and angst. Thankfully, there was neither. They have a nice, easygoing chemistry; mostly friendly but their banter sometimes has a sharp edge to it (as one does with an ex.) The two of them work really well together through; both, the characters, AND the actors.

The English dialogues and conversation patterns were normal. Some shows really overdo it and the transition between Hindi/English is awkwardly noticeable. Not so in this show; even the F bombs were strategically placed and came naturally in the conversations instead of just being shoved in there because this is a web series and they can get away with cussing.

Aesthetics are top notch. Some AltBalaji shows have an elaborately ornate, yet tacky feel to them, but this one is quite nicely done.

Cons:

Predictable af. Like I said, if you’ve seen AFGM, you know what’s gonna happen here. Like they literally took so many of the scenes from there, that at the beginning of some ~*suspenseful~* beats I knew exactly what was gonna happen. It shouldn’t be a problem for those who aren’t as familiar with that movie as I am though.

Use of some bullshit tropes that I hate; like making Monica smoke to denote that she’s a “strong woman”. The one I hated the most though is the othering gaze towards Muslims; making places like bazaars and dargaahs with a large Muslim population seem ominous; long, lingering shots of the natives of the area in skullcaps/niqab having conspicuously kohled eyes, just glaring maliciously at the protagonist who is an outsider. Even shots of normal things like bags and suitcases they’re carrying get the suspicious gaze. Jaise har koi bagal mein bomb lekar ghoom raha ho sabzi mandi mein. For fucks sake. Stop with this garbage already.

Siddharth Sharma, Priyank Sharma : Puncch Beat