Four More Shots Please! Season 2
Directed by: Anu Menon, Nupur Asthana
Cast: Maanvi Gagroo, Sayani Gupta, Bani Judge, Kirti Kulhari
Recap refreshes the memory of season one
Four More shots Season 2 starts with a brilliantly edited recap of what you had seen in Season 1. I must say it was a good idea for forgetful audiences like me who have the traits of Ghajini and binge-watch one web series after the other with lightening speed. Although if you haven’t watched the first season, there’s nothing you have missed and can straight away start watching Season 2 as well.
Meet the quirky protagonists
A divorced single mother who still remains in touch with her ex-husband and even hosts his second wife; a lesbian girl who’s in a serious relationship with a bisexual celebrity and helps her rehabilitate at a Yoga retreat; a known journalist who is an aspiring author and wants to reveal the truth of a Judge’s murder through her book and 24-year-old Siddhi Patel, who in the first season was a sulky virgin and is happily exploring her new-found sex life.
LGBTQ matters dealt well
After Section 377 was abolished last year, LGBTQ characters are more visible than ever, if not on TV, but at least in films and web series. Be it Made in Heaven, Shubh Mangal Zyada Savdahan or Four More Shots Please. It is really delightful to see that none of the four friends react when Umang (played by Gurbani) tells them that she has finally revealed about her being a lesbian to her parents. None of them try to console or sympathize with her. They all just hug and the episode ends. It shows the maturity level of the director to deal with sensitive subjects without any hullabaloo.
Casting complexities
The mother-daughter chemistry of Simone Singh and Siddhi Patel (Manvi Gagroo) is most of the time very awkward. Simone Singh (45) has put in a lot of effort to look like a mother of a 24-year-old girl Siddhi played by the chilled out Manvi Gagroo (34). Casting is a tough job and identifying right actors for the right roles can be tricky. While both the actresses are awesome individually, their chemistry as a mother-daughter duo doesn’t come across as desired. Both of them look great individually but not when they are together in the same frame.
All those who have seen Bani in her earlier days as a stylish English speaking VJ of MTV, wouldn’t have imagined that she would gradually emerge as an intense actress.
Performances
Journalists did more damage to Milind Soman’s career by tagging him as a handsome and charming man for more than 2 decades.
He was never projected as a character actor by the media. Milind has done enough acting assignments, but people tend to forget his vast experience because of the spotlight on his personal life and interest in fitness activities. He definitely deserves to be seen more and more on screen.
Prateik Babbar has grown as an actor and plays enough with his silences. He had the skills in his genes, being the son of one of the finest actresses of the art house cinema, Smita Patil and the handsome and intense Raj Babbar.
Where’s the economy of cast? What is the role of extras?
Yes, it is understood that the production value and the budget of this series is quite high, but there’s something called economy of cast. What is the need of showing six colleagues in the meeting room at a lawyer’s office if they have no dialogues or no reactions to give? The conversation can very well take place between the protagonists. It didn’t add any value to the scene. The maximum number of extras were used in Attenborough’s film Gandhi, for Gandhi’s funeral scene. For me that whopping number of a lakh was more justified than 6 colleagues in the board room wearing corporate suits and doing nothing.
Choice of Locations
How often does the director show these four ladies in their favorite bar? In the initial 3-4 episodes, after every small scene or a development, there’s a bar scene. If they shot those ladies dates at different locations, say even at the homes of each other, it would have added personal and realistic touch to it. Marine drive was a breather as a choice of location. And so was the Bombay Coffee house. Shots of the Mumbai local, auto rickshaw, Kala Ghoda crossing, Colaba, Gateway of India, the Taj Hotel add an Indian touch to the otherwise completely westernized series.
Sex Scenes in Indian series need reinvention
A sex-starved person loves to celebrate and share his/her sex experience, and that looks really convincing when Siddhi tells her friends about her sexual experience with a Turkish hunk. Most of the web series makers have ample steamy scenes in their series, but shooting them is still a big challenge for them.
Also, I wonder why all the web series couples have the steamiest and rushed intimate scenes always which don’t look real at all. The slow motion traffic montage of Mumbai roads looked fascinating after the intimate scene between Ms. Menon and Mr. Bose. It represented that getting intimate is not a big deal. We make a fuss about it. Life goes on as usual after it.
Surreal scenes
Efforts of Anjana Menon (Kirti Kulhari) to reconcile with her estranged husband (played by Neil Bhoopalam) looked practical. Although the chemistry of both the actors as divorced husband-wife is every bit authentic, the reconciliation scene was completely shallow and was either shot too fast or the editor just chopped the meaty dialogues. Reconcilation is a process, which has to be shown through meaty and powerful dialogues. It is just not easy to make friends with somebody you have broken up.
