10 reasons why Indian daily soaps are crap

10 reasons why Indian daily soaps are crap.

Indian daily soaps are crap and I wouldn’t turn back three times at you to repeat that. I am sure a significant part of human population shares my disgust. Well, at least the male part. This is partly due to the phone calls of emergency that the husbands received at work of an emergency back home, usually by a sobbing better half. “Mihir mar gaya! ”, was what they heard after the rush back home. Those who thought that it was the end of melodrama were proven wrong by an absence of lunch. This was consistent with the Indian tradition of stoves not being lit in those houses where there is a death. Let me give you 10 more reasons of my disgust.

1.      No variety.

Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi ran for eight and a half years. What followed afterwards was little different, be it Kahani Ghar Ghar ki  or Kasauti Zindagi ki. Most of the shows are centered on the hardships of a female character, in many cases a newlywed being exploited by a mother-in law or more appropriately monster-in-law.

2.      Too many tears.

One industry that might have grown with the viewership of these soap operas is the glycerin manufacturing industry. Most of the episodes start or end with a character in tears, sometimes it is both of the times. May I please suggest a dose of :

3.      Women are shown in a subjugated way.

Most of the shows depict women sacrificing stuff to make other members of the family happy. A model woman is shown to be the one who obediently takes orders from her husband and does everything to make him happy no matter if it kills her self respect and subjugates her personality. This gives out a wrong message to young girls who follow the soap operas that a woman is meant to sacrifice all her happiness just to see other people happy. Its big time the makers stopped stereotyping Indian women.

4.      Lack of an interesting script and repetitive dialogues.

The producers are so skeptical of introducing new plot and elements that they stick to the same age old formula and put it under an infinite loop. Little effort is put into writing dialogues and you can easily predict what a character is going to say next. Those responsible for the storyline of these shows need to break out of their shells and give us something new and catchy.

5.      Logically inaccurate.

Film and documentary makers have the freedom of twisting elements of the plot in their favor in order to create a better dramatic effect that pleases the audience and keeps them engrossed. However, this freedom has corrupted the makers of the Indian soap operas who introduce such twists and turns that literally murder logic. The soap opera makers use and overuse memory loss and plastic surgery as their favorite plot twist whenever a new actor comes up to play a character or whenever they run out of story.

6.      Too much K.

There was a time when you switched on the TV and you found a serial starting with the letter ‘K’. You changed the channel only to find another serial running on another channel that like its predecessor began with the letter ‘K’. You can thank Ekta Kapoor for this K bombing. This is a perfect example of how one person’s obsession with an alphabet can impact the entire nation. Too much K(potassium) in your blood can lead to hyperkalemia which in turn leads to cardiac arrest. So, the next time someone asks you for possible reasons for an increase in heart ailments in the country, you know whom to blame.

7.      Too much make-up.

There is no place for Sherlock in a country that has CID. Isn't it?Seriously, who goes to sleep with their make-up on? Our soap heroines do. The female characters are found to be under heavy make-up no matter where they are. They are adorned with jewelry right from the forehead up to their feet. Kumkum’s bindi was so large that she could use it as a Frisbee whenever she got bored. The day is not far when we would hear about an actress being crumbled to death under the weight of her jewelry and make-up.

8.      Idiotic sound effects and zoom-ins.

The soap opera makers seem to have taken an oath to defy all the advancement that has been made in the field of graphics and sound mixing to give us the same old repetitive sound effects and face zoom-ins that they have been using since time immemorial. The delivery of almost every dialogue is followed by a zoom-in towards the face of the listener starting from the left side then from the front and then from the right. Sometimes, to the viewers’ dismay, the process repeats itself. Sometimes, these effects seem irritating and at other times comical. The sound of thunder crashing every time something unexpected happens has caused ear damage to many people with home theatre systems.

9.      Too much melodrama.

Everything that the makers of soap operas lack in terms of a story and script, they seem to make up by introducing too much melodrama. We can take up the example of Pammi in “Desh me Nikla hoga Chand”. She expressed nervousness or surprise by heavy breathing and a hand on her chest that showed the large amount of air that she took in and then exhaled. This made many to suspect that she might be suffering from asthma. The characters are emotionally unpredictable and no one can say when they will start crying or shouting or dancing with joy.

10.  Too many episodes.

The makers of soap operas are so driven by profit that they go on producing new episodes even if they have run short of plot. This results in too many episodes with no progress in plot. Some of the serials reach a point where each episode seems to be a repetition of its predecessor. 

We all miss her though. Don't we?