Although I enjoyed watching this week’s episode of Laa, I cannot help but mourn the loss of depth in the story line. The initial episodes had seemed to promise a criticism of our cultural obsessions with Hasb o Nasab and cast but the moment Danyal turns out to be a secret Sayyad it made a farce of the whole question. I realise the point may have been that either way it doesn’t matter what Danyal’s heritage is but it seems too glib, too easy. So not only is Danyal a secret Sayyad but a ‘prince” of sorts: the secret son of a feudal lord who carry the special title of Gadi Nasheen i.e they are also spiritual leaders or Peer in the community from whom people seek blessings and prayers. However he has no proof and cannot explain his difficulty to either Naina or Dilawer Shah who must be his Half-brother. Again Mikaal is making this entire situation work and proving again what a versatile actor he is.

I wish I could say the same about Sadia Khan who seems to let every other scene down. Both confrontation scenes between Naina and Danyal had the power sucked out of them despite Mikaal’s best efforts. I still don’t understand why Danyal cannot explain himself to Naina at least? I can put Danyal seeing Naina at Dilawer’s house down to plausible coincidence but him running a marathon behind her car to the main city of Nawab Shah makes the whole thing look silly. Surely there were better ways for the director to show these meetings and connections? Perhaps Danyal could have got a lift or something?

The sudden connection Dilawer feels towards Danyal is reasonable enough but again it could have been more believable if they had taken a little time to build the relationship. Khalid Malik plays the archetypal arrogant feudal lord with a lot of gusto and actually makes the stereotypical role a little more palatable. We finally got to meet Daii Maa this episode as she chose Naina for Dilawer’s . this is where Seemi Raheel steals the show again with one glance at her new samdan’s (daii Maa) simplicity leaving me with at least one smile for this episode . Daii Maa , played by Rabia Noreen, is (so far ) the villain of the piece. Naimat Khan tells Danyal that his daughter was killed as punishment for him not killing the infant Danyal.

 I have put all expectations of nuance and detail to one side and decided to sit back and enjoy the ride with this serial. The story still has a lot of promise and is still more engaging than the majority of serials on air.Mikaal is providing all the right star quality, the main cast has some good chemistry between them and I am hoping that Sabreen Hasbani’s role will come up with the depth . I think I mentioned in my earlier reviews that this story reminds me of the kind of action adventure stories I read as a child; Treasure Island, The hound of the Baskervilles, and the Moonstone and so far nothing has proved me wrong.

written by sadaf