The Family Man Season 3
Starring Manoj Bajpayee and Jaideep Ahlawat
Created and Directed by Raj and DK
The temptation to leaden the extended storytelling timeframe with jolting surprises, takes over the narrative at some point. Every time the series runs out of steam—and that is quite often — a new twist is insinuated into the plot. So many characters turn out to be…well, characterless, that by the end of it, I was left wondering if this game of whimsical chairs has an end!
Apparently not, as the series ends without a proper closure. This means there is more to come. I am not sure that is a good idea. Like the protagonist who is grievously wounded at the beginning of the series,The Family Man franchise has clearly run out of steam.
Manoj Bajpayee’s Shrikant Tiwari is a spy on the run. Just why he is a fugitive, and what is he running away from (scriptural transgressions, perhaps?) eluded my limited powers of comprehension. These are over-smart minds creating a political parable where the North East, Nagaland to be more specific, gets a stellar part.
Decades ago Dev Anand starred in a film Yeh Gulistan Hamara about the problems in Nagaland. That one at least had a hero who made the absurdities benign.
The North East in The Family Man 3 goes West swiftly. The purported face-off between ‘hero’ Manoj Bajpayee and ‘villain’ Jaideep Ahlawat doesn’t happen until the final episode. By then the serial’s writers have lost all sense of propriety and logic. Bajpayee and Ahlawat are given lines that are so blurred, bland and blah, they seem to be written in a state of slumber.
Fatally, Ahlawat’s drug-dealing villain Rukma is humanized to the extent that he loses all his mojo. At one point he tells a global fixer named Meera (Nimrat Kaur, in chic suits and a clipped accent playing a svelte wheeler-dealer whose exact designation is a well kept secret) that he is a drug dealer who doesn’t do drugs.
Rukma is also a closeted daddy. That entire chunk with Rukma and his surrogate son Bobby seems a tribute to Akshay Kumar(long unwieldy hair and all) in Suneel Darshan’s Jaanwar.
Like James Bond and espionage, kitsch is timeless.
By the way, the little boy Riyan Mipi who plays Bobby steals every frame from the mighty Ahlawat. Manoj Bajpayee remains grumpier throughout than Nitish Kumar at the swearing-in (I swear!). Sharab Hashmi continues to eat constantly. He seems feed up. Talented actresses like Priyamani, Gul Panag and Shreya Dhanwanthary remain under-voiced in the Family Man universe. Not every actress is as lucky as Samantha Ruth Prabhu.
Seema Biswas as the Prime Minister is so caricaturish her political advisers have a hard time keeping a straight face.
After dutifully slogging through the entire series I am still wondering why was Shrikant Tiwari and his family being hounded? Is this a snide comment on the way dedicated civil servants are treated in this country? Bajpayee says as much to a senior officer (who may or may not be a cloaked villain: every administrative officer is under scrutiny this time by the scriptwriters). The money is all in politics and entertainment industry. Who know this better than the four directors of The Family Man’s season 3, the feeblest yet. But still watchable.
