Why does The Ba***ds of Bollywood feel like the 2025 version of Farah Khan’s brainrot humor?

Om Shanti Om walked so The Ba***ds of Bollywood could run and we’re so glad we finally got the kind of unhinged humor we were missing on-screen!

Aryan Khan’s The Ba***ds of Bollywood feels like the 2025 incarnation of what Farah Khan once pioneered with her brainrot comedies. It’s over-the-top, self-aware, and delightfully absurd. Aryan Khan’s debut takes the impulses from a Farah Khan film, but injects a meta-edge - he mocks nepotism, references his own controversies, and lets all the cameos feel like a part of the joke rather than lofty tributes. The silliness Farah Khan popularised, now wears a coat of self-parody and sharp observational humour that speaks to an audience that’s more media-savvy, more skeptical but still desperately in love with the inner workings of Bollywood!

Right from the first episode where we see an NCB officer who looks exactly like the one who arrested Aryan Khan, the tone of the series was set. And if that wasn’t enough it ends with a "Say no to drugs" line followed by a credit that says "directed by Aryan Khan". He has made the humor so meta and the scenes so detailed that it feeds into our idea of what Bollywood is and the line between actually believing what he is showing us and taking a step back and seeing it as a mockumentary is thin. Bollywood parties are being used to make film deals, Karan Johar calls himself the movie mafia (throwback to his KWK episode with Kangana Ranaut), Ranbir Kapoor is giving a lecture about loyalty and Emraan Hashmi aka the kiss master of Bollywood is giving lessons on intimacy. It leaves you wondering if you should laugh or gasp over the guts of it all!

The Ba***ds of Bollywood has the same absurd, free-wheeling energy from Farah Khan films like Tees Maar Khan, Om Shanti Om and Main Hoon Na. Just when we thought nobody could re-create those over the top, campy character arcs, Aryan Khan pulled up and brought the entire industry along with him. Out of everything that could have possibly happened this year, him re-enacting the Filmfare awards scene from Om Shanti Om would never make it to my 2025 bingo card! Om Shanti Om had a set of ‘Om and I we’re just good friends’ line of interviews before the award show and Aryan Khan’s version of it is ‘Winners will be losers and losers will be winners’. The rivalry between lead actors, the ‘puri qaynaat usse tumse milane ki koshish mein lag jaati hai’ speech, the panning of the camera to Shah Rukh Khan when Aasman says my dad is my hero. This. is. the. Bollywood. we. missed! People say he has big shoes to fill because he is Shah Rukh Khan’s son, but I’d say that he was following someone else’s footsteps altogether. 

In an era of constantly being politically correct, we’ve forgotten what it feels like to sometimes just laugh at ourselves and embrace our truth, or in this case, our rumours! A lot of the humor from Farah Khan’s films would get her canceled in 2025 and that’s exactly where Aryan Khan’s The Ba***ds of Bollywood comes in. It's hilarious, wacky and yet well within the boundaries of today at the same time! In a year where none of the big screen films have stuck with us so far, this series was exactly what all of us were craving as audiences and only someone who has graduated from Farah Khan’s school of easter eggs and punchlines could have brought this to life! 

For more entertainment, follow us on @socialketchupbinge