I was in the middle of binge-watching all the web series on TVF Play when this came (I prefer calling shows like this web series and the ones on Netflix and Prime TV-shows). I was trying my best to finish Pitchers so that I could move on to this. I had seen too many memes and saw all my friends sharing the stories on WhatsApp about them watching the last episode. So finally when I got the chance to watch this, I did it immediately. Kota Factory is probably the best web series that TVF has made so far, and that's saying something provided Yeh Meri Family also exists.

Kota Factory is a story set in Kota, where a number of students come every year to study for JEE Advanced. Everyone comes over there only with the hopes that they are going to become an IITian one day. As someone who also wanted to visit this city during my 11th class, I can very well understand what it feels like to be there. In the scene where Vaibhav is caught cheating from a book and Jeetu Bhaiya scolds him, I actually felt it right through my heart. I got an AIR 173 and got to DTU, so you can understand how much I had to struggle to get where I am, and hearing the things he said reminded me of my own days at the coaching centre.

There are so many things that feel really relatable in this web series. The way Vaibhav adjusts to the PG life, the entire character of Meena, the teachers at the coaching centre and how they try to look as enthusiastic as possible to keep the students engaged; it's all just like how we get to see people in 11th and 12th class. My school was one of the biggest schools of India, so students from all over the country used to come to study with us. When I look at Meena and Uday, it reminds me of them; the two kinds of students that used to be there.

The only problem I had with this series is how it was made in black and white. There's no problem with making a black and white show, but in this series they just slapped a greyscale filter on this. There was no contrast, the camera quality was very bad and the certain areas that need to be given special application for greyscale effect was not done at all (if you've watched Logan: Noir or Zack Snyder's Justice League: Justice is Gray you'll know exactly what I'm talking about).

Kota Factory is a social commentary that belongs to something I like to call the 'era-defining entertainment', something that people from the future can watch to understand what life was like in our times, and the fact that we actually wanted to change them. I use this term to define films and shows like Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Zootopia, Watchmen etc. I really appreciate the fact that TVF Play is a free streaming service, so this masterpiece will be available to everyone without having to spend money.