Mirzapur Season 2. Deconstructed.

Title: Mirzapur Season 2

Starring: Ali Fazal, Pankaj Tripathi, Divyendu Sharma, Shweta Tripathi, Rasika Dugal, Amit Sial and others.

Teleplay/Screenplay: Puneet Krishna, Vineet Krishna

Direction: Gurmmeet Singh, Mihir Desai

No of episodes: 10

Deconstruct meter: 2.5/5

It is a sight to behold.

A brooding Guddu Pandit emoting using his eyes. Sans any dialogue.

And an intense Kaleen bhaiyya doing his thing with a smouldering deadpan calm. And a lot of dialogue.

Plenty of that; and the revenge, which is too little too late sums up the second installment of this iconic show.

I have been an ardent fan of this genre of cinema. Partially because it is close to reality and it is hopelessly entertaining. Take Gangs of Wasseypur, Satya, Ishqiya, Saheb Biwi aur Gangster, Paatal Lok and the brilliant Mirzapur Season 1 for that matter. It blew the roof off me. Ali Fazal’s rendition of Guddu Pandit; always ready to mow down anything or anybody that did not align with him. Kaleen bhaiyya. Maqbool. Beena Tripathi. Munna Tripathi. Golu and Sweety. SP Maurya and a few more. A small ensemble. A simple core story. Brilliant dialogue and the most important of all; the notoriously unpredictable screenplay.

All the above and a lot more is absolutely missing from Mirzapur Season 2. It starts with a slow bang and soon fizzles into something which is far from the core theme of what the show is. It has its moments with the fan favorite characters but such moments are rare, with a diminished wow factor.

Mirzapur S2 starts where S1 ends. A lot of unanswered questions as to Munna’s escape from the wedding etc are left to the imagination of the viewer. I would have loved a little elaboration on that. The second season makes the canvas bigger and ambitious but not necessarily better. Too much of a good thing here ultimately becomes a bad thing.

Without divulging much of the plot, the second season is fettered with additions of new characters which do not seem organic to the core story. As usual and as was with S1, the performances of individual characters are top notch to say the least.

Ali Fazal (Guddu Pandit) knocks it out of the park. His character arc is sort of in the maturing stage right about now and he plays it to perfection; complete with the dialect and everything. Pankaj Tripathi is spot on as always making easy work of Kaleen bhaiyya who seeks bigger aspirations this time around. Divyendu Sharma and Rasika Dugal do a great job of reprising their roles of Munna Tripathi and Beena Tripathi respectively with Beena getting her hands dirty indulging in covert family affairs, a la Uttar Pradesh.

The others in the scheme of things are all on point and let me tell you, there are an awful lot of them! Lilliput as Dadda Tyagi is a delight to watch and so is Vijay Varma as the unpredictable Tyagi scion of Siwan. Priyanshu Painyuli as Robin makes for an interesting new addition but feels as though the character is written in just for the sake of it.

The new season moves away from the primary story of Mirzapur. Also, the sizzling and entertaining camaraderie of Bablu and Guddu Pandit is missing. It was the sole reason that made Season 1 so enjoyable. The camaraderie which the 2nd season has; the one between Guddu and Golu is not even remotely close to soul stirring.

The show seems to want to tick all the boxes that made it popular in the first place. Cheesy UP clichéd dialogue. Check. Blood and skin lusting characters. Check. Good old rural Hindi slang. Check. Vernacular Hindi interspersed with occasional English words. Check. Worked wonders in the 1st season. Fails to deliver this time around. Borderline irritating.

This season acts more like a bridge to the most obvious 3rd season and I am scared this may become another milking the cow franchise. 5 episodes into the show and my patience had run out as to when will the machismo of Guddu be finally back? Probably in the next season? Your guess is as good as mine. Tab tak.. yeh bhi theek hai.

Mirzapur Season 2.

All episodes streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.