Cheat Sheet:
The first season of Mithya, adapted from the British series, Cheat, had an interesting (if confusing) back and forth format, for what was basically a revenge plot. The second season, Mithya: The Darker Chapter (on ZEE5), directed by Kapil Sharma, tries to take off from where the story had left off, and for a couple of episodes it even glides, but it crashes soon enough with over-plotting and absurdity.
In the last season, Juhi Adhikari (Huma Qureshi), a Hindi professor, had accused a student, Rhea Rajguru (Avantika Dassani) of cheating. That triggered off a bizarre revenge that ended in the deaths of Juhi’s husband, and Rhea’s own father. Juhi, in turn, is accused of having plagiarized the work of Amit (Naveen Kasturia) for her successful first novel.
Early in Season 2, Rhea is seen taking over her adoptive father’s tea estate by some manipulation to oust her rival—that is the end of her professional ambition, she spends the rest of the show’s six episodes targeting Juhi and trying to wreck her life.
Rhea happens to be the half sister of Juhi too, so the father, a writer, Anand Tyagi (Rajit Kapur) has to suffer too. As Juhi is accused of cheating, her father’s latest books are returned unsold. No matter how smart or rich a woman may be, she can hardly control book sales all over the country.
There are other characters, whose exact role in the series is never clear – Vikas a lawyer (Rushad Rana), who just hangs around, a Vishal (Indraneil Sengupta), who it is hinted, may be the father of Juhi’s son, his wife (Anindita Bose) who is Juhi’s boss and has reason to be jealous, and Juhi’s mother (Avantika Akerkar), who is usually flapping about uselessly.
Lest it be said that the cops in beautiful Darjeeling (where the show is set) do nothing, a stern cop (Anurita Jha) turns up from time to time, with a suspicious, eyebrow-raised expression, but doesn’t actually solve any crime. At some point, when the plot (four writers worked on it) goes nowhere, Rhea decides that Juhi is an unfit mother, and helps herself to the little boy.
While the two women are bickering and butting heads, Amit, quite understandably, looks baffled. He is ensconced in a posh hotel, but once Juhi’s career is wrecked by his plagiarism accusation, he has nothing left to do, except be Rhea’s minion; her official slave (Krishna Singh Bisht) turns out to be a peeping tom stalker. There is no mystery, intrigue or suspense here, and zero idea about how the book trade works.
The superhero is the kid, who is kidnapped, tossed around, drugged and at one point, shoved into a tea basket, but always emerges gurgling and smiling.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
