Main cast: Karan Soni (Anish), Poorna Jagannathan (Divya), and Darin De Paul (The Man on Tape)
Director: Doug Emmett
It’s 1997.
The Internet is just becoming the thing.
Aspiring author Anish calls his mother Divya, telling her that he has secured a meeting with one of the top agents in town, and now, he’s arrived in town, checked in to Room 104, and will finish his novel in the meantime.
Wait, where is his laptop?
Now, Anish faces the challenge of a lifetime. One, he has to get his mother to actually answer the call. Two, he has to teach his mother how to email the novel on his laptop over to him. As anyone that had to teach senior coots the stupefying arts of technology can testify, often it’s easier to try to raise the dead or walk on water.
My first thought after watching this episode is how it is even possible to email a whole novel over. 1997 was the time of dial-up, right? Assuming that the line wouldn’t disconnect at least 12 times while attempting to send the file through, was there any email service in the first place that could support an attachment of a file of that size?
Also, as the mishaps keep piling up as the episode progresses, I can’t help to wonder why he can’t fly back to get that laptop. He has a few days before the interview, and if that’s important to him, just whip out the credit card and get a flight home!
In the end, I can’t fully get into this episode because of the way the whole premise is presented to me. I understand that Anish is panicking so he may not think straight, but the moment his mother started bumbling around, I would have said never mind, leave it be, I’d come take it myself. After all, as an old coot myself, I can confidently testify that one should not attempt to teach tech-illiterate old coots how to press buttons when precious documents are at stake!
Karan Soni tries to bring on the comedy, and to an extent, he succeeds, but yeesh, I think the people behind this show have forgotten what the internet was like back in 1997 or assume the people watching this show don’t know or don’t care.
