Call Me Bae Review — Sucharita Tyagi

I, like most middle-class people, and general haters, I LOVE a story making fun of rich people fallen on hard times. Its why the trope lends itself to a very specific sub-genre of comedy.

Par don’t let the ha-ha fool you, yeh jokes likhne aur perform karne ke liye, specially capitalism ke baare mein, political, economic ALL of that knowledge ya life experience CHAHIYE.

Does Ananya Pandey have what it takes?

Episode 1 of Call Me Bae starts with a voice over, that goes on for about 15 minutes, exposition dumping without a worry in the world. We see things happen that lead Bae, snatched from her riches forced toward a life of poverty. Writing ko bharosa nahi hai ki viewers ke liye kuch toh rehne do, to figure out, kuch bread crumbs daal kar age build up kar lenge. Nah. Yahaan plot point 1 se 2 se 3, haath pakad ke le jaaye jaate hain. To establish ki how much our protagonist is entrenched in her world of luxury, you see things like her talk to her luxury bags bidding them goodnight. A split second later she appears in voice over telling you about bidding her bags good night, bina mauka diye ki dekhne waaley khud sochein.

Aur yaheen se shuru hota hai reflections of places Call Me Bae has inadvertently drawn inspiration from. Moira Rose talks to her wigs in Schitt’s Creek, they all have individual names. However, her wigs are important to her as vestiges of an era she longs to go back to, and now that she’s poor again, they are the only luxury she owns, awakening within her the young girl she once was when she DIDN’T have money. Beneath this simple character trait lies a whole story, a chasm.

Bae likes to talk to her bags. It’s not weird. It’s not deep. It’s just Bae.

Chaliye yeh character quirk hai, isko chhor dein, bhool jaayein. But Bae herself is too Alexis Rose coded for one to get past it. A necklace with her name on it might be too innocuous theek hai, par ek aur specific character trait of having an insane, unbelievable back story from her old life, supplementing her misadventure in new poor life, is….derivative. Alexis knows how to solve difficult situations…because she escaped from captivity this one time or the other, or experienced a bizarrely heightened version of the scenario she currently is in, is one the most brilliant and memorable running gags through Schitt’s Creek. There’s no ignoring this show’s hangover in Call Me Bae. But here’s the difference: while Schitt’s Creek is a masterclass in how to evolve characters from shallow to deeply human, Call Me Bae is in such a rush to tick all the boxes that it forgets to let its characters breathe.

Bae, short for Bella, gets thrown out of her husband’s home because she’s caught cheating. She finds some poor friends, moves into a hostel, gets a job. Her life seems to revolve around luxury, superficial relationships, and the occasional crisis. In and of itself, yeh BEHTAREEN premise hai consumerism par satire karne ke liye. “Khushiyon ke liye cheezon ki zaroorat nahi hoti” ka moral of the story lekar, uss se backward aake develop karne ke liye. However, director Collin DCunha aur creator Ishita Moitra kaafi jaldbaazi mein hain to get to the points they want to make. Jaldi se establish karein kya hua, jaldi se kuch ride or die bhi mil gayi ladkiyan, yakayak ek motley crew khada ho gaya, internet par viral hone ka predictable subplot bhi yati sheeghra aa gaya, aur 8 episode ke ant tak pohonchte-pohonchte life poori tarah se change ho gayi.

Bae is ousted from her privileged life, and as she stands on the side of the street with her Louis Vuitton bags, the visual is admittedly so bizarre its hilarious. Par ek disconnect bhi hai. Berahami aur undercooked plot points ke istemaal se parents use ghar se nikaalte hain. While you’re pondering on how you feel about her mother, played by Mini Mathur, who objectively isn’t a very nice person, Bae moves on from the absurdity of that situation so fast, you don’t get enough time to care. Moments are designed thinking about how they look rather than how they feel. Even when you get flashbacks of Bae’s rich life, instead of the joke being “the rich are comically out of touch with reality”, the message that comes across is only that Bae was always lovely and the perfect lady. People clap for her unironically. As such, you are told for a LONG time abotu this one particular golden hearted side of Bae, without much else.

