Originally posted by: sashashyam
Airlines 1-5: Flying high
Khushi my poppet,
What a neat idea! Here is my take on the show, as usual longer than I had intended it to be!😉
Akash Saluja: altogether admirable: I loved your very neat line, Khushi, that Akash and Ananya are now in a comfort zone and should soon be moving into the discomfort zone.
But you, like all young folks, can see only the romance in the offing, and in the meantime, you do not highlight what is already there. Not just the comfort zone, but something rarer and more important, the genuine respect that even an impatient high flyer like Akash Saluja gives to a strong, capable professional woman whom he has, at the beginning, no reason to like, in fact quite the opposite.
That says more about him than it does about her. I loved it, for it is not because she is a gorgeous looker, but because she is a very sound pilot, and he does not let his irritation at her curt behaviour distort that perception. Such men are all too rare even today, so a round of applause for Akash.
Akash Saluja is a man apparently used to women fawning over him.
One wonders why😉, as he is neither tall - at least 3 inches more would be a major plus, as it is, Ananya looks taller though she is really the same height - nor handsome (the girls in his college must have been very generous with their adjectives!) though he has a mobile and very interesting face. But I should not be talking, for my crush in days long gone by was the rough and tough Humphrey Bogart, whom not even his mother would have called goodlooking!😉
So, for starters, it must have been a new experience for Akash to run into a female who does not display the slightest interest in him.
He is also initially put off, and justifiably so, by Ananya's uncalled for rudeness while rejecting his offer to do that difficult landing for her. She could easily have achieved the same result by being diplomatic and fobbing him off smoothly, but then our young lady is gauche and abrupt when pushed to the wall, plus she is under extra tension because of the sudden crisis on her first flight.
But even so, apart from respect for a fellow professional, Akash also has an innate sense of fairness that is admirable. Very few men in his position would have bailed Ananya out at the enquiry, and that too without letting her know of it.
The scene after the enquiry has been dropped, when she runs after him, all puffed up, to point out, a tad sanctimoniously, that the Committee had decided that she was right and so, by inference, that he was in the wrong, was delightful. Akash quirks one eyebrow in hidden, roguish amusement, wishes her a good day, and pushes off, leaving her to soak in her self-congratulatory mood, soon to be punctured by the Airport Manager's revelations.
As for Akash's dalliance with the pushy and demanding Natasha, I think that must have something to do with his real assignment, of which more below. I would not credit him with such bad taste in girlfriends😉, so there has to be some other reason. But he is very good at fobbing off her importunate demands, and that too with a light, non-abrasive touch, a hunar that Ananya would do well to acquire, and fast!
He has a terrific sense of humour that is always bubbling inside him - the crack he makes when Ananya closes the door of her hotel room after he has entered was side-splitting. As was his teasing her about her laughter and about the incipient fit of poetry that he thinks she is going to indulge in.
A take charge guy: But what I like best of all about this leading man, with his tongue perennially in his cheek and a wink quivering in his eye, is that he never panics in a crisis, and takes charge of the situation without the least hesitation and without any fuss and bother. And crisp efficiency too, whether he has to deal with a diamond smuggler or with a consignment of drugs.
His intelligence training obviously stands him in good stead, but he has clearly always been a man who can make swift decisions and then push them thru with aplomb and charm, as when he decides to back Ananya and fly despite the pilots' strike. ATC to strike par nahin hai na.. Mein management ke saath sab sambhal loonga.. it is my responsibility..
Just the kind of man one wants at hand when disaster looms ahead! Plus, one can be sure that Akash Saluja does not weep at the drop of a hat, which is , for me, the most important virtue of all!!😉
His real mission: He is clearly an intelligence officer, folks, belonging to the Defence Intelligence Bureau, not a commercial spy (and what would he be spying on in Inde Air, who are hardly likely to have any valuable technical secrets? ).
He is a fully trained professional, and the way in which he makes the first contact with his immediate superior in the jogging park was perfect. Even John Le Carre would have approved! No counterspy watching them could have made out even the slightest connection. And it was not till the repeat viewing that I spotted the newspaper ad in the very first sequence in Episode 1, which gives the number of the park bench!
It is not drugs that they are after, but something more serious, very likely a major terrorist attack, whence the boss's reference to 26/11 and the huge deal for 25 new planes that Inde Air has concluded in Chicago. And the reason why his immediate superior was so upset with him at episode end was very likely because this latest strike-breaking caper could have led to his having to leave Inde Air, and it would not suit the DIB - who have already lost his colleague Mahima - at all to lose such a perfectly placed and very capable asset for their operation.
