#And Rajan 😒

[lazyexceptwhencooking]

Literally my exact thoughts! Plus the fact that these types of storylines take away a character’s agency. Kala had a tough decision to make but then a convenient turn of events made it so she didn’t have to anymore. Tragic.

see, here’s the thing. my feelings about fandom’s old platitude of how ugh, wouldn’t it be MUCH better if love triangles were resolved by joining everyone in a polytriad?!? aside (triangles have a point, so that is hardly fit for every single one. also messiness is fine. hell, a good triad storyline could be messy as fuck and the better for it, why is it always proposed as a “peaceful” resolution)… that’s just not what Sense8 did with Kalagang + Rajan.

maybe they intended to develop an ot3 from the beginning or maybe not, and maybe if they’d had more time to develop it properly it could’ve been better, or maybe not. but imo, it lacked the set up of a love triangle in the first place.

I’m of the mind that a lot of love triangles are pretty obviously staked in one of the part’s favour from the beginning, on a Doylist level. you can easily see the pattern they follow (spoiler: it’s often misogyny; although sometimes other kinds of bigotry appear to spice things up!). but on a Watsonian level there’s supposed to be… more.

the thing is, with the show’s set-up, what we had is this: Rajan was the appropriate man. the catch. the rich, politically well-connected man Kala has more in common with and everyone and their mother is pressuring her to marry. everything about him is perfect on paper! and yet. Kala isn’t feeling it. there’s no *spark*. she’s going through the motions (even future father in law saw it and tried to cancel the wedding!).

Wolfgang could not be MORE inappropriate for Kala. they couldn’t be more different. worlds apart, in more ways than one. absolutely inconvenient when everything about Rajan is studiously so.

but when she sees him? FIRE. pure, pure fire. they’re drawn to one another despite how mismatched they seem at first sight (until you dig a little deeper). the passion is of the charts and as much as they might try sometimes, they just can’t stay away. when one is in danger, the other loses their SHIT.

if this was a set-up where Kala, Wolfgang, AND Rajan were all central characters, you could get away with calling this a love triangle. but the reality is that Kala and Wolfgang are main characters, and Rajan is a few steps down that ladder.

so is the result a love triangle? or… is this a set-up that screams “Kalagang are the EPIC, FOR THE AGES TRUE LOVE, and Rajan is the obstacle that must be overcome: a man Kala is marrying out of a sense of duty at beast, and simple inertia and boredom with her own life or inability to direct it at worse”?

and I know the show was praised to hell and back for NOT following up on this, and instead going with something ~quirkier and unique, more unexpected; for “subverting the audience’s expectations”. that can be a good thing! although it still irks me how a lot of the praise seemed to be about how Rajan wasn’t villified to prop Kalagang. that’s a good thing for Rajan’s character and the optics that would’ve resulted in such a choice (in a show that was already spotty regarding race, let’s be honest).

but a.) despite the fact that, yes, “husband mistreats or disappoints wife” is a trite, all too common phenomenon in our world, that doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad to tell such a story, or that it can’t be done in a compelling way, and these conversations always acted like it was so. and b.) Rajan being a good man does not mean getting married to him and staying married to him were good choices for Kala. love isn’t a debt you incurr in when someone’s kind to you and/or fundamentally decent to others.

the resolution of this story seemed to hinge into, “love is not finite. there is plenty to spare, and we need to expand our minds when it comes to it”. that’s a lovely sentiment, but with these three it didn’t quite land for me the way it did with other dynamics. and each time I rewatch a little I walk away with a poorer impression of it. it doesn’t quite *click*; the pieces don’t fit together. and I don’t think lack of time due to the cancellation and a rushed finale are solely to blame for that. like, yeah, it’s cute, it’s funny (Rajan’s actor is pretty great at all that); it’s quirky. but I don’t find it effective.

the set-up of Kala’s own feelings is at the epicenter of it. and I just… can’t actually buy they changed in nature. she grows to care for Rajan, to respect him and appreciate him and see him as a honourable man. but “you can love many people equally, if not in the same ways” falls completely flat here, because the difference in her feelings for Wolfgang and her feelings for Rajan are a matter of both quantity and quality. it’s a different love, and a lesser love for it; it’s being built up like that from the start. she’s so lukewarm about Rajan, especially in comparison to how she feels for Wolfgang, that it’s borderline painful and definitely awkward to see. even the way the camera shoots them vs. Kalagang scenes is wildly different, empathising the mundanality of one pair and the ~~epicness of the other.

tl;dr, my problem is that, at no point during the show, do I believe Kala has romantic feelings, let alone some with true depth, for Rajan. which means seeing them set up as a triad (or even a balanced V-shaped relationship with occasional threesomes lol) just… doesn’t convince me. at all.