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Illustration/Uday Mohite

Why does Two Much exist? my friend asked me. I arose promptly, at this call to arms. "Yes why?" I cried. "Are Twinkle and Kajol broke?" she mused. "Are they getting divorced?" This is indeed an empathetic reading of a show as sprightly as week-old palak.

Frenz, let's get serious, for the time for snark is past. Kajol is a wonderful actress because her ebullience is illuminated by soulfulness. Twinkle Khanna once refreshed us as an earnest nerd with common-sensical humour even if now that's worn thin.

A show that loves women, would craft itself based on such essential qualities. But this one feels like it was written entirely in hashtags - #badass #bindas #girlboss. Such terms claim to compliment women while actually infantilising them. They are cookie cutter ideas of boldness used to think and talk about women generically, and avoid actually engaging with them as individual thinkers, artists or conversationalists. The show demonstrates unambiguously what girl power slogans really mean. They mean putting women in expensive clothes, allowing them to be clever but cutely, with schoolgirlish puns and analogies, giving them only a little space - like that fourth seat in a Mumbai local - and then calling the whole shebang banging.

Package the barest minimum as awesome, and you deftly limit the imagination of what women can be. When you say something is too much - too much for whom exactly do you mean? Women are constantly spoken of as not enough or too much. But these settings reaffirm the norm - women should be limited.

This packaging allows Two Much to be an ode to sexism, because we are feministish, but not too much haan. That Reader's Digest hubby-wifey humour, Alia's Princess-mum number, Janhavi's glam savant affectations, the shrill, faux sorority sister ribbing between Kajol and Twinkle just makes them look like mean girls, babe or no babe. Men mansplain away - life should be simple, people should get married, you should speak in straightforward language (Saif and KJo were an exception). They disregard questions about the double standards of age between heroes and heroines and no one can hold them to it, not even their friends and bhabis.

Why did Twinkle and Kajol allow this? Maybe they had no control over this, maybe they believed it is cool, thanks to the insularity of their worlds. The powerlessness.

Old interview shows - Rendevouz with Simi Garewal, Tabassum's Phool Khile Hain Gulshan Gulshan - created a hypnotic mix of glamour and interiority, joining audiences to the stars who dazzled them. We glimpsed a person, a history, a life. While Koffee with Karan brought an overt-covert queerness, a 21st century glitz to the chat show format, it also slowly leached it of authenticity, except in the figure of Kjo himself.

Two Much is so bad it makes us think Koffee with Karan is great. And that seems to be its primary function in a world where movie stars have been reduced to a mere conduit for brands and consumers, faking it as a relationship of fans and idols. This is one way media schools us to accept less and expect even less - in joy, politics, enjoyment, justice, connection, love, warmth - just die inside unknowingly, of boredom.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com