The comedians — Kusha Kapila, Danish Sait, Sumukhi Suresh, Tanmay Bhatt — gave awards for best moment, best rapid fire, best episode, and best burn. A more discerning bunch than the excitable twenty-somethings that are usually the jury for the rapid-fire — hands down, the worst call they have taken — the conversations kept trailing between wanting to be sincere and stinging, this comedic facade of wit, but also a strange sense of gratitude that they were allowed to be on this set. Every punch felt padded by permission. We can’t pretend that the couch isn’t also a potential portal from their careers as stand-up comics to DCA talent. Such is strategy. So far, so known.
But dear lord in fog-fagged heaven, Orry is insufferable outside of Instagram. He was made for the reel, his presence only capable of being consumed in pockets of minute-long videos. More than that, his gregarious charm begins to feel like a weight, because he throws his fictions around so much — his minions, his doppelgangers, his plotting his own demise — you no longer have the patience to parse the fiction from the truth, to ask and probe, to doubt and poke. You just let it wash over you.
As you do with Koffee With Karan. The show’s rhythms have been turned from narrative to “moments”, which is why its consumption, too, is of more value as discrete moments. The use of games was part of this fractioning, as discrete segments that don’t build off the previous one. The rapid fire, which was the crowning jewel, became one among the many moments that allowed for performing wit, and this performance, this constant performance has a way of hollowing out the very thing it attempted — spark.