Bakaiti Season 2 Review: Sheeba Chadha, Rajesh Tailang’s Middle-Class Drama Feels Repetitive

Bakaiti Season 2 has the warmth and the performances to make the Katarias feel like family, but its repetitive conflicts and easy resolutions leave their struggles feeling oddly inconsequential, argues Sreeju Sudhakaran.

IMAGE: Sheeba Chadha and Rajesh Tailang in Bakaiti Season 2.

It is hard not to love Sheeba Chadha and Rajesh Tailang’s pairing. These two incredible actors bring a wonderfully homey vibe whenever they are cast together as a couple, so it is no wonder showrunners love having them play the married pair looking out for each other, be it in Mirzapur, Bandish Bandits, or the show whose second season I am reviewing here: Bakaiti.

While my heart warms up seeing Chadha and Tailang share the screen, I cannot ignore that their characters and marital dynamics in all these shows are cut from the exact same mould, with only minor variations. Oh wait, do I get that ‘homey’ vibe because of this repeated stunt-casting?

For instance, Rajesh Tailang’s character in Bakaiti, Sanjay Kataria, possesses the stubborn principles of Ramakant Pandit from Mirzapur, alongside the frustrated nature of Rajendra Rathod from Bandish Bandits.

Sheeba Chadha continues to play the endlessly supportive wife with occasional annoyance towards her frustrated half. This onscreen dynamic works well for the middle-class setting of Bakaiti, Dice Media’s attempt to tap into the space dominated by TVF shows like Gullak and Yeh Meri Family.

But the sheer overfamiliarity, and the fact that Bakaiti, directed by Samar Iqbal (with a screenplay by Abhinav Vaidya, Gunjan Saxena and Neha Pawar), simply fails to give them any fresh material to work their magic on, is exactly why the show struggles to stand within its own space.

Just like the Katarias’ never-ending struggles with their money.

 

The Kataria Family’s New Challenges

The Katarias from Ghaziabad are back, fighting over slightly new issues.

Sushma (Sheeba Chadha) has started a boutique in her house that is doing fairly well though her husband believes it takes her attention away from household duties.

Sanjay is still struggling as a lawyer to find cases with a good cause. His desperation for money forces him to work for a shady builder, Tyagi (Abhijeet Chavan), who wants to use his expertise to illegally evict people from their rightful land.

Sanjay is also annoyed that his younger (and more financially stable) brother Ajay (Parvinder Jit Singh) and his wife (Poonam Jangra) have to crash with them after their house ends up in a flood zone.

The kids are less annoying this time around. Naina (Tanya Sharma) has moved to Mumbai for her Master’s, where she faces her own struggles to fit into a clique of rich friends and finish an assignment. She also harbours confused feelings for a fellow student (Ritwik Nambiar), unsure whether to make him her boyfriend or keep him firmly in the friend zone.

Her younger brother Bunty (Aaditya Shukla) is anxiously awaiting his selection for the district cricket team. He is also trying to get close to Ishita (Devishi Madaan), the intern working at his mother’s boutique.

Nanaji (Ramesh Rai) remains besotted with his television set, though he has started showing signs of age-related dementia.

Repetitive Conflicts

Bakaiti, according to the show, translates to ‘arguing non-stop’. That is exactly what we witnessed in the first season, and that aspect of the family spills over in the new season too.

Characters squabble over egos and finances, whether it is Sanjay and Ajay arguing over money and house redevelopment, or Sanjay and Sushma fighting over household troubles.

Sanjay’s workplace troubles make him increasingly frustrated at home, bringing out more of his misogynistic side towards his wife, who at one point sternly asks if her only job is to bring him tea.

Naina and Bunty’s sibling arguments are dialled down this season, with each kid caught up in their own educational and romantic conflicts. But there is one silly argument over a birthday gift that reminded me how annoying these two were in the first season.

So yes, there are plenty of squabbles. But the compromises (most of which means the problems are never discussed again) and peacemaking also arrive swiftly. The show plays its theme music, all is well for a brief period, and then the next fight begins.

The cycle simply repeats itself until the finale, where one character inevitably sermonises another into seeing things in the right perspective, amends are made, and we get a happy ending. Question mark, there.

Glorification Of Middle-Class Struggles

Remember when the Barjatyas and the Johars were criticised for glamorising ultra-rich households in their movies where their minor inconveniences were instantly settled with a quick hug and a few teardrops?

Shows like Bakaiti, Gullak, and their peers are pulling the exact same trick with middle-class households.

The financial struggles and the ‘honest’ values of the middle-class households are glorified, the bitter fights are trivialised, and everyone easily comes together to settle the dust over their quarrels.

Hum Saath-Saath Hain… the lower middle-class way.

Except that in the Sooraj Barjatya film, they drop just one conflict that becomes the driving point of the film and gives it an emotional closure. Here, there are just too many of them, with no proper resolutions and way too many reconciliations.

Just like how we have the ‘Spirit of Mumbai’, web-series like these vape on the addictive fumes of the ‘Spirit of Middle-Class’!

Struggles To Find Its Own Standing

The whole builder track, while attempting to give Sanjay a moral conflict, is weakly written and poorly edited. At the end of the sixth episode, Tyagi and his men menacingly barge into the Kataria residence. Yet the very next episode begins with them simply leaving the house.

Much ado about nothing? Not exactly. It just gives the Katarias another excuse to argue and one of them to vent their emotional frustrations. Every family member unpacks their baggage, throws it at the others, and everything resolves just in time for the next crisis.

You cannot deny that the cast shares a warm, naturalistic bond that makes the Katarias feel like a genuinely lived-in family unit. It is also undeniable that Rajesh Tailang and Sheeba Chadha consistently elevate Bakaiti with their magnetic performances, almost making you overlook how stagnant their characters are.

Yet, no matter how much I love them as actors, I find myself troubled by having to use the word ‘repetitive’. The performances go through the exact same motions as the screenplay.

Though, to be fair, I would still gladly take the scene of Sanjay apologising to Sushma for his misogynistic behaviour over the hypermasculine revelry most movies and shows are throwing on screen these days.

The heartwarming relatability and good performances certainly keep Bakaiti afloat. But when the writing offers nothing concrete for the characters to strive towards, and every single problem is so easily solved, the warm vibe isn’t enough to heat your affection.

What it does is ensure that the Katarias’ struggles quickly fade from your memory once the credits roll. Because by then, you are reminded that your own middle-class problems are infinitely more complicated, dynamic, and challenging.

Bakaiti Season 2 Review Rediff Rating: