Karan Johar Anchors An Intriguing Potpourri

Amazon’s The Traitors is a show where glamorous celebrities who have nothing better to do, the idle rich, so to speak, get together in a ditzy mood at a lavish castle in the middle of the desert to play a game where the slinky contestants are divided into ‘Innocents’ and ‘Traitors’ with one contestant being ‘murdered’ in each episode.

I know what you are thinking. With so many shady crimes of passion happening all around us in real life, this sounds like a reality show licenced to kill, literally.

Banish those sordid thoughts. ‘Murder’ in The Traitor lingo is a euphemism for elimination. For the contestants on this ritzy show being asked to leave is worse than murder. I mean where do these semi-celebrities go after the game is over? How many manicures and tequilas can they take?

I have to confess I didn’t recognize most of the ‘celebrities’ on The Traitors. Of course, I know dear Ashish Vidyarthi. He is the quietest contestant on the show. In his florid bush shirts and laidback attitude. At one point he simply lies down on the floor to take a nap while his feline contestants chatted about …I am not too sure. One contestant, an astrologer named Jhanvi Gaur constantly felt persecuted. We have one of those in every reality show. It is called the Pooja Mishra Syndrome.

Other contestants Anshula Kapoor, Apoorva Mukhija, Elnaaz Nourouzi (photogenic), Harsh Gujral, Jannat Zubair, Janvi Gaur, Jasmine Bhasin, Karan Kundrra, Lakshmi Manchu, Maheep Kapoor, Mukesh Chhabra, Nikita Luther, Purav Jha (likeable), Raftaar, Raj Kundra (not much of a screen presence without his better-half Shilpa Shetty), Sahil Salathia, Sudhanshu Pandey, Sufi Motiwala, and Uorfi Javed (scarlet lips and quips at the fingertips) were caught in varying degrees of excitableness.

Admittedly, there is no one here I would like to run into at a social gathering. But as a group of glammed-up contestants (one of them carries a pretty ladies’ purse wherever he goes) who are out to rescue themselves from the ennui of amorphous affluence, they are reasonably entertaining.

What lifts the show above the ordinary is Karan Johar. As a host he is more a ghost than a dost, flitting in and out mysteriously in fancy designer clothes, togged in a seeming imperturbability that makes the contestants look like fans en masse. He is clearly the master of ceremonies who has many other more important events to attend.

Karan’s presence alone, and his indubitable class act, elevate the pickled peccadillos pegs above the pedestrian.