‘Decoupled’ Review: Manu Joseph’s Series Is Too Self-Indulgent And Rarely Even About Marriage
I am writing this review literally minutes after finishing all the episodes of Decoupled on Netflix, which thankfully came in bite-sized doses, laden with dry humour to make them palatable. I had my mind made up about the show when I was halfway through this eight-episode series created and written by Manu Joseph and directed by Hardik Mehta. First, the humour treads a very thin line between offensive truth and just plain toxic cockiness that can get tiring because people aren’t communicating. Not everyone’s cuppa. Second, the show is too much Manu Joseph to a fault, and if you don’t like reading his books, columns, tweets, it might be hard to like Decoupled. And third, the only things that’ll get me through it are R. Madhavan and Surveen Chawla, who try to work their charm but are held back by the writing.
I was so sure that my views were rock solid until I watched the final episode, which turned out the feels quota for the entire series in one fell swoop. But by then, it was too late. I wept, not for the end of the characters’ marriage but for all the potential this show, and its cast had, that felt wasted. Because this show wasn’t even about marriage. In fact. I am still trying to figure what it was about.
Decoupled begins with scenes from a marriage that has—to borrow from a lovely monologue in the final episode—gone silent. Arya (Madhavan) is a bestselling pulp fiction writer in Delhi, modelled on Joseph himself, I believe, and evidently, a difficult man to live with. His no-filter honesty and need to, shall I say, “do kaandi” in every situation is a real pain in the ass, which makes you wonder why Shruti, a smart, ambitious, and incredibly sexy woman, married him in the first place. But as someone who can get incredibly attracted to a guy’s brain before anything else, I can see how that cockiness can be a turn on before it turns into a test of your tolerance.
We don’t exactly know what definitive issues brought their marriage to the precipice, but a few scenes of Arya being Arya and you understand that Shruti’s just done with it. We also find out that she is the one who wants to end the marriage, and Arya is completely fine with the arrangement. They’re only keeping up pretences for the sake of their teenage daughter, Rohini, because somewhere Shruti is afraid that her daughter loves her father a tad more, and might hate her mother for taking her away from him.
Both Arya and Shruti go for couples’ counselling, but to me, it feels like an utter waste of time and scenes because nothing comes out of it. It doesn’t give you a better understanding of their issues, and a lot of it is just banter. The two also tangle with other people in the midst of their conscious decoupling, but once again, it doesn’t affect their equation in any way. There are other characters thrown in the mix too—Arya’s friends, one of whom is a sex guru of sorts, Shruti’s parents, a Bengali economics professor who is followed by the PM on Twitter and is rather classist, and the couple’s driver Ganesh, who hates class divide but believes in caste divide.
Also Read: 5 Thoughts That Popped Into My Head While Watching R. Madhavan And Surveen Chawla’s Decoupled Trailer
On the surface, which is exactly the word I’d use to describe the show’s treatment of marriage and women is like, Decoupled has a very promising vibe. Madhavan and Surveen look amazing, and I can sense that spark that could translate to such hot chemistry. There’s something about Madhavan, who has almost always played the lover boy, to be playing this kind of character, and it is only because of his personal appeal and charm that you sit through all his character’s shenanigans.
To me, who is quite familiar with Manu Joseph’s rather divisive opinions on social media that often incite heated discussions, the show felt like it was more about Joseph just finding an outlet for his views on women, marriage, sex, pretentious society, politics, and Chetan Bhagat than trying to give his characters a chance to open up and be people you can like. That’s an extremely selfish thing for a writer to do, stifling his characters so.
Everything feels very stagnant and repetitive in Decoupled, a time loop of Arya embarrassing everyone, disappointing Shruti, and still getting away with it because…oh wait, I don’t even know why! You wonder if it is a deliberate attempt to make you feel how this couple feels in their marriage and in their personal lives—Stuck and not moving forward. Arya’s dry humour is fun at first and the whole meta mockery, NGL, had me intrigued to see where it all goes. But this is a show about a couple’s marriage breaking down, no? Toh I was hoping the future episodes would open up more about the couple’s marriage story, or have the characters evolve in any way, or for something to happen that would make me care for them. I was waiting for the narrative to stop focusing so much on portraying Arya as both this cocky hero and yet a victim because nobody really got him, and finally give us more of Shruti, what she wanted from this marriage, what was the triggering moment for her to want to separate, and more. But none of that came. In fact, I felt Shruti’s character had barely any layers to her.
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Also Read: R. Madhavan Opens Up About His Failed Romantic Endeavours With Wife In Public, Getting Caught By Police!
There are also interesting characters that surround these two. Shruti’s mother so comfortably talks to her daughter about her sex life with Shruti’s father. A spiritual guru with such great insight on relationships that he doles out but does not influence Arya in any way. A meta-joke about Netflix offering a deal to Arya looms in the background but is just there for more background clutter and nothing plot altering. It got a little frustrating, honestly, because nothing was really happening, people were just tolerating each other (especially Arya) for the heck of it, and nobody really loved each other or cared for anybody truly.
Speaking of frustrating though, it would take me another long-form feature to talk about the unfunny sexist crap about women that is generously sprinkled all over Decoupled. It reminded me of that newspaper column that Manu Joseph is infamous for, and why most women don’t like him. I don’t know if his protagonist mocking a woman for the shape of her hips for an entire episode, or repeatedly trying to insult a woman who was dating him was meant to be satirical or did the writer genuinely think this stuff sells in 2021. Or wait, was it some clever attempt to appeal to both types of people: Jisko funny laga, good. Jisko nahi laga, joke’s on you, this was satire, haha, laugh on cue. Was this the writer’s way of being more autobiographical and mocking the criticism he gets? A sort of ‘men will be men’ so might as well laugh at it? I am telling you, I really don’t know.
Also Read: Surveen Chawla Talks About Facing Casting Couch In South Indian Film Industry, Reveals ‘Waist And Chest Size’ Are Questioned
Only that last episode…. The last episode had a dinner scene which was the only thing that came close to eliciting any positive emotion from me. By then, I was pissed about a bunch of things, and Decoupled had become that one friend you tolerate in your life, because you have too much history.
Verdict
ICYMI, I cried in my heart for all the enjoyable things Decoupled could’ve been. Maybe our very own Scenes From A Marriage. I love the short runtime, the whole polished vibe of this show, helped by that background music, and I love the idea of Madhavan and Surveen together. But somehow, just like Arya’s humour, even the most clever jokes, or the dialogues or scenes that were supposed to stir emotions did not really land because of the self-indulgent writing that wanted to show off more than it wanted to show.
At the end of my watch, I was left feeling like Shruti felt about her marriage: Started out exciting, hoped it would get better, but then it was disappointing. I wanted to borrow a quote from another Madhavan film and ask the makers, “Aakhir kehna kya chahte ho?”
Decoupled is currently streaming on Netflix.
