Episode 5 of Made in Heaven, A Marriage of Convenience, deals with fragile and severely punctured male egos. It focuses on men coming from different walks of life and belonging to different classes in society. The episode opens up with an announcement of girls’ names with their assigned numbers. The announcement goes like “Kudi no. 4 Ludhiana te Yamini Singh”. It’s like a beauty-cum-shaadi pageant where potential brides walk on the ramp, they are asked a few questions and if they say what the groom desires to hear they might get a chance to be his wife. We meet Sukhmani Sadana (Yaaneea Bharadwaj) who gives the best answers to the questions asked by Jeet (Rajnish Jaiswal). 

Jeet lives in America and wants a wife with proper Indian values. Sukhmani is declared the winner of the Mrs. Gill title! Indeed, dreams do come true. So, our bride Sukhmani is ready to embrace married life with Jeet in America. Ladka kaisa hai important nahi, America jaane ko mil raha hai ye important hai. Meanwhile, the Made in Heaven team has arrived in Ludhiana. While Karan manages the negotiations with local shopkeepers for the buying the material for this wedding, Tara is sitting in the car disturbed after what has happened in the past few days. She gets a call from Adil and without a second thought she rejects it. 

Karan is back and complaining  about the shopkeepers. He sees Tara sitting emotionlessly and tries to comfort her. She shuts him up saying she doesn’t need relationship advice from someone who’s never had a real relationship. We really need to appreciate their underrated friendship and the kind of support they extend to each other. Through sarcasm and witty remarks Karan finally manages to make Tara laugh. 

Wedding preparations begin. Shibani is managing the décor but the labourers ignore her. They don’t start working until their boss, who’s a male, instructs them to do so. their fragile male ego doesn’t allow them to work under a female boss. This wedding has a proper Punjabi vibe to it. 

Remember Jaspreet? She is searching for her drug-addict brother while her family doesn’t know about her getting fired. In the next scene, Karan’s landlady Renu opens up the laptop for some casual work and ends up getting a shock. She sees the camera recording of Karan’s home where he’s having an intimate moment with Martin. The landlady rushes to wash her hands as if she has committed a sin. Looking at her expressions, we get an idea of what she’s actually thinking. Yes! She thinks Mr. Gupta the landlord might be sexually interested in men too. 

Mr. Gupta arrives and opens up his laptop, and realises that Renu has seen the recording. There’s a sudden, eerie silence in the room. Mr. Gupta tries to approach his wife to talk about it. He starts bashing Karan and calls him disgusting and dirty. But Renu isn’t that gullible so she confronts her husband about why he was watching this recording. He assures her that he was watching it with an intent to collect evidence against Karan. They agree that the police need to be involved in this matter. 

Back at the wedding, the truck carrying the material for the wedding meets with an accident. Meanwhile, the  videographer Kabir is back at his job. He starts with Jeet, and asks him about Sukhmani. All Jeet knows about her is that they met at the competition and are getting married because she was the most suitable girl for him and his family. Other than this, they are complete strangers for each other.

Shibani gets a call from her daughter Nayan regarding the Paris trip. She knows that it’s next to impossible to send her. Shibani reassures Nayan that she’ll definitely be going to Paris. But how? Shibani calls her ex-husband and father of their daughter. He declines straightaway, giving us an idea that it’s only Shibani who has been catering to the needs of their daughter.

Kabir then starts recording the bride’s side of conversation. Unfortunately, she also accepts this competition to be the just way of choosing a life partner. She further tells him that she was 19 when she first heard about this competition. Since then, she has learned what  grooms wish to hear. It is scary how such a regressive tradition has been normalised to the extent that nobody questions it anymore.

Tara takes a pregnancy test and the result is that she isn’t pregnant. Isn’t this  something to be happy about, after what Adil did with her? But Tara looks sad nonetheless. 

Sukhmani gets a call from Jeet’s ex-wife Deepti. Sukhmani bashes her for having an extra marital affair and blaming Jeet for the failure of their marriage. However, after cutting the call Sukhmani seemed to be a bit doubtful. Jaspreet who is trying to find her brother, reaches his friend’s home and gets a lead which takes her to Hauz Rani Park. 

Tara takes us to a flashback and recalls a day when she was Adil’s secretary. Tara acts intoxicated to get into Adil’s room.Once she gets in there, she fixes her lipstick and shirt’s button to get his attention. But Adil doesn’t seem to be interested in her. Back to the present, Faiza is better now. She meets Adil to discuss Tara's reaction to their affair. Jaspreet finds her brother in that park and starts beating him out of frustration. 

Later in the day, Tara gets a call from her doctor who informs her that either stress or Adil’s low sperm motility might be the reasons why she hasn’t been able to get pregnant. The wedding celebrations have begun with drinks, dance and drugs. Shibani finally texts Harmony that she’s interested in joining them! 

It’s the Gill couple’s wedding night. The groom looks insecure about his sexual wellness and insults Sukhmani for being a low-class girl, to distract her from his insecurities. Meanwhile Karan comes into Tara's room, it’s her birthday today!  Tara hugs him tightly and shares her emotions with him. At that moment I can’t resist but appreciate the bond both of them share. Tara takes us to a flashback where she met Karan for the first time. It was Tara’s birthday and she was partying in a club, and wow Karan was the DJ! Tara was trying to comfort herself by acknowledging that she has some true friends in her life who over these years have never left her side. 

Later while talking to Deepti, Sukhmani comes to know about Jeet’s impotency. And how in his first marriage too, he kept putting the onus on Deepti for not being a fertile woman. His fragile male ego doesn’t let him accept that he’s the one who needs medical help. Sukhmani wishes to get out of this marriage and seeks help from the Made in Heaven team. Tara suggests that in case of impotency marriage can be dissolved easily and there won’t be any hassle regarding divorce. Sukhmani however, like many other girls in our country has been taught to find her self-worth in marrying a successful man. And if this marriage breaks, Sukhmani will be blamed for everything and also as she said, she did all this to get an American life. So, she can compromise. 

She accepts what she’s been served and decides to move to America with Jeet. Besides the limitations, this marriage provides her with a convenient life in American. Back at Faiza’s home, her parents are aware of her affair and are totally against it.

The Made in Heaven team is back from Ludhiana. Tara lands at the Delhi airport and finds Adil has come to pick her up at the airport after ages. She is surprised. After coming home, Tara says she cannot forgive Adil’s affair. Adil however assures his wife to never meet Faiza and that he’s never had feelings for Faiza. Such a bloody liar! Later, Tara informs him what her doctor said about the pregnancy issue. As soon as she says that it might have something to do with Adil. He brushes it away and laughs it off. Another man with a punctured ego who refuses to believe that he could have a sexual problem. Karan is back at his home; policemen bang his door and arrest him under Section 377 after his landlord filed a complaint against him. He requests the landlord’s daughter to contact Tara for his bail. 

Overall, this episode is too gloomy and sad. There’s nothing much to be happy about in this episode. The only good thing about it was that it ended. Honestly, I expected some happy moments to uplift the mood. There’s something wrong in each storyline of this episode: be it the Gill couple’s wedding, Tara’s frustration, Adil’s lies, Karan’s arrest, Shibani considering Harmony and Jaspreet losing hope in her life. I would strictly advise you not to watch this episode on days when you feel low. As I write this recap there’s a lot of sadness that has been instilled in me by the end of this episode. Hoping for things to get better in the upcoming episodes. 

Episode Rating: 3.5/5