crooner 1.27: dear creatives page 29... the mandir visit and other things and a very frazzled viewer.
priya,BRAVO.
BRAVO.
BRAVO.
👏 👏 👏
when two weekends went by and crooner wasn't buzzing with girls and phangurrls chatting, analysing, bantering, rofling madly, pondering issues seriously, moaning for monday to come, and most of all when there were no in-depth crooners from honeypriya, who understands this fabulous show in a way few do;
and takes it to a place in her analysis where all her readers, silent or audible, are left thrilled, (me often gobsmacked), appreciating iss pyaar ko at a level even the dear creatives perhaps never dreamt of.
when two weekends went by like that, it was clear something was wrong. awfully, badly wrong.
thank you, priya, for spelling it out categorically and clearly. and saying it as it is, no matter how much it hurt. oh, it might hurt the dear creatives should they read this crooner, and i do so pray they do. but will they ever realise how much it hurt honeypriya to write it?
you see, dear dear creatives, we not only enjoy or love iss pyaar ko kya naam doon, we are believers. we have faith in this unique story of life, love, incredible romance.
we are not a bunch of morons freaking out over someone's good looks or clothes. so please do not reduce us to that in your head. most of us are difficult to reach viewers. take me, for example, seen many many serials. past 15 years out of india, started turning on the telly and surfing star only to get a sense of home. have seen several serials come and go. never been impressed by any, never been hooked.
being rather interested in the opposite gender, barun's good looks were noticed by me even when he did shraddha. interesting looking, but badly presented. i turned off the tv. the much spoken of bhph did nothing for me. in fact, never paid much attention to ipk in the exhaustingly (no, not tively, tingly) promoted intitial days, expecting it to be yet another hindi serial. gaah.
but it wasn't. the day that hit home, there was no looking back. can't tell you how shocked, amused, pitying even my friends, all in their 40's and fifties, look when i rave about the show, its fascinating premise, its utterly intelligent and well crafted dialogues, its surprisingly good acting by almost everyone. i am in love with jayshree t, and i'm from the gen that has watched her dance cabarets. her nuancing of nani is so so endearing. akash was lovely till his character got messed up, what an opportunity to show a foil to asr, attractive and sympathetic in his own way.
of course, barun sanaya had me sitting up in bed, polishing my specs, and collapsing in a heap of adoration and crazy emotion. i discussed my fascination with this 27 year old boy with my husband of nearly 27 years. he said, sanaya looked nice. ipk became a part of our nok-jhok, ha ha, if you will. the poor man was made to watch episodes at 12 midnight when it gets aired here in singapore, and i actually heard him tell his bro: this serial has something about it. something real.
that fight sequence the night before she comes home with him, 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 i could watch it anytime, many times, and still feel the kick in my gut, the twist in my heart, and the sheer realness of it. of course, i made husband watch it later. doesn't it feel like our fights?
it's not just the romance and kisses that had us enthralled, it was everything about this love.
sometimes i think even you guys had no idea how good it was. great writing, characterization, story, screenplay, and then phenomenal acting. even the tacky production values kind of didn't matter. you didn't care about the strange murals on the wall or the door that swung open both ways,
after asr had said: farq padta hai kyonki, or kkg had put sugar in the petrol tank and stood looking at an irate asr, or an incredulous chit of a girl stood holding out a key to an angry arrogant young man at a dargah lecturing him on god and things, or they fell upon each other and a strange emotion electrified the air, or a boy buried his head in his sister's lap and said i'm sorry for every time i shouted at you, or a man who never dances walked out of the darkness and held out his hand to a girl in a green chiffon, or when a young man fought for his right to live his life his way with his nani, or when he brought his girl friend to live in his home without marriage, or when they broke up in one of the most mature and well conceived scenes in possibly tv history. or when he stood there at the door of a terrace watching the woman for whom farq padta hai in another's arms.
really, nothing mattered after you'd been elevated by the unbelievably wonderful moments of ipk.
of course, you also attracted many many viewers who followed other serials too. but there was always a different love for your show. more than 6000 pages on IF alone should tell you that. no other show comes anywhere near it. if we are to believe a weird sounding thing called the chaska metre, you are number one at a thousand plus and the second show comes in with points somewhere in the low hundreds.
says something about your show and our faith, doesn't it.
actually, as priya mentioned, over time these characters start becoming a part of our lives. sometimes we sense them more than real people even. to us you see, they are real. and along the way, somewhere, your show crosses over and becomes our show.
