Facebook
Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5) — A marked improvement over the preceding episodes. If you were struggling through the slow start of Aashram, Episode 5 is where you’ll get hooked. It balances social commentary, thriller tension, and character tragedy better than anything before it.
Watch it for: Bobby Deol’s chilling restraint, Anupriya Goenka’s fierce resistance, and a script that finally remembers it’s about power, not just atmosphere.
Director Prakash Jha is known for his political dramas (Gangaajal, Apaharan). In Episode 5, his cinematography improves drastically. Notice the color grading: The first four episodes are warm, golden browns—making the ashram feel like a sanctuary. In Episode 5, the colors shift to sterile whites and deep shadows. aashram season 1 episode 5 better
When Baba Nirala sits on his throne, a sharp rim light hits him from behind, creating a halo. But his face is dark. This visual contradiction—light behind, darkness in front—encapsulates the entire series. Episode 5 perfects this metaphor.
By the time you reach Episode 5, the narrative has established a fragile status quo. Babu (Chandan Roy Sanyal) is deep undercover as a devoted follower. Pammi (Aaditi Pohankar) is recovering from her sexual assault by the "godman," and the police are too corrupt to move. Episode 4 ends on a note of quiet desperation. Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5) — A marked improvement over
Episode 5 capitalizes on this silence. The pacing slows down deliberately. Unlike the explosive violence of later episodes, Episode 5 uses dialogue. Long, drawn-out conversations between Babu and the goons, between the Inspector (Tinu Anand) and his superiors, and most importantly, between Baba Nirala and his inner circle.
Why is this better? Because it mimics real life. Coercive control doesn't happen with guns blazing; it happens in quiet rooms where innocent questions are twisted into sins. Watch it for: Bobby Deol’s chilling restraint, Anupriya
While the male characters wrestle with loyalty, Episode 5 belongs to the women—specifically Pammi (Aaditi Pohankar). Up until this point, Pammi has been a victim. She lost her wrestling career, her dignity, and nearly her sanity to Baba’s predation. But in Episode 5, she gets her agency back.
The scene where she confronts the reality of her abuse to a fellow inmate at the mental asylum is brutal. She doesn’t scream. She whispers the horror. This quiet devastation makes Episode 5 better than the previous episodes because it shifts the genre. We are no longer watching a crime drama; we are watching a survivor’s journey. When Pammi finally decides to escape and testify, the audience feels a catharsis that the earlier episodes failed to deliver due to their focus on world-building.