PremiumKota Factory Season 3 Review - Hopelessness, goodbyes and the rise of a Didi; Jeetu Bhaiya serves the best season so far
Kota Factory season 3 acknowledges Jitendra Kumar’s Jeetu Bhaiya and his constant optimism; even he needs a recharge and this season is exactly that.
Kota Factory Season 3 Review
Last Updated: 01.09 PM, Jun 20, 2024
Kota Factory Season 3 Review - Plot: The gang—Vaibhav (Mayur More), Uday (Alam Khan), Meena (Ranjan Raj), Vartika (Revathi Pillai), and Shivangi (Ahsas Channa)—now walk towards the D-Day, the IIT entrance exam. But that is not all. Jeetu Bhaiya (Jitendra Kumar) is now suffering from PTSD after the tragic death of a student by suicide. The man who was the colour of this world is himself colourless, and that ends up creating a need for someone who will now uplift the uplifter. Enters Pooja Ma’am (Tillotama Shome), who hates what Kota has become and loves what Jeetu Bhaiya wants to make it. She hops on the Aimers’ bus, and now together they walk towards a time that will decide the future for each character.
Kota Factory Season 3 Review: Analysis
Look around you. There is at least one student preparing for a competitive exam, having made it the centre of their life for a period of time and thinking their life depends on it. They switch on the TV only to find out the very thing they have hooked their hope on for a better life is being plagued by a scam that favours the privileged, and they probably have no chance. Hope is lost, the colours are stolen, and the backbone is now weak. The same fortnight enters Kota Factory Season 3, a show about a bunch of students preparing for the IIT entrance alongside lakhs with a wild ratio of making it to the finish line. Add to it that the man who gave them hope until this very point is himself now hopeless and is looking for his source of hope in a world that has lost its colour, in turn making him lose his. It is too poetic and extremely tragic, but that is what Season 3 is all about.
A man, his aspiration leading to a trauma he wants to run from, a teacher who once only smiled in the toughest of situations, is now desperately looking for the solution that will make him bounce back to who he once was. His capture is visual in the introduction and metaphoric in the rest. The apple rots, the walls have caught moisture and are now eroding, and between them sits a man who needs that one ray of light from a crack in the window to call him towards the light.
With Raghav Subbu now serving as the showrunner alongside Arunabh Kumar (original story), Pratish Mehta taking over direction, and Nikita Lalwani, Pravin Yadav, and Manish Chandwani joining the writers' team, Kota Factory Season 3 is now not just a show about teenagers navigating life while preparing for entrance but about the teachers who were their safe space. But where is their safe space? Where do they go when they have problems? Who do they break down in front of?
Kota Factory Season 3 explores all of that and more. This is the season where it all walks towards a possible completion of the arc that was introduced back in Season 1. There is a sense of ‘hey, we know they are growing up and things now have to get serious’ in the air. Something has changed, and none of us in our teenage years could figure that out. The show is no longer interested in just sticking to what was successful but rather reinventing the show in a much more nuanced way. There are now layers in which teenagers, teachers, and love are being explored. Their breakdowns are no longer comical; the monologues hit you hard rather than just being plot devices because you know and understand the tension that these 16-something kids are going through in a town that is nothing more than a factory. They are the beating hearts in a place that is robotic, and yours beats with them in sync at this point.
Pratish Mehta, as a filmmaker, finds so much rootedness in the show that it deserved a season that looked beyond the exam and into the people that have formed the base of it. His direction is unknowingly poetic because there is a rhythm to everything he does behind the camera. There is a proper synchronization between the visuals, music, and dialogues. A massive chunk of credit goes to DOP Shreedutta Namjoshi, who creates some of the most stellar frames for Kota Factory Season 3. The symmetry is visible, and the urge for everything to follow a rhythm is more than that. It all lands so well together that they end up creating a near-perfect package that entertains, moves you, brings you to the edge of your seat, and leaves you with tears rolling down your cheeks.
Jitendra Kumar returns to play Jeetu Bhaiya with a more grounded vibe. He is not the solution-maker; he himself needs some, and now his system needs something more than being the ever-optimistic Jeetu Bhaiya. Kumar's effortless performance brings out the layers of the dilemma so well that you know he is now Jeetu Bhaiya and there is no going back. He is joined by Tillotama Shome, who plays Pooja Ma’am and is the best addition to the show. She is the third person from outside this factory, telling it that you are creating unsafe robots. However, the writing should have explored her resistance to staying back in Kota more. The moment she escalates from Ma’am to Didi is a massive one, and it tells you she is the future of this IP now. Her view of this world needed to be more vocal.
The gang is stellar because now they do not get even a single note wrong. Mayur is Vaibhav, the boy we have witnessed come of age; Uday, played by Alam, is the heart of this gang; and Ranjan’s Meena needs these people to fuel him. The show does manage to take this friendship ahead when Meena’s problem becomes Vaibhav's and Uday’s. The exploration of teenage relationships is done in the most relatable way possible. However, in a scene close to the climax where a massive goof-up happens, we realise this world has phones, but none of them are using them. I doubt why. But what follows is not an obvious turn, so it compensates.
Kota Factory Season 3 Review: Final Verdict
Kota Factory Season 3 ends on an emotional note, and you are going to need that box of tissues handy because this is the best season so far. Heartbreaking, loving, and in the season of separation, we are moving ahead while cherishing the past, and that is how it's done.
WHERE
TO WATCH
- see all