Bullet Point Review: Operation MBBS
Published in
4 min readJun 12, 2020
- There are well-drawn out web series like Paatal Lok, Made in Heaven, and then there are the short, sweet-infused ones like Tripling, or Permanent Roommates, that are made for casual viewing. These series with a meagre five-episode runtime tend to serve as a break (at least for me!) from the usual rigorous viewing, and this is because they are mostly always about relatable, easy to digest topics, like college/school life or corporate life with archetypical characters, with whom you can easily associate with and situations involving day to day problems, nothing extensive or life-threatening. But still, shorter formats can be tricky to navigate, as they must swiftly introduce characters, setting, and conflict and resolve it too by the end of the season. I understood the difficulty in achieving this (and thereby the importance of writing for such a format of the show) after watching Dice Media’s Operation MBBS.
- You see, I finished watching this show a few days back, and while I generally jump into writing the review the moment I finish a show, I have been contemplating for the past few days whether I should write about Operation MBBS or not. On one hand, it is a breezy watch, heavily inspired by movies like Munnabhai MBBS and 3 Idiots, nothing quite extraordinary or different but the show did put a smile on my face as it presented a funny, heartwarming story anchored by good performances from the lead trio — Ayush Mehra, Anshul Chauhan, and Sarah Hashmi. This appreciation especially comes after two unimpressive shows I watched in the past month which were TVF’s Girl’s Hostel and Just Human Thing’s Overtime.
Girl’s Hostel is fun in parts, but it also wants to deliver hammy social commentary in between, which completely killed the mood and tone of the show. Overtime had a top-notch concept of two employees stuck in their office after an alien attack on India (especially considering its release date where none of us knew how this isolation will soon become our new reality). As with Girl’s Hostel, the first two episodes are amusing, especially moments like Manoj (Harsh Mayar) talking into a makeshift radio, about the joy of eating Kadai paneer, asking people links and suggestions on the next show to watch, or singing an umpteen number of songs to pass time. But with an unpleasant female lead (Ronjini Chakraborty), and many flat jokes, the novelty wore off fast, as the concept couldn’t translate into an engrossing story.
- In comparison to both these shows, Operation MBBS holds your attention right from the beginning till the end. The series follows the lives of 3 first-year medical students — Huma, Sakshi, and Nishant as they navigate turbulent emotions arising from a competitive environment. Yes, the three are archetypical characters — Huma is studious and ambitious and is brought up by a single mother. Sakshi on the other hand comes from a large joint family and has studied in a Marathi medium school, while Nishant is forced to study MBBS, as his father is a well-known doctor. But the show does a damn good job (in its limited runtime) of pushing past these stereotypes. You see a son who is afraid of disappointing his father, and the privilege that stifles him, but his father isn’t quite a tyrant. He is cool-headed and is actually happy even when Nishant barely passes his midterms (that phone call scene in contrast to Huma’s call to her mother is nicely done). You see Huma grappling with her ambitions to always be number one (I liked how Huma explains the high — that particular choice of word — of coming first) or Sakshi’s efforts to help Akash (Deepak Simwal), as she too has struggled just like him to convince her family to let her study medicine. None of these moments, emotions come off as cheap, and while it was the usual run-of-the-mill moments (there is again a scene with social commentary, but it ties up nicely with our leads ongoing cold war, so I didn’t mind it as much) I freaking bought all of it, due to the exceptional performances.
Also, it was nice to see a platonic relationship between a male and female on the Indian web screen, and the way Nishant gets the girls to be his friend with the boneset was pretty sweet. - The cinematography by Aniruddha Patankar combined with the staging of set scenes was really well done. Like Akash placing the S3 on the three different tables when the trio are not on talking terms, the argument scene in the library, the shaky close-ups when Nishant breaks down on the stairs or when Nishant and KC (Prateek Pachauri) walk around the corridors, as the camera revolves around them. These artistic touches distinguishes the show from the rest.
