Start-up pains are a pleasant departure from crime, comedy, spy and family dramas. It is, therefore, the premise that makes the new season watchable.
Seven years after the first instalment of Pitchers, Arunabh Kumar once again creates a world where motivational quotes open each episode and three co-founders of a new company grapple with vanishing funds, the shark world outside, employee insecurities inside and the silent grouses they nurse against one another.
Director Vaibhav Bundhoo and writers Prashant Kumar, Shubham Sharma and Talha Siddiqui delete first season’s ‘Tu beer hai’ and lead coder Jeetu (Jitendra Kumar) for reasons left unsaid, make ‘Tu whisky hai’ the line of this season, and leave it to CEO Naveen (Naveen Kasturia) with co-founders Yogi (Arunabh Kumar) and Saurabh (Abhay Mahajan) to do the heavy lifting.
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Sprinkle terms like ‘Venture Capital’, ‘Death Valley’, ‘Perception creates Evaluation’ and ‘Shopping for VCs’ to give authenticity to the struggles of Pragati AI, the start-up baby.
The makers and writers are fond of lines that luckily land a punch. Samples: ‘Money has no gender’, ‘Swiggy and Zomato deliver for each other, Ola and Uber ride on each other’s success’, ‘Who created the mouse? Ideas are a commodity, it took Bill Gates and Steve Jobs to reach the mouse to all households,’ ‘A broken spine can be mended but broken himmat has no cure’ and another on Kodak once at the top now being extinct.
A vlogger named RRR (Gopal Datt) is used like a sutradhar and even though the season has only five episodes, sequences go on and on. Yogi’s long motivational speech packed with dull cliches to bring back dispirited employees, a long search for a new CTO when the obvious one is right before you but isn’t spotted till the end, an annoying CTO who keeps sipping and eating and contributes so little that you don’t know which side he’s on, a long flashback to Day Zero, a long tele call with mom, an obvious left shoulder pain all through one episode which without any surprises leads to a heart attack, a long poker game…
You get the picture. The co-founders may be in a rush to get Pragati off the ground but the show’s creators are in slow, leisure mode to tell their story.
Additionally, there’s uninspired music that adds to the length and did I actually hear ‘Adani, Adani’ in the background at one point?
What came out well was when the co-founders vented their grouses against each other and Naveen’s ‘I’ finally turned to ‘We’.
Happily, the co-founders may be all male but there are women like Venture Capitalist Prachi (Ridhi Dogra) out there who’re on top of the game.
In fact, despite seasoned performances from the co-founders, from Ashish Vidyarthi as a big gun, Abhishek Banerjee as Naveen’s mentor Bhati and Sikandar Kher as Mehta the rival, it is well-turned-out Ridhi Dogra who brings fragrance to the show.
Watch the trailer of Pitchers Season 2:
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