PremiumCubicles Season 3 Review – TVF content still feels personal but the magic now seems more borrowed than passed on
Most of Cubicle Season 3 works only because the first two have a certain recall value.
Last Updated: 12.00 AM, Jan 05, 2024
Piyush Prajapati (Abhishek Chauhan) is now the team lead in the company he entered as a resource. He chose the cubicle over a cabin so he could be close to his team. But even with the physical distance being almost negligible, the ideological distance widens, and soon Piyush is left with the job of bridging it and also proving his position in the company.
Cubicles Season 3 Review:
I might have said this every time I have reviewed a TVF-backed IP and will stand on it. The content that comes out of Arunabh Kumar’s mill feels personal, lived in, and maximally relatable. Because he isn’t telling stories of the Singhania where they step out of their mansions or the Gaitondes and Gaikwad investigating a murder mystery. He and his team are busy telling stories about me, about you, the collective us, and the ones that they believe in the most.
With Cubicles, they were indeed experimenting with a structure that has already seen heights of success not just in India but the West too. So they were clever to add a boy as average as many of us, unsure about his career, lacks confidence to be in the face of conflict, and running away is always his Plan A. This helped us to connect to this already consumed formula in a much newer light. The second season took the story ahead and hit gold for the fact that all of us were working from home and we missed our office spaces. The second season was our gateway to that nostalgia if not a way to go back.
Also Read: As Cubicles Season 3 is almost here, 5 workplace dramas to keep you busy – Pitchers to Office Office
Now comes the third season that brings back the same old cast with a couple of additions and takes ahead the story with an update. Created by Avinash Singh, Vijay Narayan Varma, Shreyansh Pandey, and Gaurav Sharma to help them in writing, Cubicles season 3 is still being overlooked by Arunabh Kumar. This time around we meet a new Piyush. Money is not a problem for him; he owns a car, and a complete house for himself, and is now a team lead. The story this time is about his struggles in being a leader, one who commands and never succumbs, which becomes the central conflict of the show.
Most of Cubicle Season 3 works only because the first two have a certain recall value. These characters have aged well, and their relatability has done wonders for them to be remembered. So when season 3 tells us they have now achieved a step bigger, we are happy. But what beyond? Cubicles Season 3 feels like it is banking too much on what’s already shown and less on the efforts to move forward. Of course, the storyline is much about Piyush trying to become the leader he is told to be and struggling with it, the conflict never takes center stage in a way you are invested to look at it.
Problems are introduced and solved so quickly that it feels like there is no future for this content. For example, the dynamic between Piyush and Kalpesh was explained in season one. The seeds of the fact that someday these two will seek redemption and cross paths to confront each other were sown in the final scene of the same season. So in season 3 when they come face to face and finally sit to have that conversation, it feels like you have grown with them to realize what this moment feels like. The new conflict, demands everything to happen very instantly and without a deeper dive.
What this leads to is that our attention and emotions are only attached as much as the screen time and nothing is kept with us to age and be curious about. Of course, Abhishek Chauhan and the team play their parts well. Director Divyanshu Malhotra takes the job ahead well (Chaitanya Kumbhakonum directed the first two seasons). All of it is not enough to make us invest in the future of the show. What is important is smartly paced loose ends and cliffhangers. The aftertaste needs to make us crave more while being satisfied. Cubicles season 3 doesn’t do that.
Cubicles Season 3 Review: Verdict:
Yes, the TVF magic is visible. But it is more of a replication than renovation, and that is not expected from makers who have given us some of the most brilliant content on streaming.