{"id":19036,"date":"2022-09-12T16:07:31","date_gmt":"2022-09-13T00:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=19036"},"modified":"2022-09-12T16:07:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T00:07:31","slug":"indian-matchmaking-season-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2022\/09\/12\/indian-matchmaking-season-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Matchmaking-Season 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trailer: https:\/\/bit.ly\/3U3ZQrH<\/p>\n<p>The cast: https:\/\/bit.ly\/3U2srh4<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve got to watch &#8220;Edge of the Earth&#8221; on HBO. It&#8217;s produced by Teton Gravity Research, which made its bones in the ski world, but that was a reason I was going to skip it, I mean I&#8217;ve seen so many of their productions.<\/p>\n<p>But nothing like this.<\/p>\n<p>There are four episodes. It&#8217;s not a huge commitment. And to be honest, I haven&#8217;t even seen the fourth one, about surfing, I keep up on the water sport, I read that Kai Lenny story in the &#8220;New Yorker&#8221;:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Kai Lenny Surfs the Unsurfable &#8211; The big wave surfer tackles some of the most fearsome swells on the planet. On the surface, it looks like he&#8217;s just having fun&#8221;: https:\/\/bit.ly\/3BcdfoO<\/p>\n<p>The article is written by William Finnegan, who wrote 2015&#8217;s &#8220;Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life&#8221;: https:\/\/amzn.to\/3xhHUjz This is a cult book, albeit a large cult, the printed word equivalent of &#8220;Endless Summer,&#8221; and if you&#8217;ve ever been in the water you&#8217;ll dig it.<\/p>\n<p>And the first story is a skiing one. Featuring Jeremy Jones and company in Alaska. This is very cool, primarily because I&#8217;ve been there, it&#8217;s so forbidding. And snowboarder Jeremy Jones is doing god&#8217;s work, he&#8217;s had his own climate change lobbying group, Protect Our Winters, for years: https:\/\/protectourwinters.org<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s the second episode that will have your eyes truly bugging out. Kayaking a never before navigated stretch of river in the Ecuadorian jungle. You truly start to get scared.<\/p>\n<p>But not quite as scared as you will be watching that woman solo climb that peak in Kyrgyzstan. I mean the falling rock alone!<\/p>\n<p>And wanting more of this, I decided to check out &#8220;Edge of the Unknown&#8221; on NatGeo, which I pay for via my Spectrum subscription.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck getting my Roku to see it. I got in on my iPhone, but that screen&#8217;s too small, and once you&#8217;re in on your iPhone you can&#8217;t keep setting up the Roku&#8230; I gave up, end of story.<\/p>\n<p>But in an outdoor mood, I switched to Outside TV, which I get via my &#8220;Ski&#8221; subscription. Long story, you pay extra for more articles and then they dropped all the physical issues but one and it&#8217;s a giant rip-off but you can watch Warren Miller movies, and I like the old ones, so I put in about a half hour, but then I was getting bummed, feeling so old, so I decided to go to Netflix, to check out what was going on.<\/p>\n<p>I do this on a regular basis, on all the services, to check out their interfaces, to see what they&#8217;re promoting, and I was scrolling down and I saw&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Indian Matchmaking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I knew there was a buzz on the first season, and having a second season means people watched it, and I doubted Felice wanted to view it, and since she was out of the house I dove in.<\/p>\n<p>I was immediately hooked.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the show you think it is. Arranged marriages. Rather, it&#8217;s the story of single Indians whose parents think they&#8217;re too old not to be married so they hire a matchmaker and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>What you&#8217;ve got to know is nobody is poor in this story. A small percentage are in India itself, most are in America, their parents have immigrated and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an hilarious story of a guy in Nashik, a few hours from Mumbai. NOBODY WANTS TO LIVE THERE!<\/p>\n<p>But who&#8217;d want to live with this guy anyway. He loves chickens, all he talks about is chickens. His family makes equipment for farms. He&#8217;s got an American MBA, but no wife.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s another thing about the cast, you get the impression they all did what their parents told them to do. They&#8217;re not liberal arts majors, they&#8217;re not artists, they&#8217;re all professionals, in search of the big bucks. and other than the cardiologist, THEY&#8217;VE GOT NO SELF-KNOWLEDGE!<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with Nadia. She&#8217;s a babe. But emotionally stunted. An adolescent. The funny thing is they&#8217;ve all hired Auntie Seema, the matchmaker, who flies in from Mumbai, which everybody keeps calling &#8220;Bombay,&#8221; which flummoxed me, to get them a partner. So they haven&#8217;t figured out the relationship game and Nadia&#8217;s hooked up with the perfect guy, but she blows him off because he wasn&#8217;t physical enough with her. But then he says she told him from the start to go slow, to stay away!