Class – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Episode 2

Episode 2 of Class starts in the present, as Yashika rants about how social media is different from real life. Her attitude exposes the mindset of the rich in the show’s cinematic universe. No matter how they portray themselves, they will always be different people. Yashika calls the three kids viruses. “Do we hide our insecurities behind filters on social media?” That is the new assignment in Mr Prannoy’s class. He divides the class into partners to make profiles of each other. Suhani is aired with Dheeraj, Balli with Dhruv, and Veer with Saba. Veer tries to make plans with Dhruv but he gets out of it to hang with Faruq and smoke drugs.

They kiss but Faruq gets annoyed when Dhruv suggests that he was trying to pick his pocket. Chowdhary’s goons beat up Neeru. His father has taken a 15 lac rupee loan from Chowdhary. But Neeru thinks Chowdhary is trying to get back at him for protesting against Ahuja. Suhani and Dheeraj ditch her bodyguard to go to Dheeraj’s house.  Dheeraj tells Suhani about Neeraj going to jail. Dheeraj’s father wakes up and thinks Suhani is Kasturi, his wife, for a minute. Dheeraj and Suhani discuss their fathers. The former feels his father is rude but the latter feels his father is a fake. She asks him if he has ever been in love. When he says love is a distraction, she dances to show him, love, is everything and everywhere.

In the present, Veer accuses Dheeraj of murdering Suhani but doesn’t say it on the record. The officer asks him about the matter with Saba and we go back into the past. Veer reaches Saba’s house for the project. He misbehaves with her father and Saba takes him outside. Veer asks Saba to come to his house instead. Sharan asks Koel to bring Balli with her so he can watch them together. In class, Prannoy praises saba for her essay. Yashika confronts him after class and asks him not to spend too much time on the slum dwellers. Their parents don’t pay the fees. Subtly, she bribes him with a Vice Principal post. She wants the Hampton Gold at any cost.

Neeaj warns Dheeraj about Suhani. But while Dheeraj edits suhani’s video, Neeraj overhears her saying that the safe in Ahuja’s study room has Suhani’s birthday as the code. Dhruv expresses his liking to Faruq and he reciprocates it by kissing Dhruv. Saba comes to the house for the interview, whereas veer has Yashika’s plan in mind. Suhani gets emotional while talking to Dheeraj about what happened to her in the last year. She goes to the bathroom and does drugs to cope.

Neeraj calls his brother and asks him to take money from the safe. Suhani passes out and Dheeraj is forced into stealing. He finds the safe and takes out the money. But feels guilty and keeps it all back. In the present, Dhruv gives his statement to the police. The officer (Bindra) initiates sexual relations between him and Faruq but Dhruv dismisses the allegations. Dhruv and Faruq have sex for the first time but the former is reminded that he missed training.

Suhani’s profile of Dheeraj is selected as the best project in the class. But when his father’s interview is screened, Dheeraj gets upset. His father reveals they are of a lower caste and ran from their previous shelter to avoid working menial jobs. He discusses it with Neeraj and feels he should not go back. Neeraj asks Dheeraj to embrace his bahujan identity and take pride in being one. In the present, it is revealed that Suhani was four weeks pregnant.

The Episode Review

The details from Elite are largely the same but the writing in this episode was better. It brought out the class divide in India’s setting quite well. The writers also branched out into various characters’ arches and the themes they want to explore in the show through them. The rich kids are played quite well but perhaps find themselves under the pressure of replicating the Elite way of characterization.

The twin timelines are a neat way to keep the tension elevated and make a symbiotic way of progressing the narrative. The jumping back and forth benefits the retelling of events and shows us which characters are truly moral, and which are all fakes.