What proceeds promisingly well though are the various romantic interests Bae finds herself surrounded by. Its WONDERFUL to see Ananya Pandey flirt and kiss with abandon, not a worry in the world. Go ahead and make out with the hotties girl. Varun Sood is the gym bro joh north india accent mein Hindi bolta hai, aur spare time mein Bollywood style ka techie bhi bann jaata hai. He “hacks into” things. It’s not really very funny, but the puppy dog act works well.

Then there is Gurfateh Pirzada, a news anchor who wants to keep journalism alive. A man who takes himself too seriously, until Bae shows up and is like dude chill a little. Literally cooling him down by teaching him how to swim. Ananya Pandey shares crackling chemistry with the actor, and when this sub-plot is allowed to grow, all the little silly and stupid things like teaching him how to social media, or him trusting this brand new intern to do major news reporting, don’t need to make sense anymore. This is when Call Me Bae flourishes, its promise becomes sharper — a woman finds out who she is once she is around people who let her be. Gurfateh’s introduction shot tells us he doesn’t know how to swim, and a couple of episodes go by before he gets his first swim lesson. When the show is not in a hurry, it settles and works wonderfully.

Unfortunately, with the female characters, Call Me Bae falls head first into the “feminist young cool girl” archetype shaped hole. Yeh best friend characters joh hone chahiye empowering, but caricature se aage badh nahi paate. You know, when someone is removed from their rich lives, and come to experience the “normal”, the humor arises from how absurd the normalness of the “normals” feels around the rich. Greg from Succession is funny in contrast, Lupe the house maid from Arrested Development adds humor because the Bluths are SO unfamiliar with her culture, Jerry Mcguire learns about real relationships when a single mother introduces him to her very plain life with her sister and her group of friends. The rich have to learn . The poor don’t have time to cater to their needs, the struggles of daily life weigh too heavy.

Here, all of Bae’s new friends are Kajol from K3G. They’re TOO eager to change her, TOO available to make things happen, TOO invested in her life, way TOO rapidly. It doesn’t help that Musskkan Jaffrey and Niharika Lyra Dutt both seem to be playing their parts at an almost identical heightened frequency.

There still is much to enjoy in Call Me Bae if you do sit through the show. Vir Das parodying a vile prime time news anchor is funny on 10 different levels. There’s a lovely little Faye Dsouza cameo, Lisa Mishra is so very good as prime time news producer, and brings the authenticity most of the support characters tragically lack. SHE doesn’t care for Bae, HER world doesn’t change because this new being has descended amongst them. These notes feel real, and fresh. Oh and also the show’s funniest gag is at the TV station — a guy who’s only job is to dress up in new outlandish costumes for each broadcast. It’s a small bit of humor that doesn’t overstay its welcome, unlike much of the show’s other attempts at comedy.

Everything in this show is heavily underlined, the writing is too eager to impress upon us that Bae’s fall from grace is supposed to be funny. The feminist themes, which could have been a powerful undercurrent, are continuously undermined by forced attempts at humor. Bae too is hard to root for, not because she’s flawed, but because she’s inconsistent. One moment, she’s a fish out of water, struggling to adapt to her new reality; the next, she’s giving people MAJOR life lessons, her morals become her only motivation.

There are moments where the show almost hits its stride — a gag here, a performance there. The series might even work for you in an Emily In Paris sort of way, I've been seeing tweets from fans saying they don’t remember a single plot point but they can WAIT for the next season. If nothing else, the fashion game is on point, even if a basic understanding of social media isn’t.

So, on a scale of 1 to 10, Call Me Bae is….1600 words toh mainey likh diye baithey baithey idhar. Comments mein batao tum kaisa lagaa show.