Imagine being invited to an intimate family dinner where everyone is constantly laughing senseless over an inside joke you don’t have the slightest clue about. The first time, you awkwardly laugh along. The second time, you nod, barely masking your awkwardness hoping there is no third time. But of course, there is. And a fourth, fifth, and on and on it continues like a contagious nightmare. Just when you’re about to lose count, you gather enough courage and walk away. But in the case of Koffee with Karan, you sit through.
With the latest episode featuring Kajol and Rani Mukerji, the celeb chat show has comfortably descended into stubborn nonchalance, not caring in the least about offering entertainment that’s meaningful, engaging, entertaining, or diverse. Considering the enviable space it has carved for itself in the pop-culture zeitgeist over the years, KwK could easily have been all of the above and much more. But six episodes in now, the latest season has shed all pretence. Whatever hopes you may have had of it, you’ve now tossed it down the drain.
Season 8 doesn’t care anymore. In fact, it stopped caring four episodes ago. It’s too snug in its own shiny bubble to want to shift the needle or the conversations or the people it invites. To add to it, the new episode is painfully hellbent on making sense of the present through the lens of the past.
It’s fitting to have invited Kajol and Rani to celebrate 25 years of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, a film that marked Johar’s directorial debut, catapulted Rani to overnight stardom and cemented the magic that Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol had created with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. It’s just that I expected more substantial talk than incessant howling laughter and inane jibber jabber.
In the 54 minutes, Kajol looks visibly uncomfortable in her mauve off-shoulder gown, spouting Instagram truisms and using her loud, squeaky exterior to bypass every topical question—whether it be her and Rani not sharing a close bond despite being first cousins or the very public fallout that she and Johar had in 2016 during the clash of the release of her husband’s film Shivaay with Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. Rani, meanwhile, managed to dish out some details amid all the madness and nostalgia overdose—how she’s ensured that her daughter Adira doesn’t get papped, why she’s not on social media, how she couldn’t do Lagaan because of a certain producer.
This episode is full of painfully long shots of the three laughing over reminiscences and observations that aren’t even funny. One segment has comics and content creators giving their takes on Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. It was a bad idea for they are so real and self-assured, it puts Johar, Rani, and Kajol’s performance in jarring contrast. It bursts the bubble, making it difficult to play along anymore.
If all that three celebs with the world at their feet can talk about are shared memories made a quarter of a century ago, you know they have drifted apart. It’s evident that they’ve done little together since and are now desperately holding on to the remains of some happy times. It’s remarkable how in an hour of chatter, they manage to share nothing new barring the very important detail that season 8 is being shot at YRF Studios. Even then, we still don’t know who is in charge of temperature control.
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