Four More Shots Please! Season 3: Just a hangover of the sophomore season with another round no one asked for!

2.5/5

A bittersweet farewell marked by tears, laughter, and a heavy heart. Those are the four ladies, as we see them this season. Everything they carry weighs them down and causes them to slouch. This season, all the four of them want is to put the past behind them, but endings may be difficult.

The four ladies, played by Kirti Kulhari, Sayani Gupta, Maanvi Gagroo, and Bani J, raise a toast in one of the scenes, "Here's to f***ing up!" Haven't they been doing the same since the beginning of the show? Making messes and cleaning them up is a natural human behaviour, and controlling it is rare. But like the infamous dialogue, repeating mistakes is like making a habit. Like binge-watching this series is a habit, seeing no growth in these characters is also.

The series starts with Siddhi Patel (Gagroo) remembering fond memories of her father, who passed away in the second season finale episode. The bittersweet moment leads Umang Singh (Bani) to make a visit to her hometown to meet her parents, who have kind of disowned her after she came out as queer. There we can sense that both Siddhi and Umang's character arcs are bending towards something newer.

On the other hand, Anjana Menon (Kulhari) has been stuck in the past since the beginning of the show. And her past is her ex-husband, Varun (Neil Bhoopalam), who is rarely out of sight, let alone out of mind. There's a sequence in one of the episodes where she just keeps ranting about how he's still the same and didn't change despite being remarried. Well, she still tolerates him and never lets him go out of her life. That literally sums up her whole journey this season.

Damini Rizvi Roy (Gupta) once more juggles between two men. Heh, don't worry, Jeh (Prateik Babbar) is still there and they are shown to be growing stronger together at one point in time. Meanwhile, she also takes a new career path as her earlier professions as a journalist and a writer made matters worse.

However, I will admit that I enjoyed this season a little more than the sophomore season, but not quite as much as I liked the first one. This time around, the makers focused more on Siddhi as she's coming to terms with the untimely death of her father. She is survived by her mother, Sneha Patel (Simone Singh), who becomes a target for older men after she becomes a widow. This doesn't go well with Siddhi, for obvious reasons, but also makes her brattier.

What makes her character better is the angst she carries due to the loss of a parent and also to mend the relationship she has with her mother. This takes up the whole season and midway kind of becomes annoying, but better than the others.

Similarly, we see Umang also trying to move on after leaving her partner, Samara Kapoor, at the altar in the previous season. We see her focusing on her career, opening her own fitness centre. However, that also comes with conditions, sort of a love triangle nobody asked for. With that comes Shilpa Shukla and Jim Sarbh, two fab actors who offer very little to her character. We expect fireworks, but these two new characters are brought in for a resolution and are largely wasted.

It just plainly disappoints me to the next level, seeing that Anjana and Damini are still stuck in the loop like they have since the first season. They are the weakest characters in the series and fail to bring anything new to the table. You root for Damini and Jeh once again, only to see that they don't belong together. She's seen coming back to a slight normalcy after an unfortunate miscarriage, but her faults are more in her stars, maybe.

Talking about Kulhari's character Anjana, we just see an unwanted and immature love triangle between Kavya, Varun, and her. In turn, it looks like she has become a babysitter at some point in time, and I am just wondering what the level of empathy is for a person.

Devika Bhagat and Ishita Moitra, who penned this season's too, bring similar story arcs and no novelty to it. Joyeeta Patpatia has directed this season, and she tries to bring in her own flavour with it, but fails to overpower in any way.

Despite the actors continuing with their fantastic performances, the dialogues don't work in their favour, nor does the storyline created for them this season. What I loved the most this season was Mikey McCleary’s music. Some songs are superbly composed, with incredible tunes and hard-hitting lyrics.

Four More Shots Please! Season 3 brought closure, and I hope there's no hangover from it.

Kirti Kulhari, Sayani Gupta, Maanvi Gagroo, and Bani J shouldn't order another round of shots. We got the closure we wanted to see, and that too, in a hurried and non-entertaining way.