Team FC
In deference to Sidharth Malhotra declaring Johar has a “new tone” (there is no new tone. Only some giggles, but more on that later), let’s focus on the positive in this episode, which brings together Johar’s “students”, Sidharth Malhotra and Varun Dhawan.
Finally, we get a set of good and occasionally juicy answers in the rapid fire and Malhotra is a worthy winner of the Koffee hamper (his first). Malhotra’s nicknames for his wife Kiara Advani are “love”, “Ki” and “bae”.
Johar’s pro-tip for seduction is to bite the ear. “I have a Wolverine issue,” Johar confessed coyly, by way of explanation. He also offers to bite Dhawan’s ear as a practical demonstration, which Dhawan steadfastly ignores.
Johar said at one point, unwittingly clueing us in on both how gendered this business of giggling is, but also that clearly most of their “chit-chatting” has been edited out. Nothing in the bland conversation that did make it into the final cut of the episode
It has the power to wreck the public persona of a star. They supposedly issue warnings to actors who want to go on the show and one mysterious someone gave Dhawan and Malhotra a 15-minute lecture about what they should say on camera.
On Karan Johar and asked him to name three friends from the industry in under six seconds. Two names tripped off his tongue effortlessly — Shah Rukh Khan, Aditya Chopra — and then there was silence.