Serial Manacle

I reached home after quite a long day…It was around late evening (if you could classify 7:30-8 PM as “late evening”!). I had completely forgotten that my grandparents had come home that day to stay over for a week. I entered with an expectation that they would acknowledge my arrival and though they didn’t, I tried to ask them about their well-being. There wasn’t the slightest response! It was only then that I turned to look at the television screen to which their eyes were glued!

I could almost predict the story line of the MEGA serial that they were watching! There’s almost always a central woman character. She has all the qualities that you would think an ideal woman would possess. Yet, she and her family are affected by all the miseries in the planet that anyone can think of! As the Indian film formula demands, there always has to be a “bad” person for every central character. And this bad person has no job other than devising evil plots against our heroine (which any sane person can easily outwit!)…Given that the central woman character (usually some Kokila or Abhirami) is very strong and brilliant, she still takes ages to defeat the villain and emphasize to the world that truth always triumphs!

All of a sudden, perhaps after some five hundred odd episodes, the story suddenly gains pace. That’s when we realize that they finally have chosen to wrap-up the story since most of the actors would by then have got into other occupational or domestic commitments and cannot continue acting. So it all comes to an end sooner than you would have ever imagined. Most viewers by then are annoyed with the foreseeable climax. It finally dawns on them, that they have wasted quite a lot of time watching such a pathetic show. Yet, they break for dinner when the channel airs News and resume their seats zealously to watch the next serial in another channel!

It beats me how such predictable storylines actually attract so much audience. And worse, there are people who get addicted to these serials which lack any form of creativity or variety. Add to it the influences these serials have on children who end up watching them, often along with their grandparents. It’s a pity that children are acted upon by the not-so-good ideas (if any!) that such programs convey, when there are so many good entertaining yet informative stuff offered on channels such as POGO.