HUM TV’s Mushk continues to stay on top despite airing two episodes this week instead of one – not only it vacated Monday for the upcoming show Dulhan but also replaced Dil Ruba on Saturdays, making you look forward to your weekend. The sixth and seventh episodes aired within five days of each other kept the audience’s interest alive, with some characters taking the center stage, and others waiting for their chance to make their mark. Imran Ashraf’s impressive script and Aehsun Talish’s smart direction keeps the viewers on the edge of their seat, making Mushk all the more interesting!

The Plot

Guddi (Urwa Hocane) returns from the railway station after boarding the train with Mehek’s kid, just to scare Adam (Imran Ashraf); however, she finds out that Taayi (Zara Tareen) is hell-bent on destroying her life by hook or by crook. Things turn nasty when it is revealed that Taayi and Dr. Rana (Raja Haider) are more than Doctor – Patient’s wife, and that’s why when Roshni (Seher Khan) is caught talking to Saqib (Raza Talish), Taayi puts the blame on Mehek (Momal Sheikh), and Dada Jee (Manzoor Qureshi) collapses despite Mehek’s the latter’s pleas, regarding her innocence. Taayi then goes to meet Saqib, pays him off, and tells her daughter that he never arrived at the meeting place. Guddi keeps on tabs at Taayi and instructs Roshni not to believe everything her mother says, and quietly plots her tormentor’s downfall.

It is also revealed that Muqaddar Khan (Aehsun Talish) incarcerated Sajjad (Sohail Sameer) because he wanted to marry his fiancée (Natasha Ali). It was the same Sajjad who convinces Shayan (Osama Tahir) to marry his cousin and be a free man so that he can search for his wife Mehek. In an attempt to cool things down in his house, Dada Jee tells Taayi to get Roshni married to someone else, whereas asks Adam to marry Mehek. This is exactly what Adam wanted all his life, but it would be difficult now that he knows Mehek’s secret, that the kid Guddi is carrying around is Mehek's!

The Good

Imran Ashraf is one of the finest actors we have in Pakistan; the scene where Dada Jee asks him to marry, he smiled for a second because he had always loved Mehek, then realized that she is already married with a kid and his smile turned into shock and finally, when he finally understood the mess he was stepping into, his shock became surprised and he displayed all three emotions at once. The last time I saw someone do this kind of acting was in Captain Phillips where Tom Hanks went through as many as five emotions in the climax scene, and if Imran can manage three, it’s a win for the young actor. Also, one must appreciate the performance of little-known Raza Haider who as Dr. Rana has interesting dialogues and might play a pivotal role in coming episodes, if he and Taayi play their cards well.

Then there is Urwa Hocane who surprises as the carefree Guddi who is always on the lookout for conspiracy, mostly involving Taayi (Zara Tareen). She makes Guddi do all menial tasks at home, yet Guddi gets her revenge when she treats Mehek the same way. One must mention Zara Tareen’s take as Zulekha Taayi who is a weird mother who slaps her daughter after she is found with another man but saves her honor by diverting the blame elsewhere; she is the reason why Dada Jee suffered a minor attack but she doesn’t want him to die; she hates her husband (Hasan Ahmed) a lot but doesn’t want him to die as yet. Her interaction with Urwa Hocane and vice versa is the kind of fuel that will take the drama forward. Aehsun Talish the director must be credited for showing the backstory of Sohail Sameer and Natasha Ali and later appearing onscreen as the person responsible for their relationship’s dramatic end.

The Bad

Manzoor Qureshi is one of the finest actors we have in Pakistan, yet the way his Dada Jee collapsed on hearing Taayi’s nonsense reminded the viewers of Agha Talish (the director’s father) who used to fake a heart attack in films in order to get things done his way. Be it breaking his son’s marriage, making his daughter forget about the love of her life or something in between, he had been there, done that. For a person like Dada Jee, who supposedly runs the household with an iron fist, suffering a mild attack on believing someone as unworthy as his daughter-in-law was a big no-no in my book. He doesn’t seem like someone who is a very bad judge of character, but here he came out as one.

Momal Sheikh’s Mehek is losing my support because if you can’t stand for yourself, then you don’t deserve the audience’s support. She is becoming weaker and weaker with every passing episode and if fainting in the fifth one wasn’t enough, crying her heart out for being blamed for an affair in the seventh was. There was too much Saas Bahu in these two episodes; if the first five episodes hadn’t been amazing, the viewer would have changed the channels. Adam bringing 3 lakhs to the railway station at night was weird, Roshni getting her hands on 20 thousand rupees seemed unimaginable and Taayi carrying around 15 lakhs in a briefcase was too hard to digest. Also, the viewers are interested in knowing more about the thermometer that checks the person’s blood sugar level, because the doctor seemed to have deduced a patient’s sugar problem through it.

The Verdict – Mushk goes from interesting to intriguing!

The credit of taking Mushk from interesting to intriguing level goes to the writer Imran Ashraf who mostly stays away from the screen in the two episodes, yet keeps introducing new characters, new arcs, and new revelations. Who knew that the doctor would play an important part in the sixth and seventh episodes and would be romantically involved with his patient’s wife, that Taayi will come out as someone who lies without any remorse and destroy the lives of those she doesn’t like, that Mehek would emerge as a weakling, that Guddi would get hold of potential material for blackmailing, that Dada Jee would trust his daughter-in-law more than his own blood, that Adam would finally get what he wants but at what expense. With the drama hardly seven weeks old, it seems that a lot more is going to happen in the coming weeks, and as viewers, we should be ready for one explosion after another.