Baarish 2 review: An insanely repetitive, outdated family drama

Everything about Baarish 2 is stale, from its plot, characterisation, to the treatment of the story. It seems like nobody in the team bothered to check that all their episodes look similar.

“So, what do you think is going to happen in the next season,” my mother asked me as we finished watching the first season of ALTBalaji-ZEE5’s web series Baarish. I did not know how to best answer the question. One, because, I didn’t like its story to wait for another season and second, there is no character for which you will want to go back. But she was looking forward to Baarish 2. And, it arrived at the best time. In these times, when TV has nothing new to offer, it is difficult to ignore content on the digital medium.

But imagine how bad can a show be when a dedicated viewer of soap operas tells you in the middle of an episode, “What is happening? I don’t want to watch it further.” Everything about Baarish 2 is stale, from its plot, characterisation, to the treatment of the story. It seems like nobody in the team bothered to check that all their episodes look similar.

The story picks up from where the first season concluded. The rich businessman and ideal son, Anuj (Sharman Joshi) goes by the book to get his innocent wife Gauravi (Asha Negi) out of jail. But after being cheated by his brother Rishi, he is penniless and starts living with Gauravi’s parents. Eventually, things fall in place for him as he manages to get a job, buy a small house and live there happily with Gauravi, who also gets a job at a law firm.

What? How can they be so happy? Gauravi doesn’t look like a ‘bechaari’. Nobody is troubling her. No pain in her life? A happy leading lady in Ekta Kapoor’s world? Kya? Kya? Kya? Apologies for being so dramatic. But this is probably how the writers of Baarish 2 must have reacted after the first few episodes.

So, what could they possibly do to attract the Indian viewer? They up the drama quotient by adding judgmental family members, a possessive husband who gets jealous of his wife’s friendly relationship with her boss and a wife who is so meek to react against what is wrong. They hold them all together within an illogical flimsy plot which takes references from the 80s.

To make it worse, there is an unimpressive performance delivered by Sharman Joshi. It is hard to believe he is the same actor who impressed us with his subtle performances in films like Golmaal, 3 Idiots, Life in a… Metro and Rang De Basanti. Asha Negi is the same as she was in her debut TV show Pavitra Rishta. The only one to hold our attention is Priya Banerjee who plays the only believable character. The rest of the supporting cast is not even worth a mention.

While writing about the first season of the show, I mentioned ‘Baarish, like any other Balaji Telefilms offering, could have been a decent TV show with some 800 episodes running over the course of five years.’ And, after watching 20 episodes of the second season, I stick to my opinion. This is just an outdated, insanely repetitive drama that leaves you exhausted.

On that note, I just have one small request to make: ‘Dear writers, ardent fans of daily soaps also deserve good scripts. They, too, want stories beyond the chaotic family dramas.’

From: A consumer of Indian content who believes the writers of Indian TV shows and web series have the means and creative talent to produce better quality shows.