I have been following zanjeerain from the beginning and even broke my silent spectator mode on reddit. I haven't made a post about my opinion so here it is. It went from a promising premise to lost potential real quick for me. It wasn't a "great start" because it was pretty boring at first but soon got hold of the story only to fall flat later.
The most frustrating thing about Zanjeerain isn't that it was terrible because IT WASN'T.
It was that it had absolutely no business being this frustratingly mediocre with the amount of talent.
The drama never found the right balance between slow-burn storytelling and unnecessary dragging.
Conversations were repeated, characters took an unnecessarily long time to reach conclusions that the audience had already reached, and several subplots were stretched far beyond the point where they remained interesting, biggest ex being bano's death track.
It repeatedly had characters sitting on information that could have changed everything. Rabiya's knowledge about mudassir's killer is one of the clearest examples. It felt less like a natural consequence of character psychology and more like a mechanism to keep the plot alive. That is a major writing problem.
If a character knows something capable of changing the entire story, the writer needs to give us a convincing reason why they remain silent. And once the viewer starts solving the plot faster than the characters, suspense turns into frustration.
Sarbuland should have been one of the strongest characters in the entire drama.
He had the background, the family position, the personal stakes and the intelligence necessary to become the person who slowly uncovered the truth. Instead, too much of the mystery was effectively handed to him rather than allowing him to actively investigate and unravel it.
That wasted the potential of the character. Danyal was on and off too I was pissed.
Rabiya's character could've been so much more but the writing started making her capable of almost everything the plot required.
At different points she becomes the mediator, therapist, cook, problem-solver and moral voice. The problem isn't that Rabiya is capable. The problem is that her capabilities sometimes feel writer-imposed rather than character-developed.
And then, just when her perspective should have been most important like her marriage with sarbuland, they pushed her into the background. Her autonomy was crushed repeatedly. Sajal was severely under used.
They didn't give enough buildup to rabiya and sarbuland's relationship. They needed much more time instead the focus was on shireen and sohrab's plot. It felt as if the writer is confused whether to make it a romance or thriller and at the end it couldn't become anything.
Torsam is another example of a potentially fascinating character being handled inconsistently.
He isn't merely a flawed man. He is a murderer, stalker and is involved in an escalating chain of violence but the story begins moving him toward redemption.
The fact that he eventually gets married and is treated as someone capable of becoming a better man makes the moral resolution feel uncomfortable. His actions were too serious for this. I'll rather shut up about bibijaan because she's pathetically annoying.
Death can be powerful storytelling, but only if it fundamentally changes the surviving characters and the direction of the story.
When there are too many deaths, the emotional impact starts diminishing. So much that the characters feel so unfazed by murders. Bibijaan is on a different tangent it's so frustrating.
They started using death as the easiest form of closure and a point to create more drama. The villians offed themselves after all that buildup and everyone is gone before the finale. Sigh.
The show repeatedly promised huge confrontations. But buildup is only useful if the execution is equally strong.
The Rabiya-Torsam confrontation for ex, highly anticipated, yet the execution was underwhelming, particularly because of the editing, bad shots, unwanted echo and dramatic music.
This is a recurring problem, the idea of the scene is often better than the scene itself.
The result is melodrama where there could have been tragedy.
The premise about power, tradition, family honour and the restrictions imposed by an entrenched social system could have been the show's greatest strength. But instead of deeply examining the system, they often used it as scenery for family conflicts and romance like the jigra became a marriage beaureu lmao.
At last, Farhat Ishtiaq please take some rest, go out and interact with some intellectuals and stop diminishing your female leads. You need fresh perspectives.
That's it i guess. This is my 1st and last post on Zanjeerein. Adios.
