Folks,
I saw, from the posts in the forum about this episode, finally shown 2 weeks late on Sunday last, that it was felt to be somewhat incomplete, adhoora, and thus not quite satisfactory. In my view, however, the episode, which is more complex and layered than the norm in this serial, deserves some reappraisal, whence this post.
To begin with, it is true that because of the 2 weeks delay, the episode seemed dated in terms of the relationships within the ETF team. Arjun was far more abrupt than he is these days, and not only snubbed Shree bluntly about the TV channel, but went out of his way to needle Rathod about the 'torture' angle, ending with his trademark Samjhe ki samjhaoon? Rathod reacts in kind, and hits back at Arjun when he and Chhotu fail to capture the key witness Munna Yadav alive.
Nonetheless, the scene between Arjun and Pathan was a landmark, in that we learnt for the first time how brutally Roshni was murdered, and the savagery of Arjun's reaction to Pathan's baiting him showed the undiminished depth of his despair at his having failed to protect his beloved wife from her killers.
A double track plot: Having got this out of the way, we come to the plot per se. It is (like the later swimming pool murder case) a double track plot, unlike the bank van robbery case, which was not just a single track one, but was devoid of any striking plot angles.
In fact the only highlight in the bank robbery episode was Riya's getting shot - because of her own incompetence, as noted in my post on that episode. She then compounds her folly by moaning Sir, mujhe bacha leejiye, like a typical movie heroine rather than an ETF professional, when she should have said sorry for endangering his life as well as hers. Then we have Arjun leaping into the air like a superhero (shown three times in loving slow mo and thus reduced to a caricature) and producing an incredibly accurate display of ambidextrous shooting. It was altogether larger than life and lacking in credibility. It was also strange to see the ETF going about with a window of their car rolled down conveniently for a smoke bomb to be lobbed in, nor could one understand why Shree did not pick it up at once and throw it out of the same window. A major plot hole if ever there was one!
Here, in contrast, there is the hawala track of Jaisingh and the sleazy criminal lawyer Varun Katiyal on the one hand, and the main murder track of the stockbroker on the other. As in the swimming pool mystery, the two tracks seem at one point to be linked, but they are really not so. The hawala track peters out into a non event, and in a refreshingly realistic approach, Varun Katiyal and his crooked client Jaisingh apparently get off scot free, despite the CCTV recording showing Katiyal at the entrance to Kalpesh's office building just after the murder. But while it lasts, the double track adds to the confusion and the complexity of the case, and keeps us guessing.
Dark Tone: Of all the episodes we have seen so far, this one has the darkest characters, whose actions are rooted in the most debased motives: greed, unhealthy obsession, and depravity and disloyalty triggering a blind, murderous hatred. It seems more like a bitter tale by Guy de Maupassant or Somerset Maugham than a TV plot. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth at the end, but nonetheless it is plumbs the depths of human behaviour with rare maturity.
For this very reason, it also has one of the most credible motives for murder that one could find- the bitter hatred of a woman humiliated beyond bearing.
Here is a middle aged mother of a grown up daughter, who falls for a much younger man, has a hopeless affair with him, and is obsessed with him to the point of handing over the management of her whole fortune to him. He however is merely using her for his own ends, and disregards her once he has found his feet in his stockbroking business. He returns only when the daughter tempts him, as a way of permanently acquiring control of the wealth she will inherit, and he banks on the conviction that the mother will be too ashamed of herself to tell her daughter the truth and stop the wedding. Where he fails is in gauging the depth of the violence he triggers in a woman scorned and degraded, and he gets what can only be called a well-deserved, if somewhat excessive comeuppance.
It thus seems totally off the mark for Arjun to lecture the mother, at the end, on what true love should be i.e. setting the loved one free to follow his or her chosen path. Arjun forgets that what Kalpesh was proposing to do - to try and marry the daughter after having had an affair with her mother, and both solely for his own selfish ends - is something debased beyond belief, and bound to eventually ruin the daughter's life as well.
Arjun's reaction seems rooted in his moral outrage at the mother's immoral behaviour, plus what seems to be her shocking readiness to make her daughter a scapegoat for the crime she has committed. Rathod echoes the latter, but neither of them has anything to say about Kalpesh's ultra-sleazy actions. Male chauvinism in action, would you say?
