Aashram Season 3 Part 2 shockingly ends in a damp squib

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Clearly, all’s not well with the Prakash Jha’s story and script department. Even the worst cynics will agree to the fact that Aashram was not only one of our best series but, despite a passing deviant decline in Part 2 of Season 1, redeemed itself with Season 2 in 2022.

The saga generally proves the long-standing malaise in the arty / middle-ground filmmakers’ psyche where they take up a fab idea and then do not know where to take the story and how to culminate it. In any case, Jha is clearly not saying whether this “Season 3 Part 2” is, at all, a culmination, or more will follow. The end, qualitatively, is a damp squib. But for a story with a purpose, it also makes no sense whatsoever. For without revealing the exceedingly absurd and silly end, it reaches a cul-de-sac that will neither satiate its loyal aficionados nor convince new watchers that Prakash Jha may have made some pathbreaking movies but is clearly lost here!

What makes this multiple times worse is that the proceedings in four (of the five episodes) are in the proper canon. Baba Nirala a.k.a. Monty (Bobby Deol) is still playing his games with his devotees, the rival state politicians and women, but this time his lieutenants are not all loyal. There is a conspiracy brewing even within his victims, led by Parminder (Aaditi Pohankar), for whom his lust has no end, her sister-in-law, Babita (Tridha Choudhury), now one of Baba’s ‘loyalists’ and more, and Parminder has begun to use her sexual attractiveness to entice Bhopa (Chandan Roy Sanyal) as part of her plan to destroy Baba, who has destroyed her family. This, of course, facilitates some truly audacious sequences of skin show, especially on Aaditi’s part!

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The twists are there in full force, backed by one of the finest background scores ever in an Indian web series (Advait Nemlekar, take a bow!) and some fine technical standards, including awesome camerawork (Chandan Kowli), production design of sets and locations. And yes, the dialogues are also crisp and direct, and the performances of the expected high caliber (Jha is always very good with his characterizations, casting and actors).

Bobby Deol and Chandan Roy Sanyal continue their exceptional turns. Aaditi Pohankar is superb too, her eyes her main strength. Of the rest, Uday Vir Singh Yadav makes a special mark with his low-key role as the man who provides crucial evidence.

But with such a solid precedence. and build-up, a far better ending was needed, regardless of whether we will get a Season 4 (or whatever it will be called) or not.

Rating: **1/2

Amazon MX Player’s Prakash Jha Productions’ Aashram Part 3 Season 2 Produced and directed by: Prakash Jha Written by: Habib Faisal, Kuldeep Ruhil, Tejpal Singh Rawat, Avinash Kumar & Madhvi Bhatt Music: Advait Nemlekar Starring: Bobby Deol, Chandan Roy Sanyal, Aaditi Pohankar, Tridha Choudhury, Darshan Kumaar, Vikram Kochhar, Anurita Jha, Sachin Shroff, Rajeev Siddhartha, Anil Rastogi, Parineeta Seth, Preeti Sood, Jahangir Khan, Uday Vir Singh Yadav & others

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