Hitesh Rhakara is one of the two secondary antagonists (alongside Jamie Connolly) of the animated series Dodo, specifically as the main antagonist in Season 2. Hitesh is initially presented as a somewhat cool kid who has some pretty good skills in getting girls with even Joe seeming to briefly admire him to an extent. However, Joe begins to hate Hitesh, after Hitesh insulted him as well as helping humiliate Joe when Daisy Adeyemi rejected him, he became one of Joe’s two arch enemies alongside Steve Malek, as well as being one of Pete Wilson’s close friends and Lily’s temptations (albeit false and manipulative on his part) love interest after she dumps Joe. Whilst he starts out as a generic bully in the first Season, he becomes much worse in the second Season when he outright commits minor offences just to get his own way, and humiliate Joe.
He is voiced by Parker Lapaine
What Makes Him a Hate Sink?[]
- Even before his true nature become apparent, he was already presented as an arrogant, self centred and all around a huge jerk with a sensitive ego.
- During his introduction scene in the episode “Disco” it’s revealed that he’d stole the orange pen in art class making Joe’s tiger green, and he mockingly tells Joe to enjoy knee sliding with Frisbo.
- Alongside most other people, he laughed at Frisbo’s knee sliding, as well as then humiliating Joe in front of Daisy.
- Alongside Frisbo and Pete, mocked Joe for his crappy new shoes that had a permanent squeaky sound.
- When Joe apologised to his father; Ian for saying he hated him as well as singing their favourite song together, Hitesh outright and heartlessly mocks Joe and Ian even saying “Oh, he loves him” before breaking out laughing. Whilst there are a lot of known unpleasant characters on the bus at that moment, even they look in absolute disgust and disbelief at Hitesh’s cruel comment. This also proves, that Hitesh couldn’t care less about his own family.
- When he genuinely asks Pete about Camilla due to still genuinely seeing him as a friend, it still doesn’t stop Hitesh from asking in a mocking and perverted manner.
- Intentionally bumps into Joe whilst claiming it was an accident causing him to drop his donut. When Joe asks for Hitesh’s donut in return, he simply replies with “No. Soz man.” in a mocking and condescending tone, before intentionally flirting with Lily right in front of Joe when she approaches them, despite it being common knowledge at this point that Lily dumped Joe.
- Is a complete prick to Joe, when Pete invites them both to mini golf.
- When they both Joe and Hitesh fail to get past the first part of the golf course, Hitesh hypocritically mocks Joe saying “What was that?” before laughing despite Hitesh himself being just as bad if not worse at golf.
- With both Joe and Hitesh holding up the huge que at the golf course due to their constant verbal abuse towards each other and not following the 10 shot maximum rule at the golf course, people understandably get angry and Hitesh outright commits public intoxication by mocking all of the people there and overall making the golf course look very bad in the process.
- Whilst after Joe got a hole in one (even as Jasper technically pointed out he didn’t and that he just straight up chested by a stroke of luck and called it a hole in one especially as he had far surpassed the 10 shot maximum rule), he seems to somewhat respect Joe and even express some apparent remorse for some of his past actions and the public intoxication they both committed, this is very quickly revealed to have all been fake and façade on Hitesh’s part, as he immediately questions him about Lily and coldly states “Good, I fancy her” before assaulting Joe and causing him to drop another donut. A couple episodes later, it’s revealed that Hitesh didn’t like Lily at all and was simply gaslighting Joe so he could prove himself superior over him.
- Stalked Lily at least twice whilst she was out, especially as his nervous mannerism, and patronising of Joe suggests, with him even mockingly calling him by his last name, and it’s heavily implied that the sister he claimed was picking him up is also completely fabricated and not even real, with him only mentioning her just to appeal to Lily who has two older sisters and once again as a manipulative tactic. Whilst stalking may not seem like the worst at first, when you consider the evasion of privacy, his actual motives snd weird behaviour towards Lily, this makes this act particularly a disgusting stand out from everything else he does which are relatively harmless or simply bully behaviour.
- It’s heavily implied, that he had John Longmore spread rumours before the History exam that he was gonna ask Lily out knowing Joe would be the first to hear about it, as well as a rumour about Joe and Fran’s own feelings towards each other.
- He mockingly stares at Joe when he shouts in the middle of the exam that he doesn’t like Fran.
- Just before Lily abandons him to support Fran who she finds out is leaving, Hitesh gives her a sarcastic glare as she struggles to try and ask him out, and then he gives a sarcastic and defeated “fine” as Lily abandons Hitesh, for him to never appear again,
- Whilst Joe’s over the top interpretation of Hitesh is comedic, like portraying him as a giant he steals donuts and another when Joe invents a sandwich which takes him back in time to stop Hitesh from every being born as a couple of examples, this doesn’t detract from how hateable Hitesh is, considering this isn’t actually real Hitesh and more how Joe sees him, whilst Hitesh’s only really slightly comedic in the episode “Hole 7” mostly when he insults Jasper, and even other minor moments are just part of a façade or normalcy to hide who he really is as the end of the same episode reveals.
- Also, whilst he may not be a delusional psycho like Steve, corrupt official like Mrs. Siddiqui, an over the top pervert like Si Rich, or even as irredeemably vile of a bully that Aaron Keendel is, he still stands out for being one of Joe’s more personal villains he faces in the show, even if his crimes are fairly bog-standard and don’t pass the baseline.
Trivia[]
- It’s possible, that Hitesh was originally intended to have a genuine redemption arc considering how the early descriptions for Season 2 implied that he’d be humanised more and that he may even change his ways (especially as he lacked screen time in the first Season though was still shown to be a character Joe very much despised and for good reason), before both this and Steve Malek’s very likely planned return were both scrapped for unknown reasons by the writers. If this implied concept had been kept, Hitesh certainly would not be a Hate Sink in the slightest.