Kota Factory season 3 review: A tearful and earnest goodbye to a wondrous journey!

The third season of TVF’s groundbreaking show, Kota Factory seems like a well-deserved farewell for the fans.

After Panchayat 3 and Gullak 4, Kota Factory season 3 is the third TVF show to premiere its much-anticipated installment within one month. And like the others, the brand maintains its USP of unique storytelling attached to a particular show, but unlike them, it gives us one last ride into the lives of students and teachers living in the factory-turned-Kota. It’s like an ode to the fans who made this show a path-breaking success in 2019, offering them a near-perfect closure! 

Nothing has changed! Under the same monochromatic lens, slick filmmaking, and allegorical cinematography with many aerial shots, once again we get involved in the metaphoric lives of IIT aspirants, where maths and science are not only taught for exams but also for life! This time around, Vaibhav (Mayur More), Meena (Ranjan Raj), Uday (Alam Khan), Vartika (Revathi Pillai), Meenal (Urvi Singh), and Shivangi (Ahsaas Channa) gear up to take their entrance exams. However, they're not the only ones who go through the perils and anxieties of life, Jeetu Bhaiya (Jitendra) does too. The young, dynamic teacher with solutions to every problem in the world is experiencing emotional turmoil that keeps getting corroded with mold. 

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Directed by Pratish Mehta and a team of four writers, Kota Factory 3 follows the Ted Lasso approach to bid us goodbye. It realizes what the show has meant to people and hence turns its biggest strength, Jeetu Bhaiya, into more of a concept where his ideas will linger on forever in our minds! The entire season relies on him and borrows from his internal struggle to balance being a ‘sir’ and a ‘bhaiya’ to his students while figuring out his future as he has started questioning everything, himself and his approach included. As we see him seeking therapy for his breakdown after one of his students commits suicide, the angel-like guru, mighty and strong, is humanized in our eyes. 

In a strange case of the TVF-verse, and given that both the characters are played effortlessly by the formidable Jitendra, it’s like while Sachiv Ji in Panchayat takes a backseat and relaxes, Jeetu Bhaiya in Kota Factory grows under-confident and anxious as the protagonist. Despite this shift, the show doesn’t leave the hands of its young adults whose not-so-trivial matters are still treated as mature arcs likeVaibhav’s battle with his rude, egoistic behavior that causes jealousy and problems in his relationships, Meena’s realization that asking for help, especially from friends, is not about losing self-respect or Uday turning over a new leaf. Amazingly, not all of this is solved by Jeetu Bhaiya. In fact he paves the way for new characters like Pooja didi (Tillotama Shome) and Gagan sir (Rajesh Kumar) to take the lead while also realising that some things are beyond him. The show’s authenticity makes the hard life of being a student aka the crippling fear of career, future, peer pressure, studies, and stress-anxiety of exams, feel seen and heard. And with its treatment of Kota as a cinematic space with visual motifs, building tension and amplifying emotions, it says the unsaid and acts like a guide and helping hand, just like a certain bhaiya we know whose words full of wisdom offer solace to everyone. 

Yes, the show deals with severe issues like mental health and the harsh realities of the education system, like Kota tuning into a factory a tad bit too simply. But to expect the show to go deeper into them would mean that we want a different show than what Kota Factory is. From the start, the show has always been about normalizing or romanticizing people’s struggles in Kota without oversimplifying them. There is nothing bad in this because this stylistic treatment of hope works as a warm antidote against the crude world that we already live in. And there is hardly any visible growth seen in the three seasons but the show’s language states that it is about a stagnant vignette of a life lived in lectures. Hence, every scene, dialogue, and moment here is meant to deliver a message. And surely life in Kota must feel like this, one fleeting moment after another spent in classes! 

After watching three seasons of the black-and-white lives of the young adults living in the chimney-like lanes of Kota, there was a lump in my throat near the end. As I'll always be glad for Kota Factory and Jeetu Bhaiya to exist just like Jug from Dear Zindagi because I definitely need them, even if it is in fiction!

Kota Factory season 3 is currently streaming on Netflix!