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This article contains spoilers for Meri Zindagi Hai Tu

After last week’s episodes of Meri Zindagi Hai Tu cumulatively garnered 30 million views on YouTube, viewers are torn between a quest for logic and protest against unacceptable plot twists. This disastrous narrative that is grasping for the elusive straws of rationality has created a buzz for all the wrong reasons.

Here’s a closer look dissecting all the effectively bizarre elements that have contributed to the “success” of this drama serial. Written by Radain Shah, Meri Zindagi Hai Tu has surprisingly managed to create a horror series masquerading as a romantic drama with an inexplicable world and unfathomable women.

The Kamyarverse

To their credit, Shah and director Musaddiq Malek have managed to build a solid world around one man, Kamyar (Bilal Abbas Khan). In this universe, every character’s world revolves around this one rebellious, promiscuous, alcoholic drug addict who is notorious for his wealth, frivolousness and good looks. All the other characters in this serial can be boxed into three categories: people worried about Kamyar, people harassed by him, and last but not least, people obsessed with him.

Colossally failing the Bechdel test (to pass this test a scene must have two named women characters talk to each other about something other than a man), Shah and Malek manage to build a universe so unbelievable that even viewers are now wondering what made actors like Hania Aamir and Bilal Abbas Khan sign on for this show.

Love him or hate him, you can’t escape him: in this world everyone is terrified of Kamyar, even the women who care deeply for him. In one scene Ayra’s sister (Meher Jafri) even exclaims “Jaldi sojao warna Kamyar phir ajayega (quickly go to sleep or else Kamyar will show up)”. Doesn’t that remind you of the djinns our elders us told stories about at night to scare us?

Ludicrousness aside, we must laud the makers for creating a catchy original soundtrack (OST) sung by Asim Azhar for forlorn lovers.

‘Woh larki’

In case you’re wondering who ‘woh larki’ or ‘that girl’ is, this anonymous woman played by Hani Taha, agrees to drug Kamyar and features in an intimate video all in an effort to end his marriage, assuming her face will be blurred. In case you thought she was hired and paid millions, she wasn’t and did all of this pro-bono.

She agrees to do all of this simply to be ‘seen’ and be ‘felt’ by Kamyar. When asked why “woh larki” went through all this trouble for a man who brutally spurned her, she confesses,“Main humesha se Kamyar ke qareeb ana chahti thi, bus chahti kisi tarah mera naam Kamyar ke naam ke saath jurh jaye [I always wanted to be close to Kamyar, I just wanted my name to be attached to Kamyar’s somehow]”.

As asinine as this may sound, what may surprise you is how Meri Zindagi Hai Tu successfully goes five episodes with this character (also referred to as ‘patient’) without a single character taking her name. We never learn her name, even as she goes viral in a video with Kamyar, is in a coma, is subsequently hospitalised, unconscious, and being treated by Hania Aamir’s Dr Ayra, then wakes up and features in a second (this time solo) viral video.

When “woh larki’“ wakes up, she is loyally devoted to redeeming Kamyar, who then rewards her with a new identity, a plane ticket and accommodation in Dubai. What made Hani Taha, a theatre actor and producer who recently returned to Pakistan from the UK with a graduate degree from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, choose to play this character is baffling to say the least.

The marriage wrecker ex masked as a best friend rises from the dead

Fariha (Vardah Aziz) is one of the most twisted characters in the story. Although some may classify her as the modern, stylish and mean vamp, she embarks on a new trajectory in last week’s episodes. Her initial activities in this story include smoking, drinking (in the very first episode she chugs a champagne bottle after being snubbed by Kamyar), dancing, partying, self-medicating, crying, scheming and otherwise pining for Kamyar.

Right from the start you know Fariha is spooky and something is off about her, because in her otherwise expensively-decorated room with paintings and high-end furniture, there is a large, rather prominent figurine, which is a leitmotif. This figurine is neither human nor non-human; it’s a stark red, with a large silver crystal ball appearing in half the frame in most of Fariha’s solo scenes in her bedroom.

This leads us to believe that she gets her darkest ideas when the crystal ball is active. Red magic anyone? For those more curious, red magic broadly represents a blend of opposing forces, combining elements of passion, destruction, and action, thus often acting as a bridge between white (healing/order) and black (destruction/chaos) magic.

Fariha partners with Ayra’s brother-in-law’s America-returned cousin — really, Fariha, could you have found anyone more dumb and distant to team up with? — to end her best friend’s marriage. She invites Kamyar to a fake party staged with paid actors a few days before his wedding with Ayra, drugs him with rohypnol, films an inappropriate intimate video featuring “wo larki” and then dumps him at his fiancée’s house.

Once Kamyar learns that Fariha engineered this entire scandal and circulated this video on purpose, he poisons her and locks her in the drawing room of her house. We watch her choking and gasping for breath, and are led to assume that she has died.

Lo and behold, in the very next episode Fariha reappears, lusting yet again after Kamyar by his hospital bedside at 4am right after he attempted to murder her. No explanation as to how Fariha reappeared after being poisoned is given to the viewers, so the only possible explanation we could think of is supernatural powers.

The doctor who needs urgent medical help

Ayra is supposedly the lead opposite Kamyar, as well as his love interest, but there are no redeeming qualities that make viewers want to support her. She is a final-year medical student and presents herself as someone who is in dire need of medical intervention and psychological help herself. She first stalks a guy like Kamyar and ruins his Cybertruck, slaps him when he burns her car in revenge mode, then beats him with a stick in public at her university after he gets her sister’s rishta called off, and then slaps him again when he asks for her hand in marriage.

However, she takes no steps to combat his harassment and stalking. If this was not enough, once he does finally leave her alone, she then goes and tells Kamyar that she now likes him. Ayra calls off her wedding to Kamyar but soon after he has an accident and is hospitalised, prompting her to urge him to marry her again, much to the dismay of her family.

We would have hoped that Ayra’s father (played by the talented Alyy Khan), who is also a doctor, would have been able to cure his daughter. Unfortunately he is one of those doctors who is never once seen practicing medicine or even stepping foot in a medical facility, so we have to assume he is not equipped to treat Ayra or even deduce that there is something  fundamentally wrong with her.

What immediately draws one’s urgent attention is the appalling state of women with tangible agency — they’re either posing helplessly, pining over Kamyar or lamenting his existence.

Amidst all this mayhem, we need to give a special shoutout to the most commendable dialogue on screen by an extra in the history of Pakistani television. In a split second scene in which Kamyar orders clothes for Rs350,000, his helper (butler?) misreads the bill as Rs35,000 and when Kamyar insults him shouting “Don’t you know how to read?!” he responds with, “If I knew how to read and write, why would I be here working as your servant?”

Watch out (or not) for this horror drama featuring the most memorable debut by a Cybertruck, a slap that somehow triggered love, obsession and harassment at the same time, and a helper with the smartest comeback.

All photos via ARY Digital/YouTube