No point beating around the bush so let’s just come to the point (an advice I wish Karan Johar and Dharmatic Entertainment had followed themselves.) If the trailer of Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives was anything to go by, it promised to be a cringe-binge. Four Bollywood wives letting us into their lives. Great. Makes sense. Bollywood generates an insane amount of curiosity. The heady mix of glamour and privilege can be addictive to watch so frankly, it does make some sense to capitalise on all this. So great you have our attention already and what do you do with that? Show us how the word 'MILF' can ruffle feathers and the correct pronunciation of “oesophagus.“ Really?
To borrow the lingo from the show - “Bro I cannot even... these 8 episodes should only have been a single Koffee with Karan episode DUDE!”
We begin in a zippy fashion. The Kapoors, Maheep and Sanjay, are all set to fly down to Paris for their daughter Shanaya’s debut at the Le Bal. At one point Shanaya wants help. “I have to talk of the two charities and my designer and why I've chosen the color red?" to which mumma Maheep interjects and asks - why did you choose the color red? “Because it’s like everyone will look at me. It’s like a loud colour." If nothing else then at least she should get marks for honesty.
Mumma Maheep responds “Are you serious? You cannot just say that. It sounds stupid!” Honest tip again. And all this while Papa Sanjay cracks his dad jokes and keeps us giggling.
The other three women back home are trying to pamper themselves in a salon because life can be hectic. Neelam Kothari, married to actor Samir Soni, has been away from films for 20 years, she has an 8-year-old daughter and a jewellery business that she manages.
Seema Khan, wife of Sohail Khan, has a clothing line and obsesses about where her sons are off to. Bhawana Pandey, wife of Chunky Pandey and mother to Ananya Pandey, is trying to manage home duties while setting up her new store. So two episodes go by in setting the context.
We have finally warmed up and just when you want to bite into some delectable inside information, what do we get? Karan Johar in episode 3 meeting the women for a lunch date and in typical rapid-fire fashion, he shoots questions and asks what they would like to change about each other. A cat fight ensues (if you want to call it that) between two of the women because one accuses the other (and I'm paraphrasing here) 'blah blah you don’t take my side blah blah.'
By the fourth episode, we are convinced the show is just flat soda. The fizz is gone, nothing is bubbling in the glass that Maheep holds.
Moving on, the only thing one can do is count the number of promotional deals that have helped fuel this unwieldy mediocrity - from Ministry of Crab to Doha Tourism and Qatar Airlines. The plugs get on our nerves soon enough.
Of course the N word is discussed but it remains strictly in the echo chamber it always has been for some members of the fraternity. There are some moments of self awareness especially when Arjun Kapoor speaks on nepotism or when Sanjay Kapoor puts things in perspective when his wife talks of her “struggle” period, but these are stray moments. The focus remains stubbornly on the uber glam beauties and their lives which sadly appear vacuous.
In contrast, the men seem more interesting and real. Like Samir Soni who, in spite of being married to Neelam, feels like an outcast and admits to his abysmal social skills. Or Sanjay Kapoor, who seems endearingly honest, but the women are never humanised for us.
They keep repeating they have ups and downs and that their friendship of 25 years has seen it all but even in these eight episodes, what we see is material that’s worth only a single Koffee with Karan episode.
The accents seem put on and for women who have been connected and well-entrenched in the Hindi film industry for decades, the fact that speaking in Hindi is such an uphill task, looks odd.
Karan manages to pull all his friends together, from Janhvi Kapoor to Shah Rukh and Gauri Khan, everyone makes an appearance and yet it all remains unbelievably banal.
If the idea was to bust the myth that Bollywood is tone-deaf and clannish and exists in a world of its own with little regard for what is happening around, then it does more harm to itself than any 'outsider' could ever imagine. The Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives is unimaginative and a missed opportunity really.
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