The Failed Potential Of Big Girls Don't Cry

I have beef with Amazon India. Specifically with their original series. Some are good, some have potential but all most all of them lose steam so quickly. And Big Girls Don't Cry is unfortunately another in a long standing line of content. 

I had originally decided to watch the show based off of a trailer I had been subjected (rather forcefully) to watch by YouTube. But what really made me curious was to see the show was when, while scrolling on Instagram, I saw a post by Avantika, who played Karen in the new Mean Girls re-boot/ musical extravaganza. I liked her in that movie, she one of the few blessings and was set on watching this new show after that. 

Now, I already have history with Amazon India shows, a prime example being Made in Heaven (which we'll get into). That show was pretty good in its titular season and the it's renewal led to the weird mess that was season 2. I was disappointed due to Zoya Akhtar's involvement but in hindsight, that wasn't the worst she do. 

I'm not going to deeply into the plot of this show, just talk about the writing and character choices. So, if it doesn't make much sense just understand that I'm squeezing about 9 or 10 different character arcs (?) over 8 episodes. 

This show is just weird to big with, really. 

It's set in an all-girls boarding school and follows the lives and education of our 6-10 main characters. One of the main characters is a scholarship student who is from a lower caste. And while the show initially does write her arc showing caste and wealth differences and her trying to join the main friend group, it ends up making her unlikeable. She becomes this awful person and lies and loses her scholarship and though it ends up alright in the end...it's still very cliche. Of course the new girl is an outsider and no one likes her and she has the personality of a rock. How else can the viewers be introduced into this world? It's just been done before and this wasn't unique or interesting. 

Most of the stories that we did get were very half-baked. Like they needed another season. But that one applies to the central conflict of the show, not everyone's singular growth. And if a conflict was resolved, it didn't feel natural as though the character when through the process, it just felt like that's what the story needed then. 

The show had really interesting ideas like living in a house with semi-divorced parents who refuse to actually get divorced due to public image and the effect that it has on the child, the life of being a princess who's family is ill and broke, figuring out your sexuality, identity crises and islamophobia, academic validation, expression of individuality, love triangles, but it felt like they weren't interested in actually digging deep and focusing on those issues for more than a couple of scenes. Or maybe they just aren't good enough to follow through on those ideas. 

One of the major plot points of this season was that one of the girls, Leah (played by Avantika) ended up being outed as a lesbian. She was in a relationship with her basketball teammate and as a result she ends up losing her basketball captaincy and the other girl gets expelled from the school. It becomes a huge issue with friends of the expelled demanding for a reason and protesting against the school.

This leads to the final episode where the whole school protests the principal and raises the pride flag and does a whole song-and-dance in the rainbow and is all ally-central for a while. 

Watching that pissed me off. 

So, let's talk about it. 

Creators, especially Indian creators (not all, but enough to rant about) don't know how to write or create LGBTQ+ stories without suffering or pain. And even then, its unrealistic. This boarding school full of girls in North India would not support a lesbian girl like this. It's not realistic to think that they would be waving pride flags and sticking it to the establishment. We haven't come that far to be this delusional. And you could say it's fiction so it's okay but it still has to have some attachment with reality. 

That's my main issue with this whole show. It decides to talk about issues that we as a society are aware of but don't see discussed in media and then go on to just make in some weird half-done, almost annoying conversation and expect a gold star for.... I don't know being more inclusive and understanding of today's issues?

I had a similar issue with Made In Heaven where the first season explored how it is the be gay in Indian society and how family can often be your first abusers. All of that to do the same thing in season 2 with character growth. My opinion there was that while we deserve flawed characters of all sexualities, I worried whether audiences would use it as a reason to villainize a community that historically were never seen as 'worthy to live'. But that's subjective. 

One of the other issues of the show was that the main friend group weren't even really friends. Like separately they had friendships but together, they fought more than they hung out. 

I think a good way to phrase this show is that it's a cookie cutter, try-hard teen show that tries to connect with different age groups and as a result ends up making most of the story painfully annoying to watch. 

It's okay, but is that the metric? 

Also, there's a whole bunch of the stuff I didn't cover but this show does have some crazy scenes in it. 

Overall, as someone who wanted to watch an Indian show about girlhood and growing up in the Indian system, it was meh. 

🐄