Pitfalls ahead: Akash knows this, and while so far he has managed to juggle things neatly between his job and his real mission, it will not always be feasible. The feelings he is already developing for Ananya, and his consequent desire to shield her from the consequences of her periodic fits of generous rashness, as in the donor heart case, will sooner or later clash headlong with the demands of his far more important assignment, which is meant to protect the lives of thousands, if not lakhs, of human beings.
There can then be only one choice, of the public good, not of the personal relationship. What then? This is likely to be the far more serious discomfort zone, Khushi dear.
Ananya Rawat: an open book: With her, unlike the case with Akash, what you see is what you get. And it is a very appealing package. She is tall and elegant and a extremely goodlooking. She moves more like a catwalk queen than like a female pilot, however, and that exaggerated glide needs to be toned down a bit.
She must be a Friday's child, for she is loving and giving. Warm hearted and kind to a fault, and to top that, with a reckless generosity of spirit that makes her go out on a limb, without a second thought, to help someone she thinks is in need, be it the diamond smuggler or the desperate wife of the heart patient. Unfortunately, this admirable courage and generosity are not coupled with a sound judgment of others, and the discernment that can sift bad from good, the frauds from the genuine cases. If she does not shed her naivete soon and learn how to do this, she will one day land in bad trouble, and perhaps drag Akash too in with her.
But I loved that scene when Akash, faced with this obstinate young woman who is ready, like a filly who is bolting with the bit between her teeth, to fly the plane out solo if need be and the strike be damned, shelves all his logical reservations and decides to play along, if only to prevent her from committing professional hara-kiri.
I did wish, however, that at the end, when he shakes hands with her and congratulates her, she had thanked him warmly in return. For without him and his backing, she would have got precisely nowhere.
She is also very comical at times. There they are, running desperately to escape from a pair of gun-wielding drug dealers and all that she can think of to say, when Akash produces a gun and saves their lives, is Aapke pas gun hai! in a high pitched near scream, and then, Gun chalana kahan se seekha? No wonder Akash looks at her as if to say You are one of a kind! I was in stitches, laughing so much that I could hardly see the screen!
Acting honours: I was very pleased to know that the poor, harried, desperate wife was played by a noted Bengali actress. She was so superb in her controlled despair, and even more so as she finally broke down into terrible, gasping, gut wrenching sobs of pure misery when all seemed lost, that I was sure she could not be from the TV industry's stable of "junior artistes". I also loved the ferocity with which she seized the mobile from that harpy of a sister in law to tell her jeth that all was well and the donor heart would arrive in time after all.
Able support: It is the mark of a really good production that even the bit players stand out. On this Sunday, it was the businessman who was firing his unfortunate staffer for getting him stranded in Bhopal (it was clearly not the fault of the poor wretch, who could hardly have anticipated the pilots union strike, but such is life!). He is so distressed at the sight of the despairing wife's breaking down that he immediately decides to try for a plane charter. It would have been for himself too, of course, but he really means it for her, since he does not think of the idea till he sees her sobbing uncontrollably. That was a very nice, heartwarming cameo.
Diplomatic bloomers: The harried Russian diplomat in the drug smuggling episode was also very convincing. I wonder what his Ambassador did to him when the whole thing came out! Packed him back to Moscow by the next flight, very likely😉.
But the way in which the narcotics cops in Goa were handling him was not credible; one cannot search a diplomat's luggage without his permission, and one cannot threaten him with any punitive measures either. He/she cannot be arrested without the permission of the Ministry of External Affairs, and he/she cannot be tried unless his government waives his/her diplomatic immunity.
Manifold virtues:There are many things to be thankful for in Airlines. It will have only 26 episodes, but if it does well, there is sure to be a season 2. That it is only on Sundays, and one has to wait for it, only heightens the pleasure of eventually watching it. It has enough repeats during the week - unlike the exasperating, single show Yudh - to help those whose Sunday evenings might be otherwise busy.
As Khushi has noted, it is intelligent - happily without being pretentious - well scripted and competently acted. But not super-gorgeous please, my dear, one should not devalue adjectives!😉 Akash and Ananya make a delightful pair, however, and they are situated far away from family squabbles and plottings, which is a huge plus. Their blossoming relationship is sure to be very well scripted, and it will be set not against the standard background of most serials, but against a thriller track that will gain traction as we move ahead.
I, for one, am supremely content!
Shyamala B.Cowsik
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