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Doc On Call:
In the list of TVF’s mini series on various professions, Who’s Your Gynac? must be the flimsiest. They even managed to infuse some entertainment on the series about chartered accountants!
Of course, it could be conceded that a web show about a doctor specializing in “ladies’ problems” has limited comic appeal. So the solution is to portray Dr Vidushi Kothari (Saba Azad) as ditzy, though she is good at her work. Season 2 of the Girliyapa show (on Amazon MX Player), directed by Himali Shah, starts with Vidushi falling off her boyfriend’s bed!
Nearly three years after the first season, she is still struggling to establish her practice, with her Choice And Care clinic, and her sole employee, the stern Nurse Violet (Vibha Chibber), often covering up for her.
Vidushi has decided that she does not want help from her father (Kenneth Desai) or her boyfriend, a pediatrician, Dr Arth (Kunal Thakur), who has already created a reputation for himself.
It’s not quite clear why Vidushi is a failure, because doctors’ clinics are usually packed, and patients spend a packet– more so when babies are involved. Her desperation to make it is just a humour-mining device– particularly the episode in which she collaborates with a corporate healthcare entity, and has to cope with an officious man brandishing a timer and demanding that she push up patient numbers. (Where do these patients come from and where do they go after the partnership collapses?)
Between Vidushi trying to grow and keep the rent-demanding landlord away from the door, the show slithers in women’s problems, like a domestic helper with PCOD, a friend suffering post partum depression or another buddy’s girlfriend unaware of her vaginismus.
Try as it might, the five-part series, with addressing the audience, Fleabag style, Who’s Your Gynac? is just not funny. If it intends to educate women about sexual or reproductive issues they may be unaware of, then just skimming over them does not serve the purpose. Saba Azad has comic talent, but this is the wrong show to put it to use.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
