‘Sabka Number Aayega’ might want to ride on the shoulders of Gully Boy, but the second season of Jamtara is more like The Rolling Pebbles singing, ‘Everybody must get scammed!’
That includes us, the audience. And I say this with a heavy heart because I had liked season one of Jamtara. I liked the idea of Sunny (Sparsh Srivastava) and Rocky (Anshumaan Pushkar) training a band of young people to scam people. Unlike Hrithik Roshan’s teacher training kids to join the IIT (Super 30) Jamtara was a training ground for get-rich-quick phishing.
I liked how a crooked politician Brajesh Bhan (Amit Sial) wants his ‘cut’ when the lads get caught out. And yes, the wonderful actor Dibyendu Bhattacharya, who plays the cop Biswa Pathak, gives us a glimpse into the grey area: he knows the young lads are up to no good, but his hands are tied because they are minors.
In Season 1, the story had moved rapidly, and we took sides because we wanted Sunny and Gudiya (Monica Panwar) to get the better of the bad politician and the traitorous Rocky. Alas, this new season makes you wonder why none of the characters is really doing anything ‘heroic’. The terrible ‘nashedi’ duo resume the role of narrators (Shakespeare’s fools), a la Maqbool’s Purohit and Pandit duo, commenting on the goings on: “More betrayals are to come”. But it turns out they are trying hard to make the events more relevant than they are. And a pointless reference to the Mahabharata doesn't help.
It's not like the other characters are anything more interesting than cardboard cutouts. Brijesh Bhan is still a bad guy, and Gudiya wants revenge for the ‘insult’ (and rape threat) she suffered but standing up to him in an election seems to be such a convoluted way to go about it, even though Ganga Devi or Buaji to Brijesh Bhan (played by the most amazing actor Seema Pahwa) thinks it’s the best way. Buaji has a limited role, and you wish she’d have more to do, instead of just letting Gudiya do everything. Why didn’t the writers come up with a way to scam the bad guy out of his millions? Elections where people are paid to vote is so '70s Bollywood!
Suddenly the injured Sunny is off centre stage, and we don’t know why he doesn’t remind Gudiya that her life’s plan was to go to Canada.
We are so far away from the original story, you realise that you stop caring for any of the characters, you are not impressed by the kids who admit, ‘Haven’t scammed more than five or ten thousand at any time!’ and you know the seduction scene is a thing added because everything else is just ‘chalo scam karte hain’.
The YouTuber-turned-scammer Rinku Mondal (Ravi Chahar) phishing the minister’s wife is so uninteresting, you wonder why Brijesh Bhan is so impressed. Just because he got Rs 40 lakh at one go? And why was I wondering that a minister’s wife was getting a salary? Was she a minister also?
But the character suddenly showing up (backstory and all) made me wonder if he would be connected to Sunny somewhere (same last name!). But no…
Rinky shows up in episode one and I just want them to move to Gudiya and Sunny, their fake marriage and future plans. Plus, there’s something stubborn inside of you that is wishing for a comeuppance for the bad deeds, and a redemption for Inspector Biswa. The end is rather tame and predictable.
I wish they had connected the journalist and his shenanigans to something or someone. It’s rather tough to watch the show suddenly turn political when the journalist turns up, with the addition of a domestic abuse thread that goes nowhere, and yes, making Sunny and Gudiya dance when we know that theirs is supposed to be a marriage of convenience…
Even if you have not watched season one of Jamtara, you will be exasperated by the gaalis and party scenes where the lads are drunk and they all dance around a bonfire cursing. My one thankful moment: it’s a show set in Bihar/Jharkhand and no one says ‘Burbak’ (it’s overused and dumb).
Come on, Netflix! Pay attention to the storytelling. The idea that village lads were so good at phishing (and we watched it, jaws dropped on the floor) turned into a blasè: ‘every kid in Jamtara knows how to scam people’, and let’s just be violent because, Jharkhand. No show should be so tiresome that people would volunteer to give you their card details (CVV, et al.) just so you’d stop…
Also read: Jamtara director Soumendra Padhi: "Season 2 is much more layered and much more researched"
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