A fallible Arjun : The fight in the bar stood out, not for the swift efficiency we have come to expect from our super cop, but for the opposite. By making Arjun first fallible, and then unconvincingly defensive, it made him seem more human and thus more believable.
The sequence was over long and contrived, like a 1980s Amitabh Bachchan action scene. Why break so many beer bottles over assorted heads, and why have so many martial arts style kicks in slow mo, when Munna could have been knocked out and safely handcuffed in the first 2 minutes? In fact, this is the first ever display of downright incompetence by Arjun; he and Chhotu make a hash of the whole and let Munna escape while they are busy with the aforesaid beer bottles, and then chase him fruitlessly.
They might have saved their breath, for the iron clad TV serial rule for such scenes is that (1) the target should run right in the middle of the road till (2) he is hit by a truck that does not brake at all when he is sighted, and that (3) is he is a key witness, he should kick the bucket at once, even if there is only a minor head injury and very little blood. No wonder Rathod blows his top, and Arjun's self-exculpatory comments ring very hollow.
Difference in working styles: More than any other episode so far, this one highlights the contrasting working styles of Rathod - standard but very thorough police procedure, based on conventional deductions from the evidence (whence his conclusion, from the footmarks, that there was more than one murderer) - and of Arjun - out of the box analysis, coupled at times with intuitive flashes that light his path to the correct conclusion. Arjun's spotting the crucial CCTV camera located opposite Kalpesh's building is a stroke of pure detective genius, as is his even more remarkable identification of the ambulance siren in the background of Pammi's voice mail to Kalpesh.
Ironically, both their methods fail when the two conclude that it was the murderer(s) who were hunting for a crucial document after killing Kalpesh, whereas the truth is that the murder and the search were not connected at all. The difference between them is that eventually, Arjun corrects his mistaken conclusion; Rathod is unable to do so.
As for Riya, for all her thoroughness in collating data, she lacks the necessary suspicious mind when it comes to Pammi's hotel-based 'alibi', and she takes the statements of the hotel staff for granted too easily. She will have to learn to be less trusting, just as much as she will have to learn to shoot unhesitatingly and straight.
Fascinating cameo: While not measuring up to the sadistic malevolence of the remorseless, totally unemotional killer in the stolen Ganesha case (that Baiju was a tour de force of cold-bloodedness, indeed of a kind of horrifying delight in killing), the unapologetically sleazy Varun Katiyal is an excellent cameo. He is a showoff and a twister of the worst kind, and he is experienced enough and sharp enough to outwit the ETF this time around, and this only makes the show more realistic. Let us see what happens in the future. I shall be rooting for something nasty to happen to him.
Riya,Rathod & Arjun: Finally, I cannot really endorse the speculations, based on the exchange of remarks at the end between Riya and Rathod, that the latter is developing a soft corner for Riya. The various instances of 'love' in this case, that are referred to by Riya, are, as discussed above, of a distorted and debased sort. Riya naturally feels disillusioned by them, and says so. To my mind, all that Rathod means by his response 'log complicated ho gaye hain' is that the degradation that shocks her is in these people, not in the sentiment of love.
He is a simple and straightforward man, with a direct approach to people and things, and while he is invariably kind and supportive of his young team members, including Riya, there is nothing to suggest that he feels any differently towards her than towards the rest.
As for Arjun, his plunging between them in a surprisingly abrupt and unmannerly fashion, even by his standards, seems to be most likely a continuation of the acute disgust that he feels (and voices) about Pammi, and the extra irritability that follows from that. This would explain the indulgent, half-smiling amusement with which Riya looks after him, and the exasperated, long-suffering look on Rathod's face. I do not feel that there is any question, at this stage, of Arjun feeling anything romantic about Riya, not to speak of anything as strong as jealous possessiveness. His total emotional absorption with Roshni, brought out so clearly in the furious showdown with Pathan, would be enough to rule out any such interpretations.
All in all, I felt that this was a complex and curiously satisfying episode. Would you agree with me?
Shyamala B.Cowsik
Anupamaa
Health and Fitness
Bigg Boss 19
