POPCORN REVIEWSS

An official adaptation of the English show The Good Wife, the biggest letdown of the second season of The Trial remains its disjoint nature of the drama that never really adds any continuity to the proceedings. It seems like every incident occurs in isolation in this one-case-per-episode kind of a format that isn’t even done properly. For instance, a young masseur does accuse a famous personality for a s*xual assault during one of her sessions. But the staging of the drama remains such that it automatically gives you an impression that this single case might be the crux of the second season, almost being intercut between the broader dynamics of the characters on the show (remember Rajiv had faced a similar accusation in season one). But…BUT…..the case comes and goes in a jiffy, so much so that you are left wondering on what purpose did it actually serve! It is flat and frivolous, something that remains a consistent thread in the proceedings.

There is an air of stereotypes inserted in the drama too, so much so that I actually was confused on whether I have been watching Taarak Mehta Ka Oolta Chashma all along? So you have a stereotypically Gujarati lawyer ending every word with ‘ne’, or a Parsi lawyer that tactfully plugs in the word ‘Dikra’ in every sentence (I ought to have taken offence to it given that I am a Parsi too, but I soon realised that I am from a minority whom nobody gives a flying f*** about, so I’ll just stick to my writing), an LGBTQ character who is asked ‘why are you guys like this’ – almost like every character is a derivative of a checklist, and must stick to that notion. There are even a couple of Gen-Z influencer characters that randomly drop words like Obvio or Crashed (the joke being that her car was actually crashed) – something that makes for a boomer take on Gen-Zs, I mean come on, really?

And while it is impossible to care about each of the episodic cases that invariably seep into the subsequent episodes, you are also on the fence on the times of Noyonika and the life around her that includes her slow-mo crumbling marriage that resembles a slow-mo action set-piece of a Telugu film, her husband’s political misfires that includes him school an anchor in a Will Smith coded sentence ‘Get my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth’, Noyonika’s simp colleague secretly wanting the two of them to be together despite already being in a relationship himself, a subplot involving the office politics and a potential firm merger by Param (Karanvir Sharma), who is on the verge to oust a firm partner Malini (Sheeba Chadha) wherein I can totally hear Malini cite – ‘Mere Peeche Mere Hi Patte Bichha Rahe Ho’. But in all of it, the (t)issue remains the same – there is no connection on an emotional level between scenes.

In a scene, you see Noyonika bickering with her husband, in another, you see her sharing a banter with Vishal. Someone else, a character randomly uses the Mohabattein line to blackmail a character, in another, you see a character who is pitted against Noyorika all along and even arm-twisting her for a case….now working with her for another case. Another subplot involving Rajiv’s opponent Narayani (Sonali Kulkarni) going on an entire smear campaign against him in isolation, and in another Noyorika getting to know about a deep dark secret of her co-worker and office bestie. The overlap is alarming, the emotional core is devoid, the case resolutions are so simplistic that if this was the speed of the judiciary, the backlog would have been close to zero.

In all of it, it almost felt like the makers wished to unfold the entire show in isolation, having a second thought of premiering their season on OTT as opposed to television where this format works like a dream. It was almost like a batter taking a single on the last ball of the over to retain strike for the entire innings. And it is odd how the scoreboard would still read the same at the end of the season, being the exact replica of what it was at the start of the season. This then was a classic case of some lazy writing that failed on most fronts barring the political ideology that it wished to touch upon (a reimagining of the line Desh Ke G*dd*ron Ko…in a leftist subtext was heard). But is that even a consolation in a season that hardly makes an impact.