Four More Shots Please Season 2
Director: Nupur Asthana
Cast: Sayani Gupta, Kirti Kulhari, Bani J, Maanvi Gagroo, Milind Soman, Lisa Ray, Prateik Babbar, Neil Bhoopalam, Samir Kochhar
Stars: 3
After the success of Four More Shots season 1. The girl gang is back with round 2 of the season. And this season is a lot bolder, brighter, breezier than the previous one. Kudos to Anjana (Kriti Kulhari), Damini (Sayani Gupta), Siddhi (Maanvi Gagroo) and Umang (Bani J) as they truly justify their characters and appreciate their flaws.
Standing true to the theme and realities of urban life. All for of them dwell deeper into complexities of life. The series touches upon various topics from open marriage, infidelity, misogyny, body positivity to anti-nationalism. Each and every character has a part to play and has truly justified their role. However, the show lacks nitty-gritty in the characters as they repeat the same mistakes time and again and at some point, it gets predictable. Although the quartet is flawed, the bond and friendship that they share is flawless. The ultra-mod series will definitely put a smile on our face as it teaches us one most important part of life that, always love your self.
Storyline
The first season of this girls-in-the-city show ended with the BFFs breaking up with each other. The new season of Four More Shots Please! opens four months later with the quartet reuniting on the banks of the Bosphorus in Istanbul.
Reconciliation happens fairly quickly when Siddhi drunk-dialling her friend Umang and is on the verge of committing suicide as she is too done with adulting and struggles hard to find her identity. All goes well until they learn that Siddhi lost her virginity to a Turkish man, which was more or less the highlight of the first episode of FMSS2.
Cut to back in Mumbai, they go all out to make up for the lost time. The quartet returns to their favourite watering hole in Colaba, Truck Bar, taking its owner Jeh Wadia (Prateik Babbar) by surprise. The story begins with more or less similar situations to what we saw in the first season. Damini is still hanging between Jeh (Prateik Babbar) and Warsi (Milind Soman) and messes up with her life even further as she gets pregnant with Warsi's kid while in relationship with Jeh ends up in miscarriage. On the career front, Damini writes a book on a judge who was murdered which seems to be inspired by Judge Loya's death case but that too doesn't work out in her favour by the end of the series.
On the other hand, Umang strives hard to make her parents understand about the sexual identity she has gone way beyond the need to come to terms with being bisexual and becomes a close confidante to fading film star Samara Kapoor (Lisa Ray). The two are inseparable even as the divide between them one is a celebrity, the other a nobody. They are on the verge of getting married.
While Anjana is a successful lawyer and is perplexed between moving on from her ex-husband (Neil Bhooplam ) and the next scene she is crying for her boyfriend, then she is getting seduced by a married man into his bed. Guilt, responsibility, living life on their own terms, motherhood, identity crises and more. The season two continues to explore the exhilarating choices that these four young women make as they navigate their friendship, life, love, ambition and evolving freedoms as their lives and the city changes.
Performances
The second instalment of Four More Shots Please is owned by Siddhi. It kind of begins and ends with her. Nothing to complain, as Maanvi Gagroo totally owned her character ,she is flawless and her journey from living life on her parent's money to self-discovery is an ode to many young girls who are striving hard to find their way. From her comic timing to enacting sex scenes she did everything with utmost authenticity. She is a joy to watch and puts a smile on our face.
Bani J was convincing as Umang her Punjabi accent and vigour keep the scenes alive. Needless to say, her romantic scenes with Lisa Ray makes you emotional. While Lisa Ray seemed to be a little out of sync, especially during the proposal scene, which doesn't get you emotional her dubbed dialogues are main to understand and doesn't go with the flow of the character that she is portraying. Sayani Gupta and Kirti Kulhari ace their roles with aplomb. We wish we could have seen him a little more of Neil in the series. (Anjana's ex-husband)
Three new actors - Samir Kochhar, Shibani Dandekar and Prabal Panjabi joined the cast. Samir comes as a surprise as his fans might not have seen him in this avatar. He does look charming but I wish he had a more substantial role rather than acting horny around Anjana.
Prabal, on the other hand, was apt as the stand-up comic and one of the most relatable characters on the show. Shibani as Samir's wife has a short role to play and towards the end her role is justified as a wife and we are hoping season 3 will have more of them.
On the other hand, Milind Soman, Simone Singh and Prateik reprise their parts.
Positive
The second season has been shot in the picturesque locations of Istanbul and Udaipur. Cinematography is visually appealing and makes us want to travel to these destinations while we are barely getting to move out of town under lockdown. Director Nupur Asthana's stamp on this season is palpable. Not to forget their designer dresses and excessive make-up for a night out at a local dive bar is grander than the previous season. Creator Rangita Pritish Nandy and writer Devika Bhagat weave a number of trending subjects into the plot, from sexism at the workplace, to issues of sexuality, body image, right-wing fanaticism, freedom of expression, political oppression, social media trolls, parenthood and infidelity in a sensitive yet harsh manner. Not everything is easy, not everything is difficult either. There are scenes which make you emotional.
The biggest vibe that the show gets on to us is it resonates with most of the upper-class girls. How these four best friends cuddle up and tell the world to sit up and pay a little more attention to what women truly want. Girls will always be girls around their girls and the problems remain simple yet complicated and funny to each other. They will make new mistakes, but love each other little more fiercely and choose themselves over society's expectations.
Negative
The dialogue (by Ishita Moitra) is patchy, and sometimes truly cringe-worthy. It felt like the dialogue writers took inspiration from WhatsApp forwards to come up with feminist quotes. Certain dialogues are so lame that you really skip them and jump on to the next scene. One such line in the show that doesn't even hold any weightage is when Samara (Lisa Ray) tells Umang (Bani J), "You are the pranayama to my Surya namaskar. The bicep curl to my lunge. The warm-up to my marathon.
There is a scene where Kirti and her new flame (Samir Kochhar) in a degree-measuring contest made for an unbearable watch as they fought over whose law school was better and then eventually wooing each other to have sex on the bed seems quite a tinder age hook up. The maturity in their characters somewhere dwindled.
Everything is so overdone that we wonder who lives such a life! The show is high on making their actors look good on screen. What do a fitness trainer, an out-of-work journalist, a lawyer and an heiress have in common? Endless access to fashion, because these girls never repeat their clothes.
Verdict
Everyone has binge-watched Sex and the City but aping it for Indian audience without having a bound script makes it a little too over the top. Four More Shots Please is a women-centric show that features urbane women. Small-town girls have other concerns, which might not be an issue at all for these city girls. The show caters to the metropolitan crowd and certainly appeals to those dreaming of the big-city life. However, it's still far from reality for girls who can't even make their own decisions.
Having said that seeing these four characters struggling in life takes us to the problems that we had during pre-quarantine. At this hour the biggest take away from the show is to love yourself, appreciate your flaws. You don't have to be perfect you have to be acceptable to given situations. So sit back with a cup of coffee and enjoy the show this lockdown.
