Virgin Bhasskar Season 2 Review – A Painfully Long, Tasteless Adult Comedy

BOTTOM LINE: A Painfully Long, Tasteless Adult Comedy

Rating: 3/10

Skin and Swear: Several Instances of Strong Language and On-Screen Intimacy

What Is the Story About?

Benaras-based erotic novelist Bhasskar Tripathi, who writes with a pen name Bad Boy, has taken a sabbatical from penning popular adult fiction, much to the disappointment of his publisher. In an attempt to nail the true identity of this writer, a college student Pakhi, a reader of his works, begins to write erotic novels, assuming the identity of Bad Girl, which sell like hotcakes. Pakhi’s cheeky bid to meet Bhasskar is met with success and the two come together to write a series of books that are a major hit at the market. The growing professional association between Bhasskar and Pakhi is misunderstood by the writer’s girlfriend Vidhi. Where is this love triangle headed?

Performances?

Anant Joshi, playing the title role, is certainly an actor with potential with fine comic timing and his ability to shift from comedy to drama seamlessly is a true reflection of the talent that he possesses. Jiya Shankar is a genuine surprise this season with her on-screen charm, though her role is fleshed out poorly. Rutpanna Aishwarya doesn’t have much to offer this season. Dhirendra Kumar Tiwari and Himanshu Arora showcase flashes of their potential but their absurd characterisation leaves very little for them to do anything noteworthy.

Analysis

Virgin Bhasskar Season 2 is a cringe-worthy follow up to a show that makes its mediocre predecessor feel like the Mughal-E-Azam of the digital medium. It’s one thing to bankroll a show about an erotica writer and another thing use this as a license to unleash a barrage of pointless episodes where the writers only think with their reproductive organs.  While the first season stuck to its core idea of exploring the world of its protagonist with reasonable focus, the story in the second instalment takes a turn for the worse in the form of a predictable, stereotypical love triangle where the protagonist is made to feel like a saint for accepting his pitfalls.

While adult fiction-reading is a dimension of one’s life that most brush under the carpet and don’t discuss publicly, the show stretches the elastic too far when it suggests that all women in a college hostel don’t have a life beyond erotica. The premise of a female and male erotic novelist uniting to write an adult fiction series is wackily interesting, but the show doesn’t do justice to the potential of the idea and is too content being a regular comedy-of-errors drama. The writing is extremely silly, the humour is puerile (a joke on the term ‘atma nirbhar’ also features here) and the repetitiveness of the visual backdrops limit its appeal.

The series tries every trick in the book to touch the 12-episode mark (with little success) and most episodes don’t do much to further the plot or explore the world of its protagonists. There are unending monologues about sex and love lives in the guise of a stand comedy show by Mishra, the protagonist’s sidekick in the plot, testing your patience. Even as you divert your attention towards the new character Pakhi, her sob tale of a love interest from Canada ditching her after a series of social media interactions is so yawn-inducing. The confusion-comedy that ensues between Pakhi’s parents and Bhasskar later delays the inevitable.

The insecurity of Bhasskar’s ex amidst this humbug makes Virgin Bhasskar even more painful to watch. A show that positioned itself as an adult comedy ends up as a melodramatic snooze fest with nothing noteworthy about it. The ridiculous pace at which AltBalaji is churning out multiple seasons of its shows only proves how they’re not giving themselves enough time to reflect upon their quality and thereby, making the same mistakes time and again. If sanity is what you desire, stay a mile away from Virgin Bhasskar!

Music and Other Departments?

Harshwardhan Dixit’s music score is redundant, lacks any variation regardless of the situation and is a major deterrent to the narrative flow, also resulting in unintentional humour at times. The cinematographers Pappu Singh Rajput, Krishna Ramanan can only do so much within the production limitations and the various garish sets that rob the show of any realism it seeks to attain. The show could have done without at least 3-4 episodes and it would have still not made any difference to the plot.

Highlights?

Anant Joshi’s performance

The wackiness in the premise of a man and a woman writing an adult fiction series

Drawbacks?

Poorly structured, wavering plot

Puerile humour

Pointless melodrama in the later episodes

Did I Enjoy It?

No

Will You Recommend It?

No

Virgin Bhasskar Season 2 Review by Binged Bureau 

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