Aryan Khan’s B**rds of Bollywood attempts satire, but Bollywood’s nepotism and hierarchy steal the show.

When Shobhaa De writes, that the joke is on us – well, she must mean something as she critiques the B****rds of Bollywood. But first things first, leave us junta out. Shobhaa, Anupama and the Rajeev Masands of the world are always known to be sitting in the lap of Bollywood – no pun, intended and no gaalis intended as well – just like the script of B****rds maintains it to be. Almost like a necessary evil. B*****d, B*****ke nai bola toh Netflix-beds-Bollywood kaise saabit hoga?

Now for the credits before we begin on the debits. The joke is on us – Despite the comedic nonsense they keep dishing out to us on the big screen wasting thousands of our cinema bucks for wasted screentime like Housefull 5 or the extra intense PR stunt they try to pull with a hyped-up Saiyaara – we still give them these opportunities to trick us.

A satire on nepotism that can’t fully escape the very system it mocks.

Ye credit toh banta hai jee. If he weren’t Shah’s kid (Like Pooja Dadlani calls him lovingly in the ending episodes), we wouldn’t have bothered. Seriously. Who wants to watch a half-dead Salman Khan (I am not talking to you.. Bigg Boss fans – you don’t count) or a super-botoxed Ranveer Singh who seems more out of work that the spoofed Jaraj Saxena?

And the it portrays itself not to be just a show—but a self-aware funhouse mirror reflecting the industry’s own absurdities with nepotism parading as destiny, talent buried under the influence of the big daddies of Bollywood and ahem, Dubai-based Gafoor (I am tempted to say “Ghafoooooooor” in that sing-song tone), and scripts that nod more to legacy than logic. Or so it seems.

Aryan Khan’s directorial debut is more of a slap on the face of the hundreds of directors trying to make it big on the OTT just like they did on the mainstream cinema. It may feel like a playground for insiders, yet it attempts (half-sarcastically, half-seriously) to expose the machinery behind the glam – self-defeatingly so because we, the audiences aint buying this.

From Aasmaan Singh’s tireless struggle to fit in, to the cameo-studded hall of fame featuring Karan Johar and Ranveer Singh and ooh, the coffee- throwing Sodawallah (I hope against hope this is not Nadiadwala), the series wants you to read like a ledger of what Bollywood pretends to hide. But dig deeper, and you would understand they are selling a different lie to you to cover the original lie – the one of being a major clu**f*ck of sorts that hands out favours to its own nepo-babies whether or not they’re capable. Sometimes even making them pose as directors (cough, cough..) of a multi-episode and god forbid, multi-season Netflix multi-starrer.

A self-aware OTT series exposes Bollywood’s nepotism—but does the satire land?

 Even the narrative structure of B**rds mirrors Bollywood’s obsession with formula: the outsider fighting for recognition, the mentor-turned-obstacle, the inevitable showdown only this time a junior actor punches a senior actor a la Will Smith-Chris Rock style . It’s a story we’ve seen a thousand times on the big screen, so nothing new on the script. Performances of the newbie outsiders Lakshya, Raghav Juyal, Anya Singh, Sahher Bambba wobble between authentic and performative, but you want to forgive them for their newness.

And yet, for all the self-awareness, the show manages to feel like a masterclass in overcompensation. Every cameo, every forced inside joke, every wink at the audience is less revelation and more a reminder: the machinery of Bollywood never really changes. Nepotism isn’t a scandal—it’s a business plan. And we, the audience, are complicit in applauding it, streaming it, and sharing it.

The satire bites, but only at the edges. The jokes land unevenly because the real absurdity is not in the parody, but in the fact that the industry continues to function exactly as the parody shows. When a Dubai-based Gafoor is suddenly a power player, when scripts bow to legacy more than logic, when half-baked newcomers are asked to outshine the overexposed, we realize it’s not comedy—it’s documentation. The series flirts with exposing this, but it never fully commits, because like any Bollywood production, it’s caught between showing reality and maintaining glamour.

Streaming platforms promised freedom: room for experiments, narratives that deviate from the formula. Yet, B**rds proves that even OTT hasn’t broken the cycle. It’s all spectacle, all lineage, all inside jokes meant to signal who’s “in” and who isn’t. And therein lies the tragedy and the irony: a show about nepotism ends up practicing it, from casting choices to directing decisions, all while pretending to hold a mirror up to the industry.

The joke is – it is so deeply ingrained in them, they don’t even realize they are doing it. Its like second nature.  And while the newbies—Lakshya, Raghav Juyal, Anya Singh, Sahher Bambba—try to carry the show with earnestness, their arcs are shackled to a script that privileges cameos over character depth and punchlines over pathos. You almost want to cheer them on, but the applause feels preordained, scripted by the same hands that write the hierarchies they’re fighting against. It’s hard not to feel the same exhaustion as the characters: trapped in a world that will always measure worth by legacy, not labor.

The real absurdity isn’t the parody—it’s that the industry continues to function exactly as the parody shows

Ultimately, B**rds of Bollywood is less about exposing the industry than holding it up for self-congratulatory laughter. It’s a reminder that for all our talk about innovation and disruption, Bollywood remains a closed ecosystem—one where satire is tolerated only if it doesn’t bite too hard, where the funhouse mirror is polished enough to reflect charm and not critique, and where the real “bastards” are those who built the system and continue to profit from it.

And oh where the Badshah knocks on a newcomer’s door and calls himself Badshah almost getting rejected for using the pseudonym for the OG. If this is ghost-directed, THEN I will be very surprised. It is definitely an Aryan Khan job. And we are the ones blowing it. Ha… and Ha!

Written by: Sonam Bhagat, Vygr 

The views expressed are personal and may not represent those of any organisation or platform.