As I said before, I thought that Mastana Mahi had been going a bit too slow, and this episode was no exception. Way too slow. Sure, it was interesting. A drama written by Samira Fazal can’t be boring! But the way it was moving was a bit too slow for me. It seemed that for the most part, the episode was about Adal (Fahad Mustafa) trying to reach the lighthouse. This part of the episode was dragged out a bit too much in my opinion. And we couldn’t even look forward to watching the conversation that was supposed to occur between Adal and Arleen (Mehreen Raheal) because he never reached the lighthouse in time! :P
I guess that the director Roomi Insha was trying to make the whole lighthouse thing really suspenseful and dramatic, but I think it ended up being more boring that interesting. But I have to admit, the way the scenes in which Arleen was sitting there waiting were very well directed.
As far as the rest of the episode goes, I’d have to mark the first scene between Adal and Arleen as the best. The fact that Arleen was angry at Adal and not willing to forgive him for disappearing and leaving her alone made me pretty happy. Too many times, drama writers often forget to think about how a normal human would be feeling after something like this happened. Showing that Arleen wasn’t just going to jump up and get excited now that Adal showed the mark of a very talented writer.
Oh, and let’s not forget the new character that was introduced! A woman named Lily (Deepti Gupta), who was kicked out of her hotel room because of Adal. She doesn’t have a job, smokes, drinks, can’t afford to pay her rent, and being a prositute is pretty much the only work she knows how to do. And yet, Adal still manages to make friends with her. We’ll see in the upcoming episodes where this friendship will take them.
And then there was Julie (Anita Camphor), the owner of the crappy hotel in which Adal was staying. Her and her…boyfriend I guess (Saife Hassan), are con artists, and trick Adal into renting a room in their nasty hotel for a week. I don’t know why, but I really liked Adal’s dialogue when he first met Julie, “Aisa mahaul tou mainey Pakistan main bhi nahin dekha!” I don’t know, I guess I like it because it implies that Pakistan isn’t the only place with slums and bad conditions.
Mastana Mahi hasn’t had just one main message in it. There have been a bunch of morals, but they haven’t been completed. The age difference thing, like between Arleen and Mike, the politician thing, the child marriage thing…saare adhure reh gaye hain. This could go one of two ways: Either all the morals that have been started will get closure at different point through out the drama, which could turn out to be a really interesting new style, or they’ll never be completed, and the viewers will be left saying “Wait, woh waali kahani ka kya hua?” We’ll just have to see as we go along, but I expect that we won’t be disappointed.
The dialogue when Adal first comes to the hotel: “Saali Indian hai.” “Saali hogi teri maa.” A bit too much, don’t you think?
-Noorie
P.S Am I the only one who was staring at Arleen and her aunty (Simin Raheal) – aka Mehreen Raheal’s mom – because they look so much alike? :P
