Okay, now that I've calmed down a bit and thought about the scene a little more, I actually think the jungle scene works really well. And this is coming from someone who initially disliked it.
Disclaimer: I haven't rewatched the scene or episode, so I'm going entirely by my first viewing.
Honestly, the scene works surprisingly well, especially the jacket scene, the pulls, the intense eye contact, and the expressions. The banter is very HeeWab coded, and underneath all the teasing, there's clearly a lot of emotion.
We know how it begins Nawab throwing Heer's suitcase away in jealousy after seeing 🎸 hold her hand. Heer goes looking for it, and Nawab follows her into the jungle, making lion like growling noises to scare/tease her and when she realises it's him, she calls him a gadha and we get their usual banter.
Then he notices that she's shivering and offers her his jacket. She refuses and throws it back at him, so he gives it to her again. When she tries to refuse a second time, he pulls her closer, and THAT MOMENT??
The intense looks, his expressions, her teary doe eyes, the way he's looking at her and asking her what's wrong… IT WORKS. There's so much unsaid emotion in that moment. Especially when he tells her she's not happy and she insists that she is.
And that's where my problem begins.
AND THIS IS WHERE IT GOES DOWN THE DRAIN.....
I enjoy Nach Baliye moments, I genuinely do they are fillers but still cute fluff and I enjoyed yesterday's dance a lot.
But here, the dance felt so out of place that it completely broke the emotional flow of the scene for me. I genuinely didn't understand what the purpose of that sequence was.
Heer was literally on the verge of tears a moment ago. Nawab had pulled her closer, was looking at her intensely, and was trying to understand what was going on with her. She was looking at him with those teary eyes, and the scene had built up this lovely tension between them.
And then suddenly she's dancing???
The transition felt so jarring. It took me out of the moment completely, and I think that's actually why I initially disliked the entire jungle scene. I was reacting to how the dance sequence disrupted the scene rather than to the scene itself.
Because, on second thought everything till the jacket scene was actually good. And even after the dance, the scene gets back on track with their banter about whether Heer is actually happy and what's really going on with her.
Personally, I think the scene would've worked much better if Heer had simply insisted, a little more assertively and almost aggressively that she was happy.
She could've handed Nawab his jacket back and walked away, just as she does in the actual scene, without the dance sequence.
Imagine her insisting that she's happy while she's clearly struggling to hold herself together, and then walking away before Nawab can get anything more out of her.
That would've preserved the tension and the emotion of the moment while showing how desperately she's trying to convince both him and herself that she's fine.
Sometimes less is more especially when the actors are already conveying so much through their expressions and body language.
And then there's 🎸 , his presence in the scene still doesn't make much sense to me at all. His appearance interrupts the HeeWab bubble a little, but that's a separate issue.
Overall, I don't think the jungle scene is bad at all I think it has some genuinely lovely HeeWab moments.
It's just that the sudden Patakha Guddi sequence felt unnecessary and took away from what was otherwise a pretty good scene.
And that clouded my judgement for the whole episode, so much so I felt it was entirely skippable and nothing burger which it's not.
Because we were finally introduced to a new character from Heer's past and who for once wasn't a villain.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts after letting it set in...
What you guys think ? Did you enjoy the dance sequence, or did it break the emotional flow for you as well and took you out of the loop too....