<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the odds of any of these people hooking up&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And then Nadia goes for someone totally inappropriate, years younger, Auntie says no and&#8230;watch to see what happens.<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s Viral, an only child in North Carolina. Who keeps telling us how successful she is. Flies all over the country for work, owns her own home, has no debt, and wants someone&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Exactly like her.<\/p>\n<p>Now anybody who has ever been in a relationship knows that you don&#8217;t want someone exactly like yourself, it never works, but Viral is delusional. She lists so many criteria!<\/p>\n<p>And then Auntie comes back with the matches&#8217; &#8220;biodata,&#8221; a glorified Wikipedia page on each potential date. Viral&#8217;s complaint? She googled the guy and he didn&#8217;t look exactly like he did in his biodata photo. PICKY!<\/p>\n<p>Oh, they&#8217;re all so picky, except for the aforementioned cardiologist, Arshneel, in Cleveland. He&#8217;s up for anything.<\/p>\n<p>First date?<\/p>\n<p>A woman in the Bay Area who works in finance. But she&#8217;s never ever been on a date with an Indian before, and Arshneel wears a turban, how is that going to work out?<\/p>\n<p>And then Auntie hooks him up with this dentist in Chi-town and&#8230; She&#8217;s only been in America for a decade, so despite being cute and alive, will she blend in with his friends?<\/p>\n<p>Shital is a babe. 38. With no prospects for marriage.<\/p>\n<p>Like everybody else on this show, she wants it all. And, once again, no one could fit all her criteria.<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s Vinesh in Miami. He&#8217;s a nice guy. His family is constantly cracking jokes, which bugs Auntie, but turns me on, I&#8217;d feel right at home, and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s set up with a nurse from L.A. and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Sure, there&#8217;s rejection and heartbreak, but there is some connection. And the most reasonable people are punted and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The number one criterion is that the date get along with their intended&#8217;s family. Usually, that&#8217;s the first meeting, you&#8217;re thrown directly into the fire. But&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The Indians have something right here, getting along with the family is very important. Siblings talk about in-laws who will take them to appointments and&#8230; It&#8217;s much more than looks.<\/p>\n<p>But everybody wants that too.<\/p>\n<p>And then, interspersed throughout the series, you see people who&#8217;ve been married for a long time who got hitched via arranged marriages. Sometimes they only saw their spouse-to-be for five or fifteen minutes. AND THEY&#8217;RE ALL SO HAPPY! Maybe this is a selected group, but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I forgot to mention Aparna!<\/p>\n<p>Not a guy alive would want to be involved with this woman. Never mind no one being good enough for her.<\/p>\n<p>Her friends are more broad-minded, especially Sophie&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Aparna grew up with Sophie in Houston. Sophie is Korean-American, but she moved to India and&#8230;she&#8217;s uber-into astrology.<\/p>\n<p>They all are, it&#8217;s a key factor in determining compatibility!<\/p>\n<p>And the face reader! I used to think I could judge a book by its cover, I found him fascinating.<\/p>\n<p>And the one wedding was such a to-do, you&#8217;ve got to see it.<\/p>\n<p>But really you&#8217;ve got to watch &#8220;Indian Matchmaking&#8221; to see the delusional yuppies who want to get married but really don&#8217;t. Auntie keeps telling them they can&#8217;t have 100%, that 60-70% is great, but they keep saying they&#8217;re entitled to have it all!<\/p>\n<p>And no one is backing down, they defy Auntie all the time.<\/p>\n<p>This ain&#8217;t a fake show, like the &#8220;Bachelorette,&#8221; rather it&#8217;s the story of America with an Indian twist. We work hard to lift ourselves up, and we emerge above and find out we&#8217;re alone, and too many people think they can find a spouse just like they got an &#8220;A&#8221; in the course. Like relationships are school.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, they have so much to learn.<\/p>\n<p>God, you know if you&#8217;re a candidate for this show, if you&#8217;re into GOT and &#8220;Lord of the Rings&#8221;&#8230;chances are this won&#8217;t be your cup of tea.<\/p>\n<p>But when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, it&#8217;s only about people. We&#8217;re all the same, looking for the same stuff. And it&#8217;s so interesting to watch other people fumble trying to figure it out.<\/p>\n<p>I CAN&#8217;T WAIT FOR THE NEXT SEASON!<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trailer: https:\/\/bit.ly\/3U3ZQrH The cast: https:\/\/bit.ly\/3U2srh4 You&#8217;ve got to watch &#8220;Edge of the Earth&#8221; on HBO. It&#8217;s produced by Teton Gravity Research, which made its bones in the ski world, but that was a reason I was going to skip it, I mean I&#8217;ve seen so many of their productions. But nothing like this. There are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-television"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-4X2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19037,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036\/revisions\/19037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}