Four More Shots Please 4 seems to have been made to show off trendy outfits because more than the script, attention was paid to the costumes, observes Deepa Gahlot.
‘You think you are in an American sitcom?’ a character in Four More Shots Please, 4.
All the characters think and act like they were in an American sitcom, particularly Sex And The City.
Since 2019, when the first season arrived, every privileged upper class young person lives the New York life.
So this is the target audience for FMSP 4, and also the ones who aspire to look and be as stylish and carefree.
The people in Four More Shots Please 4 are dressed in designer outfits, and made up all the time, like they were going to shoot YOLO reels for Instagram, even when they are going through emotional crises.
None of them have financial problems, obviously, and never a bad hair day or skin break out.
When they have a romantic void, hot men — or women — obligingly turn up. The worst thing that can happen in this world is a hangover.
Even then, they get up without a hair out of place. Or bad breath.
These people have careers like trademark lawyer, stand-up comedian, podcaster, gym owner, franchiser, adventure travel organiser and so on. No boring corporate drudges here.
The series created and written by Devika Bhagat gave Indian streaming a big female-led show, and then threw Anjana (Kirti Kulhari), Damini (Sayani Gupta), Siddhi (Maanvi Gagroo) and the gay Umang (Bani J) into a non-stop party, with small breaks for turmoil. Like, this season begins with Siddhi having cold feet on the day of her wedding to Mihir (Rajeev Siddhartha).
The honeymoon period cools off rather fast for them, more so when she uses instances from their personal life for her stand-up comedy gigs.
Anjana opens her law office in a co-working space, where she encounters Rohan (Dino Morea). They start off on the wrong foot, but she soon learns to ride a motorbike from him and get relationship advice from her ‘tween’ daughter.
Umang gets on a dating site and meets attractive women, while Damini is still in the midst of a mess of her making, when she cheated on Jeh (Prateik Smita Patil), with Dr Warsi (Milind Soman) and lost both.
Here, Dr Warsi appears with twins in a stroller, and you can’t unsee the sight of him strapping on a breast-shaped contraption to bottle feed the babies.
Small blips aside, their life is a carnival.
They all land up in Bangkok, where Siddhi and Damini’s brother Ash (Kunal Roy Kapoor) have some endorsement event.
Of course, they party all over the place, get drunk and hungover.
There are a lot of steamy scenes (an intimacy coordinator is credited) and phone sex when the action is not actually in bed.
‘Do you want to make out?’ is said without a hint of hesitation.
Four More Shots Please 4, with dialogue by Ishita Moitra and direction by Arunima Sharma and Neha Parti Matiyani, goes on in this breezy manner till the big denouement in Goa, where they all sort out their romantic hassles — since this is the final season, and at the end of it, nobody can remain unpaired (though Anjana’s salsa partner vanishes after one ‘flashing’ scene).
Four More Shots Please was always problematic because it portrayed the contemporary urban woman as independent but also flaky.
The show seems to have been made to show off trendy outfits because more than the script, attention was paid to the costumes (look at the line-up of stylists), many of them revealing.
More red lipstick must have been used on the shoot than in the entire city during the wedding period!
After three seasons of high-pitched squealing to express happiness or disappointment, the four leads look comfortable in their skins and in their interactions with one another.
Maanvi Gagroo, who goes through a tough phase of ‘adulting’ after marriage, has a clear graph, and does her part with uninhibited confidence.
The rest look like if they strained their facial muscles too much, the perfect make-up would crack!
It must be said that Mumbai has never looked so good — the criss-crossing flyovers of the coastal road are all agleam, hiding the grime that would spoil the glitter of this urban fairytale.
Four More Shots Please 4 streams on Amazon Prime Video.
