Folks,
I truly had no intention of inflicting this on you, and my wrist was protesting loudly as well after yesterday's orgy of typing. But I went and posted some comments on a thread and that got me started off, and I decided that I might as well share them with all of you. Please do bear with me!😉
It appears, from what little has come out by way of comment about this episode, that it is not a hot favourite, and this largely for reasons that the commentators cannot quite pin down. It seems rather to be a kind of undefinable discontent, apparently compounded by the feeling that one knew all along that the guilty party was Jaswant the trainer. This is rather like the favourite tag line about old fashioned British country house murder mysteries: The butler did it!
I think this a case of withdrawal symptoms: many are badly missing Arjun's lightning fast deductions and magisterial pronouncements, ending with a slow mo walk by him down whatever open space is available. Here the walk is a joint affair, and while Arjun is as decisive and his sudden moves on the financial angles as inspired as ever, it is all not as flashy as many would want it to be, that is all.
Don't be too hard on this episode, it was better than it looked at first sight. The ambience of a big wrestling match was spot on, as was the sleazy, shadowy world of betting and fixing that is part and parcel of that world. Plus the clear link between such big money and big crime.
Convincing characters: Swaraj Raikar is an entirely believable, larger than life character: the bravado, the macho preening, and beneath it all, the kind of warm heartedness that makes him empathise at once with his assistant's predicament and lend him his car . A disastrous decision as it turned out, but it takes nothing away from Swaraj's generosity. Then there is his deep, desperate love for his wife that overrides his basic honesty and professional integrity, something that perhaps strikes a chord with Arjun. And in the end, he is a loyal and very courageous man, who is ready to risk his life in order to nab the man who murdered his assistant.
The megalomaniac Hardiac Arrest is just as believable; he is an archtype that populates the world of professional wrestling.
As for Jaswant, his mind-numbing opportunism and murderous treachery are all the more sickening because it is all so believable. Like Anjali the day before, for Jaswant too there is no Lakshmanrekha in life that he cannot cross if his own survival is at stake. Even if it means stabbing his greatest benefactor in the back without the slightest qualm of conscience. For Swaraj Raikar, that must have been - as Mark Antony said about Brutus stabbing Julius Caesar - the unkindest cut of all.
The ETF: As for the ETF, Chotu and Shree score heavily, and provide much needed comic relief, while the gains made by Rathore in the last episode have been maintained, thank Heavens! But it was very amusing to see Arjun calling Rathore about the contract killer being at large in the stadium, and advising him to "be attentive"!
Hindsight 20/20: As for the feeling voiced in one thread that one knew from the beginning that it was Jaswant the trainer, if in the end it had proved to be Vikrant, then one would have felt that one knew all along that it was NOT Jaswant. Hindsight is always 20/20, and I am often the same!
The point is that we did not know what Arjun finds out, near the end, from Jaswant's stockmarket and other financial dealings. So there was no way one could tell that he was guilty, except by guessing, and that as Sherlock Holmes would say, is destructive of one's deductive abilities.
Turning points: The main turning points in the case come from two sets of financial records:
- first those of Swaraj Raikar, with the 1 crore bank transfer into his account, and from there to that of his wife, who disappears to the US 10 days later, and
- the second those of Jaswant, which show that he lost no money on the stockmarket but yet was ruined the previous year after the fight that Swaraj lost. This in turn leads Arjun to where he really lost all his money.
It is the chance comment by Hardiac Arrest about Swaraj not be able to manage his wife that sets Arjun on the track to the first. But Arjun's genius lies in spotting the one crucial point/clue and following it up, and then being able to read the findings correctly. This unerring ability to sift the wheat from the chaff of routine police procedures is what makes for a great detective, and Arjun Suryakant Rawte has this in spades!
A huge plot hole: But the first turning point also leads to the kind of plot hole that sinks the whole episode. It is clear that Swaraj Raikar bets against himself with the bookies the previous year and throws the match to make that 1 crore. Do the CVs want us to believe that the bookies paid his betting gains into his bank account from their bank account? No way! And this for several reasons.
First and most important, given the way shady bookies operate, there would have been no banking transfer at all. It would have been a cash or a hawala transaction. There would never have been a bank transaction for Arjun to trace.
Secondly, Swaraj would, in the first place, have gone to great lengths to hide his identity, for if it had leaked that he was betting against himself, the fat would have been in the fire. So even if there had been a banking transfer, it would have been to a benami account in some other name. There would have been nothing in HIS bank account.
Lastly, even allowing, merely for the sake of argument (though it is almost surely ruled out, as explained above) that there WAS such a bank transfer to Swaraj's bank account, another very serious problem would have come up. Any banking transaction over Rs,50000/- needs the PAN numbers (income tax permanent identification number) of both the sender and the recipient. Raikar would have been hauled up at once by the IT authorities for the tax due on the 1 crore, even it he had transferred it at once to his wife. There is no way he would have run this kind of risk.
Grand finale:The rest was all quite good, especially the nail-biting grand finale.
That Jaswant could not call the supari on Swaraj off is credible; contract killers do not carry a mobile phone with them to the kill, so that it does not ring at the wrong time and give them away.
The contract killer is all blank-faced menace and cold, cut-throat efficiency, murdering both the unfortunate waiter and the even more unfortunate VIP occupant of booth No. 2 as casually as if he was breaking a twig. He is so professional that he takes Arjun's call without a flicker of hesitation, for the booth cannot be locked from inside and he does not want any intruders until he gets the job done. Of course he reckons without Arjun!
One should not underestimate the raw courage of Rathore, Shree and Chotu, all three of whom stand with their backs to the sniper, in an effort to screen Swaraj to the maximum and distract the killer by blocking his line of fire. It is a much harder thing to do than facing a criminal down in a shootout.
Arjun's quickwittedness in posing as a waiter while talking to the person in booth No.2 and thus locating the killer was amazing, and his dramatic end rush to nab the sniper was like something out of The Day of the Jackal. Except that Swaraj was saved cleanly, and not, as General de Gaulle was there, because he bent down accidentally at the instant of fire!
Rating: To sum up, despite all these plus points, and they are many, this episode cannot rise above a rating of 'good', but not for the reason that many felt but could not identify. It is because the vital central point is a non-starter.
All that it needs is a solid dose of good old-fashioned suspension of disbelief!Shyamala B.Cowsik
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
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