Kay Kay Menon's 'Special Ops' Is Back, but the Thrill Isn’t

You’d think this new season to kick off with a bang. Instead, it begins with a whimper, writes Suchin Mehrotra.

Kay Kay Menon in a still from Special Ops 2.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

Neeraj Pandey’s Special Ops—JioHotstar’s flagship series, and reportedly one of its most widely watched—has returned for a second season six years after the first instalment. That’s not counting the 2021 prequel series, Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story, a breezy four-episode original tale.

Pandey’s name may no longer be associated with the tight, refined storytelling of Baby, Special 26, or A Wednesday, but his prolific output and ability to churn out multiple blockbuster franchises in the streaming era doesn’t get enough credit.

Whilst the likes of Sudip Sharma, Raj and DK, Hansal Mehta, and Vikramaditya Motwane are routinely rattled off on the list of superstar showrunners, Pandey is rarely mentioned. This, despite the fact that over the last seven years, he’s spearheaded numerous seasons of multiple franchises for two major streamers: Special Ops and The Freelancer for JioHotstar and Khakee for Netflix—not to mention several features along the way. 

A Tepid Return for a Once Slick Franchise

Given Special Ops' massive audience, amped-up budget, and scale, and long-awaited return, you’d think this new season to kick off with a bang. Instead, it begins with a whimper.

The cold open (one of many this season) is a forgettable, blandly staged action sequence (again, one of many this season) featuring Indian intelligence agent Farooq (an enjoyable Karan Tacker) being overrun by bad guys.

It doesn't work as a satisfying reintroduction to this slick world of covert ops and espionage, nor is it consequential to the core plot this time around. 

That follows the repercussions of a top Indian computer scientist, Dr Bhargav (the always robotic Arif Zakaria), being kidnapped by mysterious forces. Dr Bhargav is the “key to India’s entire digital infrastructure”.

Alongside him, top intelligence officer Vinod Shekhawat (a sincere Tota Roy Chowdhury) is murdered. Tasked with connecting the dots and averting yet another looming national threat is Himmat Singh—a show-making Kay Kay Menon, who’s managed to craft one of the streaming landscape’s most enjoyable characters within an otherwise middling show.

Karan Tacker in a still from Special Ops 2.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

Kay Kay Menon Holds It All Together—Again

Himmat is the ultimate puppet master, coordinating multiple active operations, managing field agents, and balancing several balls in the air to keep the nation safe and address every looming threat.

Kay Kay Menon continues to be an utter joy to watch, giving Himmat the delicate humanity of a man forced to operate like a machine, the weight of a leader whose every decision holds life-or-death consequences, and the boundless swag of a mastermind who you don’t want to get on the wrong side of. Even his sincerity feels laced with agenda.

Kay Kay Menon equally gives us a masterclass in “phone acting”. In Himmat’s hands, a phone is nothing short of a weapon (his three rotating phones manage to have more impact and dimension than many of the flesh-and-blood supporting characters). One look, one message, one five-second phone call can make or break lives.

I still think about those playful scenes in the first season where he would answer a series of calls and coldly respond “chodh do” (leave him) or “thok do” (kill him). 

With this new threat, Himmat must once again scramble to save the day, coordinating his armada of field agents that range from talented actors who you wish were given more to do—Vinay Pathak, Saiyami Kher, Shikha Talsania—to generic, bland faces who manage to have little impact: Muzamil Ibrahim, Ashutosh Shukla.

Granted, the bar for storytelling and craft of a JioHotstar original is very low, but it’s also rare to see a Hindi streaming series offer such bland, cardboard casting - the arena where even the most middling shows rarely disappoint.

But the seven-episode season is populated with an onslaught of awkward performers and background extras.

The wider issue is that Special Ops Season 2, from writers Neeraj Pandey, Deepak Kingrani and Benazir Ali Fida, has a protagonist problem. Outside of Himmat steering the ship, the narrative spreads itself far too thin amidst a revolving roster of characters and wafer-thin field agents without giving us a chance to develop a relationship with them. It’s a problem that bleeds into the action and this season’s conveyor belt of repetitive fight and shootout sequences.

The show doesn’t seem to care who’s in action, just that there is some.

Kay Kay Menon in a still from Special Ops 2.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

Impressive Ambition Meets Stale Execution

The competent combat sequences are the result of real ambition colliding with stale execution. Directors Neeraj Pandey and Shivam Nair enjoy their long, unbroken shots. The issue is that they rely too heavily on DOPs Arvind Singh and Dimo Popov’s dynamic, urgent camera work to make up for the often awkward staging and bland fight choreography.

It’s the action equivalent of those dynamic dance reels where the constant camera movement is doing all the work to make up for the strictly average dancers themselves. 

What’s more, it’s remarkable (derogatory) how many of these action sequences don’t feature any of the actual cast. Neeraj Pandey has managed to shoot numerous lengthy combat sequences in swanky foreign locations with the same rotating group of white stuntmen. From an “efficient filmmaking”, budgeting and scheduling perspective, I’m sure it’s genius. From a narrative perspective, it’s pointless.

Why bother staging action with actual characters and cast members we’re actually invested in when you can do the whole thing with generic stuntmen instead?

In one bizarre sequence, for example, Avinash (Muzamil Ibrahim), with the help of two random white dude agents, storms the home of a bad guy suspect. There, they get into a prolonged fight with said bad guy and his young teenage sister (?).

The scene descends into a blur of "good" generic white guys fighting “bad” generic white guys, until the good guys win and murder the bad guy and his young teenage sister in cold blood, and we’re supposed to cheer? I think? 

Tahir Raj Bhasin in a still from Special Ops 2.

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

Tahir Tries, But Sudheer Just Can’t Scare Us

Speaking of bad guys, Tahir Raj Bhasin is the big bad this time as an all-powerful businessman hellbent on the nation’s downfall who goes by the name “The Collector”. It’s probably for the best, considering the character’s real name is…Sudheer. Hardly a name that inspires fear.

Tahir is always enjoyable to watch, but even he isn’t able to do much with the one-note villain who does little more than speak menacingly and kidnap liberally.

Instead, the far more compelling antagonist this time around is the always impressive Prakash Raj as Subramanyam, a retired intelligence official gone rogue when the very system he gave his life to protect lets him down and costs him his loved ones - a spiritual cousin of Naseeruddin Shah’s Common Man from A Wednesday.

Except that Subramanyam is only fully introduced and established in the season’s final stretch. It’s why season 2 also has a stakes problem. Barring the suitably urgent finale, we barely feel a sense of escalation of stakes through the season. Dr Bhargav is kidnapped, and the good guys are on his tail trying to get him back for over 5 episodes.

Prakash Raj in a still from Special Ops 2

(Photo Courtesy: YouTube) 

The fact is, you’d expect the second season of a flashy action franchise to fall into familiar but forgivable sequel traps - bigger, busier, more bloated, more ambitious, more disjointed. The problem of too much-ness.

But this second chapter seems to have the opposite issue of not enough-ness, falling short on delivering the bare basics of sustained tension, urgency and excitement.

As the kidnapping crisis unfolds through the episodes, we get several scenes of the Defence Minister repeatedly asking Himmat Singh why nothing is happening and why the investigation is stagnant. “Same pinch”, I felt like saying. 

Special Ops Season 2 releases on 18 July on JioHotstar.

(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)