He just made a film, had the composers make a catchy song and at that time, it worked wonders. But what Bindass subsequently did with the title Emotional Atyachaar was for all of us to watch and cringe on.

Long before Dhinchak Pooja, when cringe was not a defined genre but just another (happy?) accident, we were blessed with the TV show, Emotional Atyachaar.

Now, you can name all the pretentious intelligent shows that you’ve seen and criticise this reality dating/investigative/cringe show but you can’t deny that you’ve certainly seen a few episodes of this show for some late-night cheap thrills, when your brain could no longer process the complex politics of House of Cards.

Hosted by Pravesh Rana, Emotional Atyachaar is a deadly combination of actors with bad performances, music that highlights pyaar mein dhokha, and staged ‘real’ events.

With hidden cameras and loyalty tests, the investigators of Emotional Atyachar followed the one who was apparently cheating, made him/her cheat some more, followed by a showdown between the actual couple. The show later started recreating actual events but fortunately for us, that didn’t bring down the cringe factor.

The actors on the show discussed their cheating partners in a way that made us mock their misery even more and though we understand that the producers weren’t aiming for a comedy, no intentional comedy could have been this funny, any way.

Aspiring reality show contestants could totally submit their episode as an audition tape and there is no way it won’t work for them. From performing drama to love scenes to severely bad yelling matches, this show had it all.

At the peak of its popularity, Emotional Atyachaar had some ‘celebrity’ episodes as well. Their definition of celebrity was just as good as Bigg Boss’  but who are we to question them. ‘Celebrities’ like Bobby Darling and Raja Chaudhary added to the cringe value even more and trust us, these are some of the best episodes to watch.

Emotional Atyachaar has been going on for 5 seasons now and with the kind of cringe that’s making our way into our lives with the likes of Dhinchak Pooja, this show will have to pull something out of the hat to stay relevant. 

After all, who doesn’t love content that is ‘so-bad-that-it’s good’?