Eternally Confused And Eager For Love: Eternally Dumb, No Sign of Love

If this badly-scripted drivel that Netflix has flushed out for us is passing muster for Gen Z programming these days, I don’t know who to doubt more, Netflix standards of gauging the generation’s taste for humour or the generation’s IQ level itself. Ray (Vihaan Samat) who oddly looks like he could be related to American actor Dev Patel, is a 24 year old privileged boy. He works in the lower ranking order of an investment firm, has rich parents who got him the job in the first place, and yet manages to get fired from the said job because of his juvenile ways. Characterised as a man-child, it would be an insult to call him that as the poorly written protagonist flounders between being an angsty, desperate, lust-filled teenager and shy, fumbling school boy who was obviously living in a cave in all his years of puberty. What could have made him endearing would be his unadulterated and candid innocence, naïveté and sheer helplessness and bad luck in the love and dating department. However, Ray manifests all those traits proving to be downright repulsive for a man of his age. He is constantly moping around and whinging to his imaginary friend Wiz who is disturbingly a fictional character he grew up with (another proof of him being stuck at the age of 13). The voice of actor Jim Sarbh for Wiz is given the huge task of stringing this puppet-like character along, which is a huge responsibility he botches up on regularly throughout the season’s eight episodes, enough for us to supposedly guffaw at Ray’s inherent flaws and weaknesses. Unfortunately, if we are finding comedy in a guy’s story that screams red flags indicating mental health issues, it doesn’t say much about our own sick minds and sadistic personalities. That’s not the end of our problems, as Suchitra Pillai and Rahul Bose pose as his parents who are seemingly detached but regularly appear to mollycoddle and pamper their befuddled, good-for-nothing brat. From finding him the next viable job to setting him up on a date, these folks have all the resources at their fingertips enough to add to the obvious ineptitude of their darling son. As a bonafide loser who sucks at everything, what makes a leading man still successful is when you give him solidly funny punch lines. Unfortunately, Vihaan as Ray has very little that he stands for and remains devoid of that one redeemable quality or characteristic that makes him worth your attention. I am still figuring out which part of him I find more detestable- fat shaming, ditching a girl on a date, wishing a date’s grandfather dead or hoping he doesn’t catch syphyllis by sharing a lift with an old man. Watch Never Have I Ever if you really want to see amateur romances and their dramatic highs and lows. For cool, upper crust, nuanced and definitely more entertaining fare, turn to Dil Dhadakne Do from the same Farhan Akhtar-Ritesh Sidhwani camp.

I admire your patience if you can live through the eight episodes of this series without inducing a headache. My rating? *1/2

Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb- Astounding Archaeological Adventure

 After 'My Octopus Teacher’ won Best Documentary Feature last year at the Oscars, Netflix raised the bar as far as the quality of documentary features go. That led me to find another gem that released the same year on Netflix, Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb. Now I am no Egyptologist and my knowledge of archaeology may be as dry as a desert, but that doesn’t mar my fascination to discover the buried secrets of Egypt’s dead. In fact, it draws me to watch everything tomb-related. So exploring the secrets of the Saqqara Tomb came naturally and what I stumbled upon as a viewer were precious moments of exploration, excavation and excitement. Through the documentary, we are presented with parallel stories as a motley bunch of experts- archaeologists, historians, masters of language and script and osteologists reconstruct a different reality, lived 4,400 years ago. What they unearth is a treasure trove that generations of Egypt’s archaeologists have been unable to do- reveal the Saqqara Tomb that houses the hidden secrets of a high-ranked priest called Wahtye and his family’s mysterious deaths. Several ornate coffins and tombs are pulled out of the layers of sand and limestone under the pyramids. Workers toil in the heat of the sun breaking their backs to carefully dig out articles of daily use like games people played in the 12-13th century, artefacts and antiques shaped like cats and a beautiful sculpture of a lion. Excavators carefully climb down deep and suffocating shafts to fish out entire mummies and scattered skeletons. Particularly gripping is the discovery of a well-preserved mummified animal among heaps of domesticated and deified cat mummies that turns out to be the first lion ever to have existed in Egypt! Delicately spread out over an elaborate course of over two hours, we are able to enjoy an immersive experience of a lifetime that spells definitive results for the archaeological history and scientific advancements of Egypt. Usually a documentary of this nature could end up feeling very clinical, dull and ruminative, what sets the documentary apart is its ability to keep the viewers focused on the progress of each excavation while adding a human angle of the thrill and achievement of its ultimate discovery. The search for the deepest and darkest tales of erstwhile dynasties and generations demands an extremely exhausting level of passion, commitment and hard work that sets locals apart from the distant foreigner who may trip upon Egypt’s pyramids. Seeing Egypt through the indigenous perspective helps give a rich emotional context to the proceedings, we are as invested and nervous about the results as the researchers, who shrug off the sweat and toil as long as it gives them a chance to witness or get in touch with their history. British documentary director James Tovell gives us a piece of precious ancient Egypt, unravelled by modern Egyptians for whom these findings leave an indelible mark just like the hieroglyphs in the inner sanctum of the pyramids, often life-changing and unforgettable.