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
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