TVF Pitchers Season 2 review: A once iconic series returns without the humour or the soul

In the broader narrative of streaming, TVF’s Pitchers is both a relic and an icon. Even before binge-watching existed, TVF’s plucky little underdog adventure was a massive hit. In some sense it was also prophetic, not only about the potential of streaming, but also of the near despotic rise of start-up culture. India’s economists today swear by the number of unicorns the country has churned out, but equally concerning has been the fall from grace of some of these brands. Considering just how relevant and timely this long-awaited return of what is perhaps India’s first streaming show in principle is, there was always going to be a sense of wild anticipation. This anticipation is rather rudely squashed and run-over by a lazy, bloated and confused second season, that in hindsight, might have been better off hanging onto the myth of an unlikely show’s mythical popularity.

The second season returns with three out of the four protagonists. Jeetendra – Jeetu here as well – is missing from this third season and while it might have been explained as a storytelling choice, we can assume the actor has possibly overgrown the studio’s (TVF’s) oeuvre. Naveen (Naveen Kasturia), Yogi (Arunabh Kumar) and Mandal (Abhay Mahajan), though, return as the head honchos of PRAGATI, a vaguely positioned start-up, hunting their ‘series A’ round of funding. The plotlines are predictable, as much as they are reminiscent of headlines from a reality we are well familiar with. Investors have to be chased, products built, loopholes fixed and schemers outthought. Starting up, the show says, is as complicated as navigating a volatile, but co-dependent relationship. There is never a good time to stay, or leave.

You’d think this second season has had so much material to chew on, in the seven years that it has gestated, that it would materialise as the tightest, most cogent piece of articulation about simmering ideal – entrepreneurship. Or that it would at least be brimming with ideas, if not nuance. Except, this second season is a humungous let-down, a rotten, bloated piece of pop culture banality that fails even to reclaim its own, humble crown. Hour long episodes clamour for space and relevance as time literally stands still in this bizarrely cumbersome second season. The show for that matter neither refreshes nor returns to the milieu of the old. It’s somewhere in the middle, undecided but awake, speaking but barely making sense.

Naveen is still the philosopher of the group, not mercurial with his intelligence, but possibly the only one who can read between the lines (including those in the script). Mandal continues to act as the moral centre of the group, cutting off people who curse and jumping in front of metaphorical bullets with the glee of a deer who believes his destiny is to be hunted. Yogi is still the maniacal, misfit. A Hinglish-speaking, coarse man who really looks and sounds as if he belongs in another profession. But this is what modern workplaces are made up of, the soft and the hard, men and women who import different personalities often playing off of each other’s strengths to somehow pull off the improbable. Only, here it might also be impossible.

It’s startling that a show with so much promise, cache and potential feels so insipid and lost. It practically doesn’t get going until the third episode, by which time you’re convinced that caution has simply not been ushered to the wind here. The first season was a breezy overlap between the world of tech and men, and while the pool in this second season is considerably more diverse, the show loses much of its sheen, trying to uncover the depth of prosaic situations. It feels overthought, overcooked and bafflingly, under-acted. Surprisingly, the writing, one arm of the TVF conveyor belt you seldom have to doubt, is lethargic, lost in a feverish attempt to slap punchlines to the drone-like, monotonous hum of moments that mercilessly do not end. Much has been lost here on the edit table as well, by hanging onto indiscriminate moments that seem to want to feel time rather than the void of meaning. Weirdly, and rather prophetically, this is the life cycle of ideas with short shelf-lives.

You could partly blame the climate that this second season has come out in. The show has lost some of its novelty given a news cycle overrun by stories around the good, bad and ugly of entrepreneurship. But the same could also be viewed as an advantage. Not for nothing did the teaser for this instalment include a certain Ashneer Grover. But while clamour and intellectual clout are one thing, backing it up with ideas and performances that hit a ball semi-flight, out of the park, still takes doing. For that matter, this second season of Pitchers, to an extent undoes the good work of the first. There is a sequence in the overlong third episode that articulates, rather intuitively, an office’s quiet descent into chaos and mutiny. It’s the kind of sequence that made the original lithe, silly, perceptive and soulful. Exorcise all you like, the carcass of an overindulgent second season is, unlikely to yield any of those qualities.

TVF Pitchers Season 2 is streaming on Zee5

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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