'Aarya Season 2' review: Sushmita Sen still shows grit, but the story drags

Sushmita Sen's “Aarya” is an official remake of popular Dutch crime-drama "Penoza". (Image credit: Photo tweeted by @thesushmitasen)

They say, if it ain't broke, don’t fix it. But it sure looks like season two of Aarya was the work of an overenthusiastic committee. Writing and rewriting The Godfather when the bible was there to follow.

Let’s backtrack a bit, to Season 1.

The setting is Rajasthan and the underworld here is not gritty or dirty sewers. It’s privileged and drinks wine and lives in palaces. The premise is simple. Two men - a son and a son-in-law - from a very powerful family have stolen/stumbled upon drugs that belong to the rival ‘business’ house. A third, more mature man tries to prevent the two from being gleeful. He knows that the rivals deal with Russians, and stealing the drugs will have consequences. Of course, the drugs are hidden and the men die gruesome deaths. It falls to a daughter who was happily planning to leave it all and move away from the seedy family business to fix the mess.

Sushmita Sen plays Aarya (the Michael Corleone equivalent here), who loses a spouse (just like Michael sees the young Apollonia lose her life in a car bomb explosion, Sushmita Sen’s youngest of three kids witnesses his dad being shot by a man on a motorbike). The upright cop ACP Younus Khan tries to help, but… Sushmita must deal with the hand fate has dealt her without complaining.

Season 1 ended here.

After a long wait, fans who fell in love with Sushmita Sen again (except some noticed the strange cosmetic work on her face) watched Aarya Season 2, which dropped this week on Disney+Hotstar. Instead of keeping her focus on the goal (catch the ones responsible for the murder of her husband and deal with the drugs worth Rs300 crore which she has found), we are collectively sidetracked into issues that would drive any mother insane. Perhaps that’s why we see Sushmita Sen cry before she does anything, cry when anything fails, and cry some more because she doesn’t know what the writers are about to make her do… Perhaps they’re trying to turn her into a dark Jaya Bhaduri role from K3G where she knows when her son’s going to show up!

A daughter who thinks the mother is a liar and is responsible for her father’s death is given an unnecessary amount of attention as we see her slowly manipulate the manager of a bar into giving her drugs. And she gets to OD, be sent to rehab and more. If you were Aarya, you’d never put your daughter in a place where people are drinking and where she could have access to drugs (erm… The man has literally stolen drugs from the Russians, why would Aarya trust him with her daughter who’s on suicide watch?). As they say in Bollywood, Overacting ki dukaan! Poor Virti Vaghani who plays the daughter gets to OD one pill at a time, drinking from bottles…

Another person who gives the daughter a run for the money in overdoing it is Hina, the drunk wife of the brother. You can have one drunk-person-will-tell-home truths scene, but not every time she shows up on the screen! It’s exhausting to see Bollywood (and now OTT) have super articulate drunk people. Hina, played by Sugandha Garg, can figure out schemes that her family is up to, can dream up coherent conspiracy theories... Whatever happened to alcohol befuddles the brain?

Geetanjali Kulkarni, always perfect in the role she is given, is the crooked cop who wants to sell the confiscated drugs. She also has an odd ‘I too am a mother’ moment in the show. The interrogation room with recording device, the must-win-at-any-cost prosecutrix is too borrowed from shows and movies that are non-Indian. They could have taken inspiration from Narcos Mexico and interrogated Aarya face-to-face. It’s not like she doesn’t know who is on the other side of the glass.

Jayant Kripalani, who is the patriarch of the Rathod crime family, and Akash Khurana as the head of the Shekhawat family, as rivals don’t do much but seethe and plot to kill their own… I wish the women - Nandini Shekhawat and Aarya - had pitted wits more than in one episode instead.

Sampat, the henchman is played well by Vishwajeet Pradhan. Sikander Kher plays Daulat, who had a meaty role in Season 1 (and he did justice to it as well) is there too, shadowing Aarya because daddy ordered him to, seems like a sadder version of himself. A sharpshooter, a killer with a conscience? Tough act to believe. The horrid part? The Russians who must say ‘Dosvedanya’(to prove they’re ‘Rasshiyans’) and try to match phrases to Hindi.

You had one job, story continuity person of Aarya, and you guys missed it by a mile. The overly convoluted plot twists make ‘Aarya I am your father’ Darth Vader moment just plain awful. Watch it because you loved Aarya Season 1. But this is no Godfather 2. It’s more like Godfather 3. Fans anticipated an Emmy for season one. This season, just anticipate yawns.