Four More Shots Please! Season 3 Has Messed Up Its Characters, More Like Toxic Masculinity!

*Spoilers alert 

Four More Shots Please! (2019-2022) has lost its charm and freshness altogether. Be it the natural chemistry between the four protagonists or the development of their characters or the subplots, the series is simply not what it used to be.

Here is my (very personal) take on why the makers of the third season know nothing about feminism because of which they ended up creating four problematic characters:

In this season, she pushes her partner Jeh (Prateik Babbar) to move in with her to the point where she even shows up at his place of work and yells at him for the same. She rightly refuses to indulge in any sexual activity with him due to her own traumas. However, she constantly gaslights him into believing that he is sexually dissatisfied with her and that he expects too much out of her.

The worst thing is that she cheats on him with a colleague of hers and yells at him when he gets upset about that. Her defence for everything is that she isn’t perfect. No Damini, women empowerment isn’t women embodying toxic masculinity.

Siddhi Patel: Daddy’s (not so) little girl (anymore)

Siddhi (Maanvi Gagroo), who used to be a happy-go-lucky girl in the first two seasons, is simply unbearable in this one. Her character, from the beginning, was portrayed as that of a privileged South Bombay Girl, but it was all still done with subtlety. In the third season, however, every third dialogue spoken by her is about how much money her family has, and how jobless she is as a result of not having to work because of that.

She further disrespects her friends constantly, acts agitated and purposely tries to behave as if she is a childish teenager. Of course, she experiences a serious loss in this season, but that can not justify her excessively obnoxious behaviour.

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If you hated her mother, Sneha (Simone Singh) in the first season, you’ll know in this one that Siddhi is truly her mother’s daughter.

Anjana Menon: messed up (ex)wife

Anjana (Kirti Kulhari) has been known for her impulsivity in the series. While a lot of her impulsive decisions were quite powerful in the previous seasons, in the recent one, they simply seem confusing and irrational.

To begin with, she allows her ex-husband, Varun (Neil Bhoopalam) to move-in with her after his wife kicks him out of her house. Any sane person would know that allowing this to happen is opening one’s door to a disaster.

Of course, her goof ups don’t stop at just that. After everything, she goes on to get sexually intimate with her ex-husband knowing that he is still married and has a newborn baby.

Varun’s wife, Kavya (Amrita Puri) is one of the most broadminded, accepting and forgiving characters that we might have come across in the Indian media. Thus, watching her suffer because of Anjana’s impulsive and insecure nature is simply disturbing. Let’s not forget that the cliffhanger that we were left with at the end of the first season was actually sorted out by Kavya in the second one.

Umang Singh: (Un)iconic lesbian

Umang (Bani J) is no longer the bold lesbian icon a lot of us once fell in love with in the first two seasons. In the third one, she comes off as being an insensitive fuckboy trapped in a woman’s body, at best.

Making bad choices in terms of the people one chooses to date or get sexually intimate is one thing. But, getting involved with someone who is vulnerable, using them to heal your own broken heart, then breaking up with them when you suddenly stop feeling any sort of chemistry and completely ghosting them after the breakup is simply disturbing behaviour.

The makers of Four More Shots Please! need to understand that feminism isn’t giving women the personality traits of the worst kind of men that are capable of existing in our society. Feminism is a much bigger than a bunch of privileged, yet dissatisfied women creating problems for themselves.

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