In the 70’s and 80’s there was a time when families discuss important issues and ideas at the dining table without any external interference, coming on to the 21st century where even children need mobile phone to “connect” with family and friends. The earlier era is “old school” and the new era dominates with the neo concept of “feminazi”, “libertarian”, “capitalist baboon”, etc. The daily life struggles of middle-class nuclear family dominate all other problems of the century. From making meals to dropping kids to school, from being a “minimum guy” to win over the likes of your spouse, it seems family life is more complicated and complex than the chemical formula of an atom bomb.
The Family Man-2 starts with the same complex situation of a typical middle-class Indian family, trying to appease each other after 16 years of marriage. Srikant Tiwari (Manoj Bajpayee) left his challenging and demanding job at TASC and joined an IT firm to do a 9-to-5 job to spend time with his family and more importantly to win over his wife Suchitra Tiwari (Priyamani). Nevertheless, he failed miserably in his act by trying to be a “maximum guy” (you will understand this phrase once you watch the series). He later quit his job at the IT firm to save the PM of India, Mrs. Basu (Seema Biswas) from the insurgent group of Tamil rebels led by Bhaskaran (Mine Gopi) – who wanted to avenge his brother’s death along with an ISI operative Sameer (Darshan Kumar) – that wanted to wage a war on India.
The director duo Raj Nidimorn and Krishna D.K. (Raj & D.K.) craftly created the family man and maintained the balance and dilemma of work and home throughout the first and second season. The daily struggle of a middle-class family to maintain the “standard” of society and to control their children’s upbringing is brilliantly portrayed.
The parallel story of serving the motherland and saving PM Basu from the eminent threat of the Sri Lankan rebel group and ISI further the overall story. The reference of Tamil Elam freedom struggle of Sri Lankan minority, which dominated the 70’s to 90’s era of Sri Lankan history (and ended after the assassination of Prabhakaran) is well balanced and the woman suicide bomber Raji’s (Samantha Akkeneni) character is well developed except the makeup of the actor.
In the midst of the blood thumping drama an important aspect of a middle-class family is shown that they do not need a medal of patriotism nor the prize money of 1 lakh rupees, rather they prefer having three time meals with their family, clothes to cover their bodies, and an interest free loan for an apartment.