We're Watching: You Season 4; Yami Gautam's Lost

Lost Sparks Briefly But Never Quite Bursts Into Flame

Based on the case of a missing boy, Lost has the requisite urgency, but no sieve that separates frothy ideas of journalism from the lived-in complexity of actual people, writes Manik Sharma.

“SHE LOOKED LIKE A SUFFERING ANGEL,” Vidhi Sahani, a journalist (played by Yami Gautam in ZEE5’s Lost), tells her boyfriend about a mother reeling under the loss of her son. It’s an odd statement in a film that often seems detached from the emotional core of the crisis it intends to frame. Based on the case of a missing boy, Lost has the requisite urgency, but no sieve that separates frothy ideas of journalism from the lived-in complexity of actual people.

Tushar Pandey stars as Ishan Bharti, a young Dalit boy — an idealist in love with the ambitious Ankita (Pia Bajpiee). To aid her aspirations, Ankita courts the thorny patronage of local politician Ranjan Varman (played by the ageless but also miscast Rahul Khanna).

On the night that Ishan confronts Ankita about her relationship with Varman, he disappears. What follows is a search led by Vidhi, a self-righteous journalist who is peeved and pressured, but never quite pushed to the brink. Like most journalists imagined by cinema, Vidhi chases leads and sources through cramped alleys and against good sense. Incredibly, she gets easy access to people placed highly in offices, the red tape sidestepped for the sake of a story that is unclear about the things it wants to communicate. There is journalism happening here, but without the resounding resistance most journalists face from people unwilling to cooperate. It’s an everyday nightmare, but in Lost it simply doesn’t exist. To add to that, there is no socio-economic consideration to mull, for journalism — at least investigative journalism — has become a financial risk that most people in the country would rather not take. Vidhi, in that sense, appears privileged and cocooned, even if unglamorous in a superficial way.

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MEET JOE BACK

You S4: The World’s Longest Sly Tweet Returns In Style

By RAHUL DESAI

IN A WORLD WHERE writers and artists routinely get imprisoned for dissenting against totalitarian regimes, You doesn’t get the credit it deserves for single-handedly battling the onset of ‘cultural fascism’. I know. I know. This sounds like the sort of snarky observation that Joe, the protagonist of the criminally popular Netflix series, might offer without the slightest hint of irony. In that smug, sexy, scornful, beautifully condescending voiceover too. But hear me out. Regardless of how cool or tiresome You is, it takes immense courage and wit for it to exist — and thrive — in an age of hyperwokeism, cancel culture, keypad feminism, virtue signaling and a million other internet-era plagues. (I’m surprised I even know the terms.) Before you, Dear Reader, condemn me to the dark depths of digital oblivion — the depths that most offenders temporarily occupy after being called out by righteous Twitter mobs who promptly forget about their own outrage a year later — just know that it’s true. It’s true that you’re being entertained by your own good-looking troll, and you can’t get enough of it.

Joe Goldberg just happens to be a murderer, sure, but he Facebook-stalks like we do, feels like we do, bitches and scrutinises like we wish we do, and most of all, loves like we dream of doing. His violence is a parody of how storytelling views the ways of the heart and human instinct, not a glorification of it. He is the best and worst versions of us at once, and it’s no small deal that over three-and-a-half seasons, the man has managed to turn repetition — the cornerstone of human nature — into an artform. I, for one, still wish I could articulate my disdain for people the way he does. I still chuckle at his impossibly sharp commentary about contemporary life, only to wonder what my chuckling says about me. Joe is not aspirational as a character, but his intellect is.

That said, Part 1 of Season 4 — the first five episodes premiered on February 9 (the final five will drop on March 9) — is probably the cheekiest installment of You yet.

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