The Bads Of Bollywood: Bollywood gets messy, colourful, and hilarious in Aryan Khan’s Netflix debut. And the internet is loving it

Synopsis

Aryan Khan's The Ba***ds of Bollywood successfully revives lost Bollywood playfulness and colour. The show is making waves not just on Netflix but across social media. It stars Lakshya, Bobby Deol, Raghav Juyal, and Sahher Bambba, with cameo appearances from Shah Rukh Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Ranveer Singh, SS Rajamouli, Aamir Khan, and many more. Read on to know why the internet can't get enough of this show.

Back in the day, Bollywood comedy had its own charm, Govinda dancing in neon pants, Johnny Lever as the unforgettable Babulal in Baazigar, and jokes that were silly yet timeless. Coming to today's era, where humour is packed into three-second memes before you finish your Maggie.

Rarely do they hit the right spot, and most stories have drifted into darker zones, murders, crime, conspiracies, with trending reel audios or viral moments thrown in for forced laughs. The fun, romance, and colour that once defined Bollywood felt lost, replaced by endless debates on nepotism, remakes, and tired formulas.

Aryan Khan’s The Ba***ds of Bollywood dares to bring that energy back, with a twist. It’s cringe, it’s clever, and it makes both tree-dancing and Twitter jokes feel like they belong in the same frame.

A lot has already been said about Shah Rukh Khan's elder son's show’s popularity. It clocked 2.8 million views in its first week on Netflix and ranked number four globally among non-English shows, according to Tudum. Memes, reels, and reaction videos have flooded timelines. But here’s what deserves more attention: Aryan’s debut isn’t just a buzzy celebrity project; it’s also a rare attempt at reviving one of the trickiest genres in Indian storytelling, a satire that works.

For too long, Hindi film comedy was reduced to tired stereotypes: bumbling fat characters, "90s-style" comic relief. Social media, on the other hand, had been shaping an entirely different kind of humour, fast, absurd, layered with irony. As M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story screenwriter Dilip Bachchan Jha puts it, "As writers, it pushes us to be sharper, quicker, and multi-layered, because this audience can spot clichés instantly and decode subtext at lightning speed."

Aryan’s show doesn’t mimic Gen Z meme culture, but it acknowledges its existence and then sidesteps it, offering something we were missing in our recent films. The Ba***ds of Bollywood go for unapologetic humour, there are fat jokes, nepotism jokes, and paparazzi jokes. But crucially, the writing doesn’t punch it down. It teases Bollywood’s absurdities while never disowning the culture it comes from. At its sharpest, it laughs with the industry, not at it.

"If the satire comes from love, the audience laughs with you. If it comes from bitterness, they tune out," said Dilip Bachchan in an interview with The Economic Times.

One of the lines that captures this best is, “It’s my dancing around trees that has gotten us here.” That mix of humour and self-awareness makes Aryan’s show stand out. You could say Akshay Kumar’s Tees Maar Khan and Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om walked so that Aryan could run.

Satire with affection, not bitterness

However, we feel satire is notoriously difficult to pull off, especially in an era of instant outrage. Aryan seems to get that balance right. He uses his insider access not to flatter, but to roast, poking fun at his father’s colleagues, cracking on their larger-than-life image, even spoofing his dad’s detractors. And yet, it doesn’t feel mean-spirited. It feels like the kind of banter only someone who truly grew up inside the circus could pull off.

Sneha Desai, who co-wrote Laapataa Ladies, points out why this works: "Writing satire is a fine art. One has to disagree without being disagreeable. To bring out the dirty underbelly of one’s profession in a comic, inoffensive way can only be done well by people who have richly lived and observed that environment."

If thrillers and crime dramas have been OTT’s comfort zone, comedy is a tightrope walk. Too shallow and it becomes "brainrot." Too sharp and it risks being preachy. Too safe, and it feels like a WhatsApp forward. Aryan’s show attempts something fresh, wacky, and unafraid of being messy, and that in itself is a feat.

In fact, the context makes it even more impressive. Today’s audiences are sharper, faster, and more unforgiving. Audiences now want stories that respect their intelligence and time. As Snesha Desai said, "Post-OTT, post-pandemic audiences are extremely fidgety and multitask while consuming content. To engage them, the writing has to be very tight and honest."

Which is why the humour in The Ba***ds of Bollywood feels refreshing. It’s loud, colourful, knowingly cringe at times, but never hollow. It embraces the imperfections of Bollywood while refusing to turn cynical. And, trust us, there are too many easter eggs!

The main question arises that can you be woke and funny at the same time? Perhaps the show’s biggest achievement lies here. In a social media climate where every joke risks backlash, can one still be both “woke” and genuinely funny? Both Dilip Bachchan Jha and Sneha Desai say yes.

"The best comedy has always been about punching up, not down. Being woke doesn’t mean humourless, it just means being conscious of where you aim your jokes," says Jha.

Desai added, "Humour can be a very sharp and brutal weapon if handled by the right hand. Intelligently handled, it can convey very potent messages."

"The best comedy has always been about punching up, not down. Being woke doesn’t mean humourless, it just means being conscious of where you aim your jokes," says Jha.

Desai added, "Humour can be a very sharp and brutal weapon if handled by the right hand. Intelligently handled, it can convey very potent messages."

That’s the sweet spot Aryan’s debut seems to have found. The show doesn’t sanitise itself into dullness, nor does it wallow in outdated, offensive tropes. It laughs responsibly, but still laughs loudly.

The return of colour

Ultimately, The Ba***ds of Bollywood works because it restores something Bollywood had been missing: playfulness. It may not be perfect, it has its flaws, but it feels alive, chaotic, irreverent. Aryan Khan’s directorial debut reminds us that Bollywood doesn’t have to be trapped in endless crime sagas or social-issue sermons. It can still dance around trees, crack bad jokes, and wink at its own absurdity, without losing its edge.