Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Vir Das: For India’ On Netflix, But Mainly For Us To Learn About India

On last week’s episode of Fresh Off The Boat, Vir Das guest-starred as the patriarch of an Indian immigrant family in Orlando at the turn of the 21st century operating the “Magic Motor Inn.” While waiting to see if ABC green-lights this backdoor pilot to series in 2020, Das has decided to give us all a proper history and cultural lesson about the nation of 1.3 billion (and growing) where he grew up. It’s filmed in India, called For India, but just as much for the rest of the world as it is for Indians…

VIR DAS: FOR INDIA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Das already has two Netflix comedy specials under his belt. The first, Abroad Understanding, let us know we should this comedian seriously, as he took a page from Chris Rock’s Kill The Messenger and filmed his stand-up show in both New Delhi and New York City. His second, Losing It, is about his rising fame and journey to live the American dream. And he’s definitely following through on that. ABC cast him last year in the action-comedy Whiskey Cavalier, and when that didn’t last past 13 episodes, the network built Magic Motor Inn as a way for him and Bollywood star Preity Zinta to carry on once Fresh Off The Boat ends its run this spring. Their backdoor pilot episode aired on Friday night.

For India dropped on Netflix on Sunday. Why Sunday? Because Jan. 26 marked the 70th anniversary of Republic Day, India’s national holiday honoring the start of the Constitution of India, completing its independence from Britain.

The special opens in the darkness, to focus on his voice. “If I could tell you four things about my country, where I’m from, what would they be? We’d probably agree on about three of them, and we’d probably fundamentally disagree about one of them. And that’s OK. That one would be just for me. That’s all tonight’s show is. It’s three for you. One for me. Are you ready to begin?”

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: This hour-plus arrived just nine days after Russell Peters delivered his own special filmed in Mumbai for Amazon Prime, and yet they couldn’t be more different in tone and senses of humor. Despite Amazon also making a big push into India with native-born stand-up comedians in the past couple of years, none of them have ambitions as bold as Das. And while the United States boasts a growing collection of Indian-American comedians who can speak to the second-generation immigrant experience (among them, Hasan Minhaj, Hari Kondabolu, Aziz Ansari, Aparna Nancherla, Arj Barker and Paul Varghese), Das remains the only Indian-born comedian who’s bridging the cultural and geographical gaps between India and America.

Memorable Jokes: The first thing you’ll notice is the set design, as Das sits on a stoop, surrounded on three sides by the audience, arranged in semi-circular rows, with one sliver segregated and regularly bathed in red light to point out the “non-Indians” for whom he’ll explain some of the Indian references as he goes along. At times, too, throughout the show, graphics will appear in white on the black wall opposite Das to illustrate the topic at hand.

Some of his topics for satire should be well-known, or at least understood, by American audiences.

Das all but calls India’s national newspaper fake news, but doesn’t call the paper by its name, joking that they’ll sue him. He later has fun pointing out the architectural history behind India’s most famous landmark, the Taj Mahal. And in between, he fills us in on things we might not have known about two of India’s most famous or infamous books: The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie, and The Jungle Book. Of the latter, Indian kids grew up with a weekly cartoon TV series, “not the bastardized Disney live-action version” movie, and we get to hear everyone sing its theme song in unison in Hindi. Don’t worry. Das translates. To wit: “Big news from the jungle. The jungle has a new flower. And he has grown inside an underwear.” So, yeah, different than what you likely remember.

Our Take: Pulling off comedy and satire within a history or cultural lesson can be a stretch. Especially when you remember that some countries define “freedom of speech” a little less freely than ours.

But Das pulls it off with aplomb.

From the little but ubiquitous things Indians eat and drink (chyawanprash, Parle-G biscuits, Old Monk rum) to the notion of desiring a skin-lightening cream called “Fair & Lovely,” Das reminds us how any society can bake in its own internal defects and call it a tradition. And there’s no bigger India tradition in contemporary society like Bollywood.

So Das offers a filmography to brush up on the stories India tells itself, from 1977’s Amar Akbar Anthony to 2001’s Dil Chahta Hai to 1962’s Bees Saal Baad.

He jokes about colonizers and white Bollywood stars, about how more than a million Indians fought in World War II, and how nobody seems to know the right way to solve India’s policies in Kashmir today. But he finds comfort in how India has learned from past tragedies, and the lesson he learned while working in Mumbai on the day of the 2008 terrorist attacks there (known as 26/11). He’d already learned something even bigger years earlier, when he moved to Chicago in 2005 to learn comedy, and had a gay Indian roommate there. Neither of them could live out their dreams in India then. They can now.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Netflix and ABC have gone a long way toward introducing us to Das, and we may come to know a lot more of him in the years to come. He neatly pays it forward by introducing us to India, and reminding us we have plenty in common, despite our cultural differences.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Vir Das: For India on Netflix