It was a simpler time when Made in Heaven premiered in 2019. We, as viewers, were yet to be cooped up in our homes owing to a certain virus and be bombarded with content. Season 1 felt fresh, even shocking at times as it took us inside the bleak underbelly of Delhi’s rich via a flower-adorned aisle. The protagonists, wedding planners Tara Khanna (Sobhita Dhulipala) and Karan Mehra (Arjun Mathur), were outsiders trying to cement their place in a class above theirs. Quite relatable. Every episode unearthed the maggots behind the scenes of dazzling marriages. In the process, the central characters reflected upon their own lives. The season was more vocal too. There were mentions of “the ruling party” and it concluded with Tara and Karan sitting in a defaced office, saffron flags sprouting from demolished furniture. It was almost a foretelling for another Prime Video series, Tandav (2021).
In comparison, Made in Heaven Season 2 is more of a fluffy successor. The show has surely upscaled. The clientele is richer (One of them is a movie star), the weddings are brighter and there are so many celebrity cameos that even Farah Khan might feel envious. The new season also introduces too many supporting characters, with arcs that go round and round in a whirlpool of obsolescence. For the original cast, the character development is so internal, at times it feels navel-gazey.
After the destructive happenings of season 1, Tara and Karan are building their wedding planning business from scratch. The recurring Ramesh Jauhari (Vijay Raaz) from the previous segment, is a permanent presence now as a major partner in the business. There are also new entrants: Mona Singh as Jauhari’s wife and nagging auditor Bulbul Jauhari, and the firm’s production designer Meher Chaudhary (influencer and transgender woman Trinetra Haldar in her debut).
At the home front, Sobhita’s Tara is negotiating a divorce settlement with her philandering husband Adil Khanna (Jim Sarbh), while Karan is sinking into drugs and depression after her homophobic mother was diagnosed with cancer. The in-house photographer and series’ moral spewer Kabir (Shashank Arora) is figuring things out with Shivani Raghuvanshi’s Jaspreet “Jazz” Kaur. In the course of seven episodes, too many things are happening to too many people. Some character developments seem unnecessary like Adil discovering he has a step-sister. Some character explorations seem unnecessary, like understanding more about the Jauhari family. A tale of a domestic abuse survivor trying to push some sense into her sexist teenage son can be the premise of another web series, but it doesn’t mix well into the larger narrative of Made in Heaven.
In accordance with its format, this time too the series aims to look at society via the prism of weddings. And these weddings are grander, the in-laws more obnoxious and the themes more diverse. But along the way, the narrative becomes increasingly preachy. There are weddings where the bride is trying to assert her Dalit identity, her queer identity, and at times just her identity but nothing particularly lingers. An episode featuring Elnaaz Norouzi (Sacred Games) losing out on a film with Anurag Kashyap or the one in which real-life couple Sameer Soni and Neelam Kothari cheat with each other on-screen, while Sanjay Kapoor is busy playing an Anil Kapoor parody, feel like lousy winks at meta-ness. Not that fabulous.
As the episodes trot, the weddings and their hurdles become background noise. What is left in the forefront is the story of Karan and Tara which drags without a destination in sight. Both Arjun and Sobhita feel constrained in their performances by the one-track developments of their characters. For most of the series runtime Karan snorts his way out of the internalised disdain for his mother, who, even on her deathbed, refuses to accept his sexuality. This might have read profound on paper but it doesn’t reflect impactfully on screen. Tara, on the other hand, is grappling with the financial mediocrity of her new boyfriend (Ishwak Singh) while she is trying to make Adil cough up a better settlement.
In their bid to add depth, the series creators gave an arc to each character but there still remain some loosely tied ends. If Shashank Arora’s Kabir had to sum it up, he would have said, “In the ever-changing world of storytelling, writers sometimes forget. Amidst the satire, the social commentary, and the political correctness, all that matters in the end, is what you left them with.”
Cast: Sobhita Dhulipala, Arjun Mathur, Jim Sarbh, Kalki Koechlin, Shashank Arora
Directed: Zoya Akhtar, Reema Kagti, Alankrita Shrivastava, Neeraj Ghaywan and Nitya Mehra
Streaming on: Prime Video
Rating: 2/5 stars
