“Mirzapur 2”: Amazon Prime Video Series Gives You Sense of Deja Vu

By Ektaa Malik

Directors: Gurmmeet Singh and Mihir Desai

Cast: Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Divyenndu Sharmaa, Ali Fazal, Shweta Tripathi, Rasika Dugal, Harshita Shekhar Gaur, Sheeba Chaddha, Rajesh Tailang, Amit Sial, Isha Talwar, Priyanshu Painyuli, Anjum Sharma, Vijay Varma

Rating: Two stars

While the backbone of Mirzapur, economically speaking, is the carpet weaving and brassware industries — not to mention the illicit trade of country-made guns — the one other profession that will surely thrive in this small Uttar Pradesh city, will be that of therapists. Clearly, the local population and the main protagonists of the show have had a lot on their minds since we last met them. Some noteworthy cast members had been killed off in the last season’s blood-soaked finale, leaving the audience and the residents of Mirzapur reeling. A session or two with a friendly therapist might just come in handy for the most part. Those sessions will go a long way in addressing the oh-so-dominant daddy issues that almost everyone in the cast seems to have in abundance; we will come to that later.

We see Guddu Pandit (Ali Fazal), Golu (Shweta Tripathi Sharma) and Dimpy (Harshita Gaur) who are on the run, which is a tad difficult as Guddu has been shot in the knee, on the other hand, we see Akhandanand Tripathi aka Kaleen Bhaiya (Pankaj Tripathi) sitting on the bedside of injured Munna Bhaiya, the unhinged son, who had been shot five times in the back. And a game of cat and mouse ensues, though it takes a long convoluted way to figure out who’s the cat and who’s the mouse. The prize though remains the same, from last season — the reign of Mirzapur.

There are some new players in the fray: Sharad Shukla, son of Rati Shankar who was killed by Guddu Pandit last season; there are the Tyagis from Siwan, who deal in everything from stolen cars to liquor; and there are the new alliances where the CM of Uttar Pradesh is now on first-name basis with Kaleen Bhaiya. It’s exhausting to keep with the constant backstabbing, the constant hustle and backhanded deals that seem to fuel this desire for revenge, the recurring theme of season two. Everyone is out for something, and that single-minded pursuit seems to justify everything.

Mirzapur season two is essentially a feud between four sets of fathers and their sons. The Pandits, The Tripathis, the Shuklas and the Tyagis, the father-son duo in all these clans are at loggerheads. All upper-caste men, dealing with their overbearing, controlling fathers and doing everything to step out of their father’s shadow. The above-mentioned therapist will have a field day when left alone in a room with Munna Bhaiya or even Junior Tyagi. The daughters assert themselves, albeit sporadically. Golu Gupta, who debuted with the rather unnecessary and out-of-place masturbation scene last season, has an interesting journey, but yet it leaves a lot to be desired. Similarly for Beena (Rasika Duggal), who decides to cut her losses and does whatever it takes to survive after a rather traumatic finale. Certain plot points have been introduced to tick off boxes, to make sure the show looks and promotes an image of a ‘progressive, liberal, strong woman,’ but it all reeks of tokenism. Everything rings hollow and is downright jarring.

Mirzapur season two fails to learn from the mistakes of season one. There are some improvements, sure. Production quality has gone up; it no longer feels and looks like a telefilm from the nineties that used to air on Doordarshan. But everything else gives you a sense of deja vu. We even see a recreation of a famous scene from The Godfather, the one where someone comes to propose the selling of drugs to Don Vito Corleone, and the ageing Mafia don declines, while being interrupted by his younger offspring. The one in Mirzapur involves Dadda Tyagi (Lilliput) and Bharat Tyagi, and all we can think of was Marlon Brando. We have seen all this many, many times. Everyone speaks in one-liners, the dialoguebaazi gets heavy, and each dialogue is supposed to hold pearls of wisdom. But you cannot help but roll your eyes, because there is only as many times as we can hear lines like “Kuch log bahubali paida hote hain, kuch ko banana padta hai,” or “Rone se kamzoor to nahin pad jayenge naa.” Etc etc etc.– Indian Express