Fin

It has been a while since I posted here but that doesn't indicate, by any means, a lull in my television watching. Soaps and series have been dropped and picked up... the television milieu is always a fluid business. I wrote something of that here, for context.

Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon?, a soap that I particularly loved is coming to an abrupt close this week. The reasons appear to be complex and convoluted - this wasn't your regular tapering off of viewer interest. Apart from the fact that the lead, Barun Sobti, has opted out of the show, the word is that the production house involved lost interest in the project. A new and, to my mind, refreshing stance in an industry that wants to milk every single success well past its dry date. When you have a love story, it is best to tell that story well, and end it with its natural flow - not drag it out till you have soap watchers hanging on for sheer habit, long after the juice has dried.

The counter argument is that the soap industry runs on the principle of longevity - if you begin at all you must mean to go the distance. If you're successful, the long distance. To stop, because you don't feel like anymore, is shocking to the prevailing mindset. Everyone - the channel, the cast and crew, the audience - everyone feels betrayed because the soap has been invested in.

My sympathies are with the production house in principle. I'd rather have a story told well, ENDED well. It is such a rare event, finishing properly. The best of movies don't manage it and with soaps that is an impossible business. Given the various compulsions they operate under, I can't think of more than a clutchful that ended in a pleasing manner, by which I mean neither lingering past their welcome date, nor being yanked off abruptly, having to hastily tie up its loose ends over a mere month or less. No, I can't think of very many that didn't cause me trauma before they ended. So much, that I look warily for signs of decay and detach myself before the rot sets in.

Which might lead you to think that Iss Pyaar Ko... is ending well. No, that is not the case. The time for ending gracefully came and went. In the meantime, the story has meandered. Inorganic plotlines were added on. Characters, for want of anything to do, have started to grate on the nerves. The telling became half-hearted - far more than it need have been. The main story was over but there were very worthy sub-plots, many possible 'tracks' growing out of characters that were so nicely etched already. But, for whatever reasons, those options weren't taken up. IPKKND was allowed to flounder.

Now it will go off air - perhaps the lead character will die, or maybe he won't. But everyone (barring viewers with a precious half-hour hole in their evenings) will be relieved it's over. It really is a great pity.