All this time the Great Indian Family was a refuge, when did it become a toxic dump, wonders Deepa Gahlot.
If an OTT show is called Perfect Family, chances are it is anything but. What comes as a bit of a surprise is that Delhi's Karkaria family is so ordinary.
Somnath (Manoj Pahwa) is the hard drinking, gluttonous bully, who burps, passes wind, yells at everybody in the family because that's how Punjabi Daddyjis behave.
Pahwa can play this role in his sleep because he seems to have cornered the casting market for such characters. Of course, he is a halwai by profession, keeping the business going at a time when sugar and oil is considered poison.
His wife Kamla (Seema Pahwa) makes a virtue of being the doormat. She even cowers in the corner of the bed, while her husband spreads his limbs.
The son Vishnu (Gulshan Devaiah) does not want to mind the sweet shop, and works at a PR firm. Passed over for a promotion, he has to put on hold plans for moving to his own place.
His wife Neeti (Girija Oak Godbole) had quit her publishing job to be full-time mother to Daani (Hirvaa Trivedi) and Daksh (Ronav Vaswani).
The Karkaria daughter Pooja (Kaveri Seth) has left the home of her husband because he is 'boring'.
The domestic situation of Karkarias is so fraught with hostility and screaming matches, that Daani develops anxiety issues.
In the show, created by Pooja Bhambri, produced by Pankaj Tripathi, and directed by Sachin Pathak, the school insists on family therapy if Daani is to be retained in the posh institution.
At first, Somnath is resistant, insisting that the family is perfectly happy, but the therapist, Megha (Neha Dhupia) starts to unravel that fiction.
There is predictable saas-bahu strife, Neeti feels neglected by her husband, and all conversations go from zero to 60 on the screech-o-meter in seconds. She wants her own home, and annoyingly, Vishnu withdraws into spiritual chanting whenever the subject comes up.
So she cuts herself and the kid polishes off a Nutella jar -- very American coping style; the house must be full of fattening food!
Using the platitudinous questions and comments by Megha is an easy way to get the various members of the family to open up.
For no convincing reason, Daani has trouble fitting in with other students. She gets aloo parathas in her tiffin, the other students order avocado toast. So a class/ social status issue is needlessly introduced.
There is the family problem, but nothing that every other household doesn't go through.
Most of the time, Daani just appears to be an attention-seeking brat, not so much a troubled preteen. She just likes the fuss and bother everyone goes through to keep her happy.
There are some nice bits, like Somnath having to shed his patriarchy just a little, when his daughter shows more business sense than the constantly disgruntled son.
Then, to explain why the Karkarias are the way they are, there are clichéd childhood traumas detailed -- full pop psychology mode.
Everyone looks shocked and hurt when Vishnu wants to accept a overseas promotion, as if every second family does not have an offspring working abroad, which their families boast about.
On the one hand, it is admirable that Perfect Family seeks to destigmitise therapy, and bring mental health issues out of the closet. On the other, it does not think of better emotional graphs for the characters.
If every time two people in a family quarrel and they are made to undergo therapy, and join expensive wellness centres, there would be psychiatric clinics at every street corner.
All this time the Great Indian Family was a refuge, when did it become a toxic dump?
The actors work doubly hard to make their hapless characters likeable or sympathetic, but it is a tough task, and they often tip into melodrama.
Perfect Family streams on YouTube.
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