Spoilers

Kamala and her family head to Karachi where some answers await…

There is more confusion this week and it stems entirely from the superhero elements of the show. Continuing with last episode’s baffling decision by the Clan Destine’s to go full Thanos (he at least was called the ‘Mad’ Titan) we have them escaping the Department of Damage Control. After outwitting the DODC’s three incompetent guards, they somehow find Kamala in a secret hideout literally half a world away the next afternoon. Upon locating Kamala they once again engage in maximum carnage when even a slightly more sober approach would have led to them attacking her when she wasn’t surrounded by people whose job it is to defeat them.

All of which is very dumb. It’s also entertaining in its own way but it’s ultimately not very good. This is a huge shame because the parts of the episode that don’t feature secret societies fighting one another are very good indeed.

I’m beginning to think this series needed another pass at the drafting stage because the major problems with it are structural ones – where the plot doesn’t sync with itself but which are eminently fixable.

I can’t say why some of the more baffling choices stuck around to the final version but I think what it shows is the two sides of the MCU – that of real people living their lives and the hyperreal events surrounding super powers.

Anyway, onto the highs of this episode.

Kamala arrives in Karachi with her mother and the show gets so much right. From the sense of scale of the city (Karachi has a population of nearly 17 million, making it vastly bigger than London and New York) to the chaotic vibrancy of the place.

We also get a sense of just how different it is to somewhere like New York with modernity and local history distinctively laced together.

Kamala meets not just her grandmother but also her cousins who are delightfully snarky and just a little bit resistant to treating her like one of the family.

There are a couple of instances where the sense that she’s an American first is shown to be resented by people around her and that is a very subtle observation (and one I’ve been on the receiving end of myself). In particular this is rooted in how the wealthy middle classes of non-European cultures think about themselves, especially in relation to the colonial power of the day – the US – and it’s nice to see that awareness on screen.

I was a bit surprised at Kamala finding the pani poori too hot given her family and community clearly eat the foods of home. I can see how it served a nice purpose in making her outsider status clearer both at the club and later on at the beach where she eats biryani out of a bag, but it stands out as an element added for other people rather than being true to who she’s been painted to be.

The character work here continues to deliver in spades – whether it’s Muneeba’s heart-breaking conversation with her mother, the bored indifference of her cousins when Kamala is no longer entertaining, or how Iman Vellani portrays being entirely out of her depth culturally.

The episode ends on a proper cliffhanger and was the first scene where I felt the fact that Kamala has superpowers and her own personal story properly integrated.

Verdict: I’m disappointed by the structure here – it feels like the superhero elements are tacked on with no real thought of how they integrate with the central characters. However, my disappointment is that of my Indian grandmother who would be proud of my A grade but spend quite a lot of the day suggesting how I might get an A* next time.

Rating? 7 untrustworthy strangers out of 10.

Stewart Hotston