yes, dear creatives, ipk is indeed our show.
honestly, any production house should be leaping with joy and a sense of incredible success at this fact. it should give you what you need to defend your story, your characters, your budgets when channel comes calling.
if channel says, i am not getting my trp, have the courage to point out to channel what it is getting. viewers whom you might never get otherwise. also the quality and reach of the viewers. how many serials on sp are so intensely followed by doctors, engineers, ivy league college educated women, lawyers, well heeled women with their own spending power, how many serials reach women 13 to 80 and hit them all with equal force. how many serials are watched avidly across the subcontinent, in nepal, in south east asia, in the us, and yes hot fave in the uk. there's much more to this audience and a bit of research would reveal things that might leave the channel amazed.
don't tell me all of this means nothing. it can be converted to much for the channel if you guys put your heads together, think different as you did for ipk. it will work. prooomise.
two weeks ago, for the very first time, i felt nothing after watching the episode. just an emptiness, a complete disconnect. khushi has been changed into a typical star plus lead over time. can't tell you how much i miss our beautiful, spunky, good, true but daring jhalli.
she is inspiring. she is good for the indian girl. she is nayi soch.
not the puppet you are willing to turn her into. a forum regular's mother stopped watching because she couldn't bear to see the cut down, meek khushi.
this girl has taken on asr. she has taken on shyam. now all she can do is look dopey and rush around happily because rasams are being followed? is this all khushi wanted? is this the girl who went to talk to a complete stranger, a man about to marry her sister, whose fam had asked for dahej which would ruin her bauji and she wanted to stop that? how come this clear headed, gutsy creature doesn't even know whether she is married or not? how silly must we look to be seen as "good."
and who is dadi exactly? does she even belong to ipk? she just feels all wrong to me. not because she's negative or harsh. because she is unreal. the whole premise is unreal. 14 years later a character never even remotely referred to all these months, enters the fray with a flat, caricaturish, 😆 stopwa mien and starts becoming the crux of all narrative. how? why? and if so, why is she not half as interesting as the rest? even hp is nuanced for h's sake! and we discuss his renegotiation deals. 😃
daljeet, one thought a fine actor once upon a time, is lost in a not properly delineated di suddenly. so who is di? we thought we kind of knew her. but now, can't even take a wild guess at the character. no connection to the girl we've seen this past year. what's going on? and you still played that "maa" song on her during raksha bandhan?
shyam has returned louder and far less interesting. no one knows where mamaji or lakshmi hide. garima's story that would take us to perhaps the most interesting track is being stalled and used as time waste tactic.
of course, the marriage is not at all centre stage. leads are looking unkempt. but most most most sadly for me, i feel nothing when they interact. should we come to a point where we are left discussing how good they look in black, and that's all across an entire weekend? not a single moment from last week that i feel like seeing again and again.
in the last two weeks, i thought i saw ipk only in a few scenes.
sorry 👏 👏
thank you 👏 👏
that i love you dammit (loved the entire suhaag raat scene) 👏 👏
hum bhi aapse i love you dammit (only the dialogue and his response, not even sanaya's delivery for khushi is a girl i know less and less every day)
jahan meri patni nahi ja sakti...zaroorat hai. braaavo.
flirting during janmashtami puja. yeah both very much in character.
that's about it.
the part i'm finding really difficult to say, guess i have to. what are you doing to asr?
he doesn't feel like himself. and would you believe it i won't spend the whole weekend telling myself: stop being obsessed with a 28 year old. i won't even be waiting madly for monday 12 midnight.
gul, you it is said, conceived this character, chose barun to play him, you i heard convinced the channel not to sack barun when he took 12/28/45/365 days' leave for his movie because you believed asr and barun was a combo worth fighting for. please don't let either of them go.
dear creatives, if we mean nothing in your story telling, i will feel sad, but ultimately i will let you go. i do hope you find audiences that will replace me and grow to the trp all seek. though i have to say, i doubt that will happen.
no hard feelings, you gave me a spectacular show and almost 8 months of excitement, pleasure, thrill, and insights into life. thanks to you, i have explored a whole new medium, the online forum. have written, have been read and appreciated. most of all, i have met a fabulous bunch of girls that make me hope crazily for women everywhere. and who knows some of them might become friends even when all this is over.
so thanks, all the best, and if you can save our show, life bless you. salaam.
Edited by indi52 - 10 years ago
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