5 more annoying things about Indian soap operas

Need to get this post out of my system.

Hello to everyone who’s reading this! You may or may not have come across my other article entitled ‘5 annoying things about Indian soap operas’. If you haven’t, read that first over here.

Also: Again, ALL the images I got were from Google images. I do not own ANY of these and they’re just used for representation, no offence intended to ANYBODY AT ALL. 

Enjoy from where I left off.

6. The dance routines and wedding invitations

 

Credit:Google Images. Honestly.

Okay, your actors clearly don’t know how to dance. But in order to gain some TRPs and some air time, you deck them in fancy costumes and have them dancing to the latest songs with horrible choreography. And it burns my eyes!

This is almost always during a wedding and nothing but this dance happens for 30 out of 40 minutes, with the entire song being played out five times, every single person from the kids to the grandparents having a line to sing and being slowed down for five minutes each time the hero and heroine graze hands, hold hands or look at each other. And without fail, the heroine will slip, the hero will catch her and they’re now both just posing like they’re on the poster of a romantic movie.

How do you maintain that much balance? And how do you manage to look in to the eyes of your co-star for 20 minutes with the same stupid BGM playing over and over again? It evades me. And, you know, when the lead pair gets married, the whole TV show sends an “invitation” to all the viewers three weeks before the wedding, has a crossover of about twenty shows with characters just turning up to dance at someone’s wedding and has a whole three-day wedding celebration planned for it. Tip to gain air time #3.

7. What’s an actor?

Image: quickmeme.com

The amount of acting skills required to land a role in these shows stresses me out. The requirement is probably something like: A good looking person who’s great at crying, staring at something with a depressed expression on their face, yelling, fighting, wiping their tears…maybe even someone who can make a good ‘disgusted’ expression.

And I don’t even blame these emotionally dead actors because they’ve had a look at the script and instead of saying no while they could, they landed up in this horrific TV show and are now under contract to continue with it.

So many actors in these Indian TV shows have no screen presence, can’t deliver dialogue for nuts and have no appeal in any department other than the pretty face department. This has convinced me that real talent honestly doesn’t stand a chance here. That’s not to say there aren’t some fine actors out there in TV shows. But what are they doing? Supporting character roles. Comedy roles. Side roles. Roles where they die quickly. All the main actors do is smile, cry, get dramatically high on self-righteous anger and swear by their children (or parents or siblings).

8. Did you get my message?

Did Ananya here become a singer? No? She’s spending the series battling it out with her boyfriend’s mom? Or his control issues? Has she spoken about music in a while? No? Then why did you name the show “Khwabon ki Duniya mein” and mislead us with trailers about singing being her life when in reality, her life is now her forced marriage in to this unbearable family?

PS: I have no idea if there is a show called “Khwabon ki Duniya mein” and if there is, I haven’t watched it. All names here are used for representational purposes only).

I probably have addressed this before in the previous article, but this is looking at it from a different angle. The previous article was about the plot being annoying. This is about what kind of a social message is being sent. Lets take the example of Ananya. (Again, this is not a reference to any TV show I’ve seen or heard about).

So, Ananya loses her life’s purpose because she can’t be a singer anymore (because plot). Now, she married in to this family where everybody hates her because of the circumstances under which she married her husband and because she’s probably poorer than him, or the boy was going to get married to someone else and she unfortunately got in the way. This has ruined the boy’s life and made him extremely unhappy and moody, turning everyone and  particularly his mother against her.

They start getting borderline abusive. So does Ananya leave to become a singer? No! She doesn’t file for divorce because she’s too “traditional”and now she has made it her life’s mission to get along with her new family members and make her husband happy again. Chances are, the person he loved died and she’s taken it upon herself to bring him out of his sadness. And that’s okay, but now she’s completely let go of her dream and she’s all alone. Her parents disown her and things are worse than ever. So does she put her foot down? No! She stays like she has no life of her own and makes her entire life about her failing relationships, letting herself get ordered around, or battle with the old lady of the house for the house keys! What even?

So this TV show goes against divorce, happiness and freedom. Wow. Great message. But for real, there are so many TV shows out there that try to send a great message but that only happens when there’s some good change in the lives of the characters. Which never happens because the villains are idiots and in the most literal sense, the show must go on so that the production house recovers its money and thus the show never ends, making it seem like no matter how many challenges you overcome, your life’s going to be pathetic and there’s no way out. Thanks for crushing my dreams.

9. Rip-offs

Image: http://www.pinkvilla.com

You have these TV shows trying to imitate the West all the time. I’ve legit seen a rip-off of Twilight around the time it was big deal, on Indian TV, with just a slightly different storyline. I’ve seen a TV show try to pull of a Game Of Thrones style trailer and fail miserably. Great job, you guys. I have just one thing to say to y’all:

Stop doing that! Frankly, this just speaks volumes about your insecurity about your own content, you desperation to get people to like you, and your incompetence in being cool along with your lack of originality. Even you know you can’t come with something good, so you steal.

Also, when I read Romeo and Juliet, the first thought that came to me was “This is such a Hindi movie or TV show.” Then, I realised that it was because Indian movies and TV shows have taken it upon themselves to make every romance a Romeo and Juliet style romance. So many movies and TV shows are based on this warring-family-children-falling-in-love thing that the plot has lost its charm. It has been done to death and every day you have new shows that come with the same damn plot. Thanks for ruining a Shakespearan classic for me!

10. The viewers! 

Credits:Troll.me Hehe.

Honestly, how are viewers still interested in this rubbish? The very fact that some TV shows have been able to continue forever and ever is because they have enough loyal viewers to keep the production coffers from starving. This means that there are some people out there who are lapping it all up.

To them, I say: How can you stand it? It’s ridiculous!

To make matters worse, whenever there’s a story with an actually interesting storyline, it runs for a few episodes and then shuts down because nobody’s watching it. Maybe it’s because people don’t like stories that are drama-packed from the beginning. Maybe it’s because we’ve lost faith in Indian TV shows and we know all too well about deceptive packaging. (Ananya, I’m looking at you.)

Maybe it’s because some viewers prefer to stick to these ratchet dramas because, let’s face it, that’s what Indian television does best. Eurgh.

Sorry, I just had to post this. I know it’s super long. Please don’t hate me for this. Aargh.

Alpha ♥