How many girls you know do rigorous gymming and weight lifting? Umang who is playing a lesbian girl, is one such characters. Is it an attempted indication to show a bisexual tomboyish girl would always indulge in weight lifting? If that’s the idea, it would add to the unsolicited stereotype of projecting how lesbians behave in real life.
The literature festival scene and the fight between the bhakts and the writer Damini was a good culmination of her struggle to publish and distribute her controversial book. The foyer of the literature festival looked like India Habitat Centre in Delhi and very authentic for such a scene.
Fake Fake Fake
Siddhi enters her boyfriend Mihir’s toilet and his roommate is caught masturbating. Siddhi still stays there and says sorry. I mean why a girl would see a stranger masturbating and still stand there.
After having struggled enough to look for a publisher, Damini (played by Sayani Gupta) decides to self-publish her controversial book and says, “Main apni FD aur shares tudwa doongi”. It sounded like one of the the Nirupa Roy’s dialogues of 60’s films “Main apne gahne girwi rakh doongi aur zamindar babu se kuchh paise udhar le loongi”. Self-publishing books is not that expensive and you definitely don’t need to break your FD for it.
Real Real Real
The reasoning of why Anjana Menon (Kirti Kulhari) breaks up with an ideal and prospective husband Arjun (played convincingly by Ankur Rathee) was realistic. Most of the girls perhaps never tell the boys (at the time of the break up) what is wrong with the men they don’t like.
The standup comedian guy first approaching Siddhi and telling her she ruined his show looked a bit impractical but that small scene was very nicely planted there to later on build that character along with the protagonist Siddhi. The comedian later telling Siddhi he wants to collaborate with her is realistic. Artists often do such experiments with non-artists.
All the stand-up comedy gigs performed by Manvi Gagroo had different variations and flavors and showed realistic growth of Siddhi’s character as a non-performer to a performer.
Prabal Punjabi as the stand-up comedian did good justice to his role.
Authors talk at a book store with no audience was a realistically penned scene. In real life also, most of the seats at new author’s talks are usually occupied by family and friends only.
Dialogues and Monologues
If you spend so much on the production value, star cast, international shoots then why not also invest some time and manpower in dialogue writing and making the scenes look meatier? In India, most of the writers want to leave the responsibility of the scenes on the actor’s shoulders than penning them down, which is indeed a tough task.
The monologue delivered in the end by Prateek Babbar is completely impressive. Big applause to the writer who wrote the it. There were two more monologues at the time of Umang and Samaira’s (played by Lisa Ray) wedding. So, one could really count the number of meaningful monologues.
The series ends with the news of Siddhi’s papa’s death announced in 3 words. “Papa! Heart attack! Gone” There was definitely a better way to end the season. Plus what was the need to chop off the poor Papa’s character from Season 3? If this would shift the focus to Mommy Simone Singh, then it’s not a bad twist as she’s a brilliant actress and get a chance to show her acting chops.
Subtle Sex Gyaan
The washroom scene between all the 4 protagonist ladies when they talk about periods and try to convince Siddhi to use tampon instead of the sanitary pad was a bold move and praiseworthy. This is how the Indian kids learn about small things about sex related issues.
Conclusion
Elite houses, English speaking parents and English speaking children, South Bombay girls, frequent dates in bars, spontaneous vacation abroad and many such fancy stuff make it look like the series is meant for the so called rich people only.
As there’s a dialogue in the series “All art is inspired by preexisting art”, so is FMSP. Those who have seen Sex in the City can judge the series to be a fantastic Indian version of the same. Indian audiences surely need more such openly vocal series on sex and relationships issues.
However, none of the 4 protagonists are relatable for the masses but only certain classes. So, it always looks like you are having a sneak peek into somebody’s life. It’s like reading a page 3 paper or the hidden lives of the celebrities. Hope the series maker takes reviews like these seriously and make Season 3 more relatable for people like us.
Four More Shots Please! Season 2 started streaming on Amazon Prime Video April 17 onwards
Kamal Pruthi aka Kabuliwala is a character actor with 21 years of stage experience. With more than 300 stage shows to his credit, he is an aspiring Bollywood actor. A multi linguist, Kamal has so far acted in 9 languages and directed 6 plays as a Theatre director. Apart from acting in short and corporate films, Kamal is writing web series these days. Kamal can be contacted on 91-8861907362.