For those who came in late, Applause Entertainment’s Undekhi on SonyLIV, is about the arrogance of wealth. This affliction makes the Atwal family believe no law of the land is applicable to their lives.
The arrogance of unlimited wealth is on full display as the Atwal family prepares in scenic Manali for the Big Fat ‘Greed’ Wedding of their heir apparent Daman (Ankur Rathee, suitably lost and wimpish) to his girlfriend Teji (Anchal Singh), who before the series clambers to a kickass climax, will display unexpected pluck in taking on her socio-pathic in-laws. More of the same, and yet at the top of the game…That just about sums up the second season of 2020’s well-played cat-and-mouse crime thriller about a super-rich wedding, a murder, and the affluent arrogance of a family that thinks crime is the only way to stay wealthy.
It’s a world where people get shot randomly, remorselessly. The patriarch of the family (Harsh Chhaya over-the-top) is a drunken lout whose empirical viciousness is manned and powered entirely by his wild nephew Rinku(Surya Sharma, brilliant).
Rinku remains remarkably riveting all through the three seasons. He is rough, rude, violent, and unstoppable. Yet, he gives us fleeting glimpses of something less toxic, especially when his wife, Muskaan (Shivangi Singh), is around. Muskaan is another character to look out for. She looks homely but loves guns, especially when they are in use and more especially when she is using them.
And the way Muskaan participates in shootouts with her violent husband gives a completely unexpected twist to the till-death-do-us-part theory of marital togetherness.
The women are, in fact, exceptionally aggressive in em>Undekhi. There is one on the run, a dancer who has tremendous survival instincts in the jungles. Then there is Teji (Aanchal Singh), married to the most peaceful heir of the violent Atwal family; Teji is rapidly learning the ropes of the illicit business. And then there is Saloni (Ayn Zoya), a television journalist not averse to blackmailing and extortion.
For a series about toxic masculinity, the women in em>Undekhi have a lot to do, and not much of it is legal or legit. Writer Sumeet Bishnoi plunges us into this dangerous, sleazy world with no hope for any redemptive thrusts. Nobody changes; there are no character reformations in em>Undekhi, at least not in Season 2. Perhaps the characters will begin to shed their plumes in Season 3. This time, for now, they are avaricious, vicious, sneaky, and mostly unlikeable.
While the patriarch of the family Harsh Chhaya, loudly embodying the high spirits of the Capitalist Pig, embarrasses himself and the family with his loutish behaviour, it is his nephew Rinku who runs the show, in more ways than one. While the character is the kingpin of the series’ well-appointed crime syndicate, the actor Surya Sharma, who plays Rinku, presides over the narrative as though it was inherited property. Sharma is absolutely chilling in the way he normalizes crime and treats women like vassals and vessels. Fill ‘em up.
To me, the best part of watching em>Undekhi is that it doesn’t glorify the life of affluent crime, although the main antagonist, Rinku, is every bit the cinematic hero gone the wrong way. The scripting is rigorously non-judgemental. There are no attempts to rationalize the criminal arrogance of the Atwal family as they confidently stride from one level of reprehensible criminalized behaviour to another.
In every season, there is plenty of ‘feud’ for thought. There are the old characters played with reined-in verve by all, especially Surya Sharma, Aanchal Singh, and Dibyendu Bhattacharya. The only salient performance that I failed to comprehend is that of Harsh Chhaya, whose weird facial expression throughout, as the patriarch of the criminal family, is inexplicable. This is not the Godfather. It’s the Odd Father! If Chhaya was trying to convey the sociopathic element in the character, then the performance doesn’t work.
Surya Sharma’s Rinku is the best portrayal of a criminal mind I’ve seen in a very long time. With each season of Applause Entertainment’s eminently watchable em>Undekhi, Sharma has grown as an actor of confidence, none of it misplaced, and stature. It would be no exaggeration to say Sharma anchors this miniature epic’s progression to the stunning finale where nemesis, always lurking when you least expect it to be around, strikes Rinku Atwal’s life with a brute force.
And why not? All through, Rinku has exercised the kind of savage, arrogant tyranny obtainable only to the most powerful evil minds. There is a lot of karma catching up in this season. Two of the most ruthless killers in the series meet their match in romantic angles that come to expectedly tragic endings.
It is ironic that these men don’t think twice about destroying lives. But when it comes to their own hearts, they are gentle, vulnerable men hopelessly in love.
The women in em>Undekhi are more practical and shrewish. They fall in love but are practical about their feelings. And although two of the very strongest women in the plot don’t encounter happy endings to their love story, they are no walkovers as long as they last.
With the picturesque valleys and twisted roadways of Manali serving a serene counterpoint to the Atwal family’s iniquitous activities, em>Undekhi swishes through three seasons with the terse celerity of a series that means business.
The sprawling space is not wasted for even a minute. New characters are brought into play regularly but never are they superfluous. em>Undekhi is a mirror of our times. It sometimes reaches deadends in its plot construction but the writers expertly steer the plot out of sticky situations. They know better than the characters that, much as we’d like, good guys don’t always win. There is not a single character in this series that I would like to run into at a party.
But I have only one question for Applause Entertainment: how long before Season 4?
