BOTTOM LINE
Preachy Moral Science Lecture
PLATFORM
Amazon MX Player
RUNTIME
5 hours, 10 Episodes
What Is the Show About?
CA Shantanu a.k.a Shanky Bansal’s life changes after a fire, forcing him to choose between integrity and ambition. Desperate, he joins Shaukeen bhaiyya’s criminal ring, leading to his family’s exile, the downfall of Bansal Classes, and a deep crisis of conscience. A family tragedy prompts his return to fight for justice. The Bansals reunite, but Shanky faces a final confrontation with his former boss.
Performances
Ritvik Sahore, the child artist-turned-lead, does a commendable job in shouldering the series that taps into many of the navarasas of drama, yet one feels he has some distance to go in bringing more transparency into his performance. Though technically impressive, it doesn’t strike a chord the way you expect it to. Varun Badola, playing the father that most sons would love to hate, delivers a neat performance without going overboard.
Srishti Ganguly Rindani’s character is treated more like a passing cloud in Shanky’s life (without much scope). Anubha Fatehpuria, however, is the real deal, mirroring the suppressed emotions of a homemaker with finesse. Anushka Kaushik shows some spunk in an underwritten role. Dhruv Sehgal, fresh after Hotstar’s Search, plays another similar role with predictable grey shades.
Vijay Raaz doesn’t have to push himself much in the shoes of a usual, menacing gangster. Ankita Sehgal and Inder Sahani also bring formidability to the supporting cast.
Analysis
OTT platforms serve as an essential link in the entertainment industry, offering a wider purpose than simply garnering weekend viewership. Even if a streamer like MX Player isn’t a hub synonymous with top-notch storytelling, it casts light on a side of India that mainstream cinema has consistently ignored: the stories of the average middle-class man. Their moral dilemmas and everyday concerns deserve to be told with sincerity as well.
The first season of Jamnapaar focused on Shanky, the blue-eyed boy who had just cleared his CA exams and was ready to foray into the big, bad world. It went on to address intergenerational clashes, his initial struggles in the corporate sector, and included a mix of romance, bromance, family drama and heartbreak. By the end, the youngster comes of age, transitioning into adulthood in all its messiness, absorbing the madness around him and finally forging his own path.
The show, in its second instalment, raises the stakes further. It tells the story of many old-school competitive exam coaching institutes stuck in the transition phase, neither fully able to sustain the offline model nor wholeheartedly embracing the idea of virtual learning. However, in the process of mirroring this change, Jamnapaar adopts a simplistic, generic trope – making the digital revolution and the foray of the corporates in education look like the obvious villain.
At its heart, the show deals with the primal conflict between the father and the son, though the story is essentially about the struggles to accept change in order, value systems, and the inability to accept the passage of time with a pinch of salt. The key characters in Jamnapaar generally have two choices to make, and when they do, the results aren’t rosy. Robert Frost, the poet behind The Road Not Taken, would’ve been a happy man watching the essence of his poem vividly come alive on the screen.
After a fire in the Bansal Classes building, Shanky’s father, Bimal, is unsure of the path ahead, but leaves no stone unturned to revive it. Back to square one, Shanky gains a foothold at Shaukeen bhaiyya’s shady refurbishing business, to his family’s disappointment. The father and the son go their separate ways, nearly lose everything and bury the hatchet to fight for their community. Some of the other subplots deal with the taboo around IVF and issues in Shanky’s love life.
The trajectory across both seasons is tediously similar: fleeting hope, escalating chaos, total collapse, a sudden resurgence, and then a twist that turns the story on its head. Jamnapaar’s first season wasn’t by any means pathbreaking, but it was aware of its boundaries, grounded in its treatment, without trying to tick items off a checklist as if a corporate firm is trying to put a sum aside for their CSR expenses. The second season is a victim of the latter, trying too hard, engaging very little.
Jamnapaar Season 2, though set in a contemporary backdrop, has the heavy melodrama of 80s cinema and the old DD soaps, and in blunt terms, it’s a massive bore.
Music and Other Departments?
Sarthak Nakul’s background score follows a tiresome template; it exists as if it were an obligation, not making much difference to the proceedings. Hanoz Kerawala’s sharp visuals and a few catchy dialogues do deserve praise. However, Gaurav Arora and Jasmeet Singh Bhatia’s writing is much like the father’s character—stuck in the Doordarshan days, refusing to gracefully adapt to the needs of a more vibrant, modern medium like OTT.
Highlights?
Decent core performances
Humour works in parts
Addresses topical social issues
Drawbacks?
Lengthy, far beyond necessity
Over-simplistic story sans much novelty
Too mechanical and melodramatic, fails to strike a chord
Did I Enjoy It?
In parts, yes.
Will You Recommend It?
Only if you feel the need to drown yourselves in middle-class blues again.
Jamnapaar Season 2 Web Serie Review by M9
