The moment the Eid drama Ashiqui trailer hit YouTube, the internet lost it—dragging Jovan’s singing through meme hell and slamming his overacting. He looked like someone experiencing severe gastrointestinal discomfort with bloodshot eyes was screaming into a mic. At some point, viewers genuinely couldn’t tell if he was mourning lost love or just hadn’t pooped in three days.

And honestly, nothing quite explains why the lines from his viral song—“O re mon, e kemon premeri dohon”—sounded like he was complaining to Doraemon about why love hurts so bad.

The drama opens with a familiar disclaimer: “Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.” Of course it is. Because that’s exactly what you say right before copying Ranbir Kapoor from Rockstar or Aditya Roy Kapur from Aashiqui 2.

The plot is simple (behold, with proper twists): poor boy meets rich girl. Rich girl rejects poor boy. Poor boy becomes a rockstar. Rockstar boy rejects rich girl. Justice is served, or love is avenged—or something. All I know is, Ashiqui doesn’t even try to hide its unoriginality.

The opening scene is a checklist of clichés: a glamorous, upper-class girl steps out of a luxury car while her bodyguard holds the door like this is Cannes, not Dhaka. The male lead instantly falls in love and gets brutally rejected as the rich girl thought he was too ugly to propose to her.

Jovan’s (named Ashiq in the drama) look on the screen felt hilariously exaggerated. His eyebrows looked like a child’s attempt at drawing second brackets, and his two front teeth have Bugs Bunny energy. But whatever, he has to be a rockster, no?

And miraculously, a singing performance — albeit deeply mediocre — lands him a meeting with a music producer. (Never mind, he’s the hero.) The producer tells him to “make love with music.” I haven’t stopped thinking about that line. Was it a metaphor only musicians understand? Or just a bizarre linguistic accident no one had the heart to edit out?

Ashiq, now rebranded as Aash, starts performing at concerts. He also does what every insecure musician apparently does: getting cosmetic surgery.

And then comes the twist at the end. One so illogical, so magnificently absurd, that it made me question whether storytelling had officially died and no one sent out a memo. But I’d rather not spoil the fun and leave it up to you to watch.

It was the longest, most excruciating, godawful one hour to stare at this drama, and the YouTube thumbnail brags 10 million views. Ten. Million. Which proves, perhaps, that viral fame travels one of two roads: either you’re so good the world can’t ignore you, or so spectacularly bad that the world must watch.

Naturally, Ashiqui took the second road.

I wish I could say it was worth it. That it told me something about love, appearances, revenge, or the art of creative failure. But mostly, I just wish I’d stared at the ceiling instead.

Still, if you’re determined to see it for yourself, I won’t stop you. That’s one more view for them. And maybe that’s the whole point—whether we’re laughing or cringing, we’re still watching.