Four More Shots Please season 3 review: Less cringe, more mature, but still quite bad

Things were going pretty great for Four More Shots Please’s new season until the eighth episode. The girls were back on the beach on a sombre night, finally realising how naive they all were, screaming about ‘vaginas’ into thin air just a couple seasons ago. This time, life has messed up so bad, challenges and fears are more real (for a couple of them) and they now know how they know nothing at all. The moment could have been the perfect end to a good, significantly more mature, far less cringe third season but the need to ruin a perfectly good thing–as show’s leading gang of four often does–overpowered everything else.

What followed were three inexcusably bad episodes of the writers making questionable decisions, characters acting so out of character they might as well be in another plane altogether, cliched proclamations of love to someone who wasn’t even mentioned until two episodes ago, abrupt comebacks of old flames and angry dads, platonic relationships turning steamy, anything and everything that can possibly remind you of just how bad the first two seasons were is brought in to smack you back into the reality of this, let’s be honest, bad series.

But before it jumped the shark as horribly as it did, there was much to like and praise about Four More Shots Please season 3. The opening episode, for instance, was by far the best. As random as the plan was, Anjana (Kriti Kulhari), Damini (Sayani Ghosh), Siddhi (Maanvi Gagroo) accompany Umang (Bani) to her pind in Punjab. The awkward silences and the explosion of rage on the dining table between queer Umang and her disapproving father was accompanied by some crisp writing, believable exchanges and yet another good performance by Bani. She is still the best part of the show whenever she decides to let the Punjaban out. The hurt, the anger and the frustration all seem real as she battles for her own father’s acceptance. The rest of the episode also roams around khets of Punjabs and ghostly old school buildings on a winter afternoon. It looks beautiful even as the girls prepare for another round of adventures.

While Umang has her distanced family, broke new life and homophobia from random strangers to deal with, the rest have issues of their own. Some, of course, inspire more empathy than others. Siddhi is reeling with the death of her father in the worst way possible. She is lashing out at everyone, making life difficult for her mother (Simone Singh)–whose very convenient, sudden change from Evil Queen to maiyya Yashoda still baffles me. Regardless of Siddhi’s very childish tantrums, Anjana still takes the crown as the most selfish of them all. Like last time, she gets involved with another married man but unlike last time, she knows he is definitely not in an open marriage. While Kriti Kulhari doesn’t put a single step wrong performance wise, the writing is so shoddy that nothing of what she does makes any sense.

Even Damini’s plot kicks off with promise. Finally with Jeh, she is still unable to get intimate with him. Sayani is thankfully not crying like a child anymore and until the dreadful last third of the season, she also raked in some of the better scenes for herself. She joins a young politician’s election campaign and it seems like there might be something good and platonic to this relationship after all. But soon enough, the shirts come off, the thirst traps are laid and sex is had. But even that isn’t as disappointing as what they did to Jim Sarbh. Yes, he’s in it too.

One of the best actors on OTT space, Jim Sarbh is brought on board for the most inconsequential part. Every bit the Manic Pixie Dream Boy, he enters Umang’s life as a friend and things seem sweet and wholesome for a while. Of course, Jim’s naturally hot looks could not have been wasted on a wholesome part and he, too, is sacrifised to the gods of thirst. No one is safe here.

While I remember disliking the first two seasons of Four More Shots Please as well, I don’t remember being this disappointed by any of it. This time, I was baited into believing that things have changed. For the longest time, it even seemed so. Damini and Jeh fought over the realest if tiny things like an ugly bean bag he brought to her house, Umang shows the frustrations of a broke friend being bulldozed by a richer one, Siddhi bombing on stage with some truly bad performances and Anjana, well… I can’t remember much good stuff about her. But at the end, the horniness takes over, gaslighting is seen as a very credible argument, sex means closure and real closure comes out of the blue. Rarely have I seen a series toss something good so carelessly to the trash. Save yourself and log off after that ‘beach at night’ scene.