Aarya(Season 3,4 Episodes, Disney+Hotstar)
Directed by Ram Madhavan
Rating:**
It is like some more of the same when you are filled up. Totally uncalled-for. And ruinously selfimportant. The anything-but-serene Sareen family ceased to be relevant after Season 1. When Season 2 was around the corner I asked the director why,and he said there was more story to tell.
There isn’t actually. Ram Madhvani and his team stretch the plot to breaking point. This one barely survives the demands on its spinal chord to stand erect as the world around crumbles under the weight of mounting nothingness.
As Aarya Sareen, Sushmita Sen of course towers over the rest of the cast. And that is not such a good thing .All the supporting actors are positioned in the shadows looking like hapless puppets waiting for their strings to be pulled. No one seems inclined to give the supporting cast a chance, although some of them are potentially interesting.
Geetanjali Kulkarni as a cop on Aarya’s payroll struggles to make sense of her underwritten part of a snitch.Daulat, played by the underrated Sikandar Kher, is definitely one of the characters whom we would like to see more of. Sadly he is kept out of most of the running time in Season 3’s first four episodes(four more are banging on the door) .
We can safely assume Aarya Sareen is not the only suicidal element in Aarya.
The third season is blissfully bereft of surprises. Aarya Sareen is still selling cocaine and telling everyone repeatedly that she is a “working mother” fending for her children. She could be a language interpreter , a doctor, maybe even a sumo wrestler. Why a gangster ,and that too a cigar-smoking one?
Why does Sushmita Sen need to be Sanjay Dutt?
For those looking for a spot of Romeo & Juliet, there is Aarya’s son Veer(Viren Vazirani) playing doctor-doctor with his mom’s trusted right hand woman Roop (Shweta Pasricha) right under Aarya’s hawk eyes.
A clear case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.
The Roop-Veer love story, like all great love stories(ref: Romeo & Juliet) comes to a tragic end while we desperately wait Mr Madhvani and Ms Sen to come out of their killer zone and put this bang-bang binge to end. Enough as they say, is enough.
