Crave’s top-notch dramedy Late Bloomer is back for a third season – with a memorable character’s surprise return

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There’s an episode of Late Bloomer, Jasmeet Raina’s top-notch dramedy back on Crave for a third season starting April 24, that I think about at least once a week.

Like many people living in central Toronto, I sometimes find myself bugged by the delivery drivers whizzing around everywhere.

I can get irritated when I try to pass a group of these gig workers taking a break on a sidewalk with their bikes – or when one jumps the line at a café to pick up an order.

But then I recall the sixth episode of Late Bloomer’s second season, and I am cured of any crankiness.

Late Bloomer normally focuses on a Toronto-area Sikh influencer named Jasmeet (Raina) and his circle of friends and family. But that stand-alone episode cut away from the main characters to follow a nameless Punjabi international student (Siddharth Sharma), as he pedalled around my city bringing lukewarm lattes to office workers and helping folks with more money than sense skip the dishes.

Titled “New Canadian,” it was a close-up portrait of one of the scapegoats of the housing crisis. We saw the reality of his financially precarious life, working all day only to receive more abuse than tips before settling down to sleep in an illegal boarding house.

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The script, credited to Raina and Rahul Chaturvedi, was a bleak and honest look at the scam education schemes and exploitative economy many such South Asian students found upon coming to this country.

Sharma was great in the role of the Student; he even landed a Canadian Screen Award nomination for guest performance in a comedy.

Indeed, the role was so memorable that some viewers of Late Bloomer were annoyed that he disappeared after that episode.

Fans who complained will be pleased to see Sharma’s student back for a couple of scenes in the second of two new episodes of Late Bloomer that premiere this week.

The character has a name now, too: Diljot. I was moved to see him return and to learn a little about what happened to him since “New Canadian” – and I hope there’s more of his story to come.

Stand-alone episodes focusing on minor, working-class or gig-economy characters have become a staple of the streaming-era dramedy genre, of which Late Bloomer is Canada’s best example.

The trend may have started with Master of None’s influential “New York, I Love You” – also the sixth episode of the second season of that Netflix show – which focused on a doorman, a cashier and a taxi driver whom series lead Aziz Ansari’s character crosses paths with.

But I’ve wondered about the artistic value of giving a cleaner or a maid or a nanny that kind of narrative space – only to then take the plot back to more rarefied places. Is it good storytelling or just a virtue-signalling speed bump?

I didn’t feel that way about “New Canadian” because Late Bloomer has such an economically diverse cast of characters.

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The show’s third season begins with a bit of a reset. The romantic relationships that were the focus of much of the second season are over.

That’s no surprise when it comes to Jasmeet and Rebecca (Seher Khot). The two are both Punjabi second-gen Canadians, but he’s from a working-class Sikh family and she’s from a rich Christian family.

The epic fight between the couple over whether Jasmeet would consider converting was the climax of the season finale. Rebecca scolded Jasmeet for his woke platitudinizing about her privilege.

“Scurry back to your dusty basement, with your judgmental parents and immigrant complex, as if you weren’t raised here like me,” she said.

Jasmeet took the insults further. “You’re, like, brown people stuck playing ‘good Christian’ for the colonizers,” he said.

While that encounter technically ended on a cliffhanger, with Jasmeet popping into a Christian church to check it out, I never really thought North American TV’s best-known millennial Sikh was going to give up his gurus for Jesus Christ.

In the two episodes dropping this week, Jasmeet slowly gets himself out of his breakup funk. Chippy (Sugenja Sri) Jasmeet’s fashion designer pal, deals with the aftermath of her own ended relationship with a controlling club owner.

And Neal (Ahamed Weinberg), Jasmeet’s mixed-race cousin, is in the throes of his latest cultural confusion; the cousins have made up, thank goodness, because their back-and-forths inside and outside the gurdwara are a comic highlight of Late Bloomer.

I expect the third season’s plot will pick up eventually, but if it turns into a hang-out show, I’m good with that.

Raina and his writers have done such a fine job fleshing out their characters – even seemingly throwaway ones – that I’m always grateful to spend more time with them.

Late Bloomer streams new episodes Fridays.