Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Season 2 of “Deli Boys,” all six episodes of which premiered on Hulu on May 28.
“Deli Boys” season 2 is all about luck in love.
As of the start of the new season of the acclaimed comedy, Lucky, played by the incredibly talented and impeccably dressed Poorna Jagannathan, and her indiscretions have Mir (Asif Ali) and Raj (Sagar Shaikh) running a successful Darko cocaine business. But with their success comes a common problem among drug lords. It’s about where you handle your illegal cash.
Enter Max Sugar (Fred Armisen), a prominent casino magnate and money laundering expert. Sugar is infatuated with Lucky from the beginning, but she does not immediately return his affections. Later, after Max helps him with an attempted robbery at a deli, Lucky agrees to go out with him.
“Lucky loves poison, and when he sees something poisonous, he knows it’s poisonous,” Jagannathan said in an interview with Variety. “She met her match at Max Sugar.”
As the season progresses, Max helps Lucky and the boys, but encourages her to leave them behind and fend for herself.
“Lucky is just used to having to be in the trenches all the time,” Jagannathan said. “There she found a man who was attracted to her, but who also protected her and gave her the level of power she desired.”
However, this season it turns out that Max isn’t Lucky’s only love interest. Kumail Nanjiani will guest star as Daniyal, a shady lawyer who helps Raji, who is accused of bombing Ahmad (Brian George), be freed. Danial and Lucky were together before the events of the series, but his failure in handling Raj’s case caused Lucky to deliver memorable lines in Urdu that were actually written by Shaikh.
“It means, ‘Shakal dekh ke chod diya, akal dekh ke chod diya,’ which means, ‘I fucked you because of your looks and dumped you because of your brains,'” she said.
Later in the season, it is revealed that Max intends to sell Lucky and the boys to Andrew Chadwater (Andrew Rannells), a district attorney who hates the Durrs and is running for mayor. When Lucky learns the truth, he wants to kill Max before the boys convince him of another plan to overthrow Max, take over the casino, and take control of Chadwater.
“She finally understood that these two boys were the closest thing to family she had ever had,” Jagannathan said. “They’re dependent on her, but she’s starting to depend on them, too. They’ve really stepped up time and time again. They’ve never betrayed her, and everyone else has really betrayed them. She’s settled into this three-unit a little bit more comfortably than she has in the past, because she was about to let it go.”
There’s still plenty of violence this season, but it’s noticeably toned down compared to the bloody events of season one. Jagannathan said this was a conscious choice by the creative team.
“I think there was a little bit of a conversation behind the scenes about how we look at the violence in our faces instead of showing the violence,” she said. “It was a very, very interesting conversation and kind of the right tone, but I think it ended up being less violent visually and more emotionally violent. I think the camera was more focused on our facial expressions than it was on what was actually happening.”
Jagannathan also draws attention to the flashback scene at the beginning of episode five, which is notable for its mainstream depiction of qawwali, a traditional singing form of Sufi Islam. The scene features superstar musician Ali Sethi, whom Jagannathan calls not only “one of South Asia’s biggest artists” but also “a very old friend.”
She also can’t help but laugh at her memories of filming flashbacks where the Dahl boys appear as young men.
“That was the last day of shooting! We both shaved. I don’t know if you saw it, but Asif has braces. I’ve never seen him look so bad in my life!” she said. “We were all screaming because it looked so bad.”
