Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives review: Shalini Passi sparkles in a dull season

You expect the ‘Bollywood Wives’ to bedazzle you with their glamour and surprise with their wit. Each one of them has their own extraordinary sense of judging others for being who they are. And yet in the new season, they seem to be failing at doing just the same. The third edition of the reality show, titled Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives, on Netflix, appeared to be lacking its usual charm. This, despite the addition of three high and mighty socialities from Delhi.
While Maheep Kapoor went more rigorous with her accent this time, Bhavana Pandey had hardly anything going about her. Both Seema Sajdeh and Neelam Kothari also seemed pretty low in the entire season, except for the last episode where they let their emotions flow for the audience. However, the season seemed more about the Delhi divas than the Bollywood wives, especially about Shalini Passi, a social worker, an art collector and a woman of many talents.
As soon as she is introduced in the first episode, throwing Delhi’s first ever ‘The Mash Ball’ where all the elites in the capital are invited, you know there’s something about her that will make you curious. Turns out our Bollywood wives are left more curious than us! So much so that the entire season becomes fully dedicated to discovering and fathoming the whims and fancies of Shalini’s lifestyle, her choices and just everything that makes her who she is.
Trust our Bollywood wives to not give anyone a free pass when it comes to fashion and style. However, all of them seem confused about what exactly they are supposed to do in the show. There are no meaningful arguments, except for resentments between Maheep and Seema, which, honestly, looked cooked-up and more exaggerations than reality. All the energies are put together in trying to put Shalini in her place, and prove that she’s simply weird for not confirming to the kind of lifestyle other women follow, or for simply refusing to bad-mouth anyone.
The season justifies Delhi’s social culture and establishes its uptightness, but nothing comes to us from the perspective of the Mumbai divas. It’s almost like they are busy looking for nooks and corners to hide themselves every time a Delhi diva come looking for them. At one point, they discuss giving a ‘chance’ to the three women to impress them, and you sense how they haven’t understood the job here.
Neither one of them appears friendly to the new ones, and are constantly searching out ways to either be guarded around them or avoid engaging with them. While Shalini does her own thing – learning to dance, living in a museum-like house, wearing the most expensive pieces from the biggest designers in the world, and just making the world her personal runway, our Bollywood wives gaze in surprise with jaws dropped and eyebrows raised.
The show is a fluff. You know what you are in for the moment you press the play button. But, seeing the four women losing to their own insecurities and fallacies looks disappointing. Where is the bold Maheep who’d do anything for her ‘twats’? Or a sincere Bhavana with tons of stories about her family? Even the sophisticated Neelam looks defeated in the show. And Seema makes for the case of a lost soul in a strange land. Like she agreed to be a part of the series with her mind and heart somewhere else, chasing some other dreams, or running away from nightmares.
All the promos and the build-up that the makers created before the release of the third season made Riddhima Kapoor Sahni look like this beacon of royalty in the show. All eyes were on her while she emerged as the least expressive one, almost plain. Her presence never added any value to the narrative, neither did you miss her when she wasn’t there. A few scenes with her husband, Bharat Sahni, showed her family dynamics, but nothing that could paint her personality for you or give an insight into that part of the world that belongs only to her, not to her star mother, Neetu Kapoor or her brother, Ranbir Kapoor.
Kalyani Saha, another Delhi socialite, remains an object of pettiness despite all the talk about her greatness as a single mother or a successful businesswoman. Her only identity gets wrapped up around the fact that she had four failed relationships and her quest to find a suitable partner now.
It’s only at the end that we are treated to a few real insights worth remembering and discussing, when Seema introduces her boyfriend and Neelam discusses her first marriage with Ekta Kapoor. In the meanwhile, there’s hardly anything that makes your eyes roll and tongues wag.
Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives doesn’t lack glamour and opulence. It, in fact, raises the bar for the same. You get to see Gauri Khan spreading her magic with a restaurant opening, Karan Johar putting his nose into girls’ businesses, and Saif Ali Khan making a rather charming appearance, transporting you to his Hum Tum days when he does a book reading for his fans. But, at the end of it all, when the Bollywood wives don’t perform, don’t get the memo right, it all looks made up, in a need for fixation. Also, they manage to make Mauritius look boring!