Aashram Chapter 2: The Dark Side
director – Prakash Jha
To emit – Bobby Deol, Aaditi Pohankar, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Darshan Kumaar, Anupriya Goenka
Prakash Jha thinks you are stupid. The sheer contempt his first web series Aashram has for his viewers can only rival the condescension with which his anti-hero protagonist Baba Nirala treats his ‘bhakts’. It’s appropriate for a show about an abusive, arrogant, and obnoxious man to be just as condescending to the people who watch it.
However, in the grand scheme of things, Aashram is not entirely useless. Shows like this serve a purpose in the entertainment ecosystem: their utter incompetence puts things in perspective.
Watch the trailer for Aashram Chapter 2: The Dark Side here
The existence of nine new episodes, constituting a ‘chapter two’, points to a conspiracy far greater than anything that takes place in the actual series. Why, for example, did ‘chapter one’ end as abruptly as it did, not in a suspense, as creator Jha perhaps thought (or hoped), but almost in the middle of a sentence? Why are the episodes shorter this time? And what led MX Player to split the series in half?
You should know that none of these questions are answered in Chapter 2 of Aashram: The Dark Side. If anything, Jha’s claim that chapter one was viewed by more than 400 million people only raises more questions.
Here’s a theory, though: Faced with a shrinking ‘content’ bank due to the pandemic, and probably with around ten 50-minute episodes each ready to go, MX Player decided, at the cost of quality, force Jha to divide Aashram into two parts and fill with padding material on the cutting room floor. The end result is as puzzling as it is shocking: a story so poorly told and a show so poorly done that you almost want to stage a ‘dharna’ against Jha for outraging the modesty of a beloved art form.
In a year that has given us Breathe: Into the Shadows, Mrs Serial Killer, and Laxmii, Aashram somehow lowers the bar even further. That the torture continues for three months only makes it worse.
The entirety of chapter two could have been condensed into a couple of episodes. The plot is deliberately stretched to a breaking point, with endless scenes of relentless repetition. Over and over again, we are shown flashes of Baba Nirala’s misdeeds, but his motivations remain as murky as ever. Are you in this for political power? Or is he simply a man with a particularly acute god complex?
We never found out. At no point does the show stop to breathe and take us inside the mind of Baba Nirala. There is no evidence to suggest that he even believes his own myth. The Baba, it seems, is just a common thug playing dress-up, caught up in a scam that has gone on longer than anticipated. And he’s also bad enough to be a criminal.
Bobby Deol slobber sets his sights on Pammi.
But the walls are closing in A couple of rogue policemen have infiltrated the aashram in an attempt to uncover the truth. The prime minister, meanwhile, participates in a game of thrones with him. But what really gets the ball rolling is Baba’s own arrogance. While his history of sexual abuse was always implicit, in chapter two we see the predator on the prowl. He drugs and rapes Pammi, the wrestling champion who was brainwashed to join the cult in chapter one, but unlike many women who have found themselves in a similar position before her, she decides to end it. Baba’s misconduct.
I could get into the show’s problematic handling of these scenes, but honestly, it feels like running a silly errand. I object and hope others do too. This story is not completely fictional, as we know, but rather than capturing the true sadness of such stories, Aashram revels in squalor.
And he does it in a comically amateurish way. The sound mix is so poor that the actors’ mouths routinely move regardless of the words we are hearing. At other times, the voices of the characters in the same scene are mixed unevenly, making it appear that one of them is in a cavern and the other in an open field. I’ve seen YouTube vlogs with better production values.
Also Read: Aashram Review: Bobby Deol’s Show Has Bark That Is Worse Than His Bite
I have a hard time understanding who this program is for. He clearly wants to be counted among the more mainstream OTT hits India has produced in recent years, but his sensibilities are stagnant in the early 2000s, when Ekta Kapoor ruled the roost. Some of Jha’s techniques are bizarre enough to make him feel right at home in a K series: awkward flashbacks scored with loud music, freeze frames, and smooth wooden performances from a cast clearly struggling to make the most of what’s coming to him. had given. .
So we also need to re-examine Bobby Deol’s gravy train. In a star-obsessed country like India, actors may be overlooked only on the strength of goodwill, what else can Bobbysance explain? But with his post-return resume dominated by projects like Race 3, Housefull 4, and Class of 83, the actor will have to recognize the difference between short-term success and long-term respect. You know better than most how fleeting fame can be.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
The author tweets @RohanNaahar
.
