Masaba Masaba 2 is a whole lot of fun

Wendell Roderick, who passed away last year, gets a beautiful little sendoff in the second season of Masaba Masaba when during a ramp event, someone insensitively blurts out the bad news to Masaba.

Now, since Masaba is played by Masaba Gupta, who was really close to the wonderful Wendell , the tears that flow are real. Moments such as this, or the one where Masaba meets the much-missed Bappi Lahiri for a possible collaboration, seem so authentic, it is unreal!

The line between the real Masaba Gupta and her onscreen version is thin. Luckily, it’s sharply and delicately, though not always consistently drawn. Many times, I caught the actor and the individual behind the actor struggling to merge and succeeding more often than not.

This time, Masaba Gupta is a lot more in charge of her performing skills as well as her character’s destiny. The season opens with Masaba delivering a baby in a dream sequence where, curiously enough, the doctor is Kartik Aaryan. While we need Freud to analyze that dream (is Kartik supposed to be Masaba’s dream man?), other problems await Masaba…for one, there is competition from younger designers who are creeping up on her .

Kareema Barry is hilarious as Qayanaat with a ‘Q’ , an airheaded social influencer who threatens to usurp Masaba from ramp renown. There are unexpectedly devious performers in Season 2, people with limited or no acting experience coming in from nowhere to capture a place in the populous plot.

YouTuber Kusha Kapila is excellent as Masaba’s pregnant manager. She hits all the right notes with her feisty ruthless energy. And Rytasha Rathore as Masaba’s bestfriend Gia continues to be a seasonal delight.

Ironically, the veteran actors are a letdown. Neena Gupta, who gets a lot more space this time, is surprisingly lackluster. Is she bored or preoccupied? As her daughter busies herself with clothes and men(not necessarily in that order), Neena revives her television serial Fursat and her wobbly relationship with her Fursat co-star Shekhar. Ram Kapoor plays Shekhar with a ceaseless suppressed smile that suggests he knows more than we do. He probably does. Care to share?

Neena Gupta gets a nostalgic moment when she calls up her co-star Kanwaljeet from the 1998 soap Saans on Doordarshan. As far as guest appearances go, I think today’s audiences would prefer to go with Kartik Aaryan.

In all the drudgery that follows after Neena’s attempts to get back to serial writing, the one bright spot is the young upstart show-director Shlok, played by an unknown but clued-in actor Vikhyat Gulati.Shlok has a problem: how to politely tell Neena that she is no longer relevant?

The writing in Season 2 is clever, though some of the lines sound like WhatsApp messages: “He gives Eminem vibes but turned out to be Gulzar”; this is about a possible love interest.

Neil Bhoopalam and Armaan Khera are given the thankless task of playing Masaba’s love interests. They try to make their suitors’ roles suitably interesting but constantly encounter roadblocks in the way Masaba is supposed to respond to their stimuli. Khera’s Dhairya is especially problematic: he is a privileged brat who wants to marry the heiress and conjugate with the wedding dress designer a night before the wedding. Talk about having the cake.

The wedding planning that forms a sizeable chunk of the plot in Season 2 reminded me of Zoya Akhtar’s Made In Heaven. Which is not a bad thing at all. But Masaba Masaba, for all its bright spots and cuddly interludes in Season 2 has clearly run out of steam in Season 2. So no more, please. As the diva designer Mickey(Harpreet Baweja) tells Masaba, “We can’t remain relevant forever, can we?”

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.

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