5 Things Amazon Prime’s Four More Shots Please Does Better Than Sex And The City (& 5 It Doesn’t)

The hit Amazon Original series Four More Shots Please! is one of the only Indian shows to explore the lives of urban young women on their path to self-discovery. The series follows the struggles, disappointments, and triumphs of four unabashed women in their late-20s-early 30s living in urban Mumbai.

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Four More Shots Please! (FMSP!) has been nominated for the International Emmys 2020 and indeed takes an intense unapologetic glance at life from the smart, well-educated Indian woman’s perspective. However, the series’ parallels with the iconic American romantic-comedy drama show Sex And The City (SATC) which was itself the first of its kind at the time in the States, can hardly be missed. Here are a few things Four More Shots Please! seems to have done better than its older American counterpart and a few it doesn’t really improve on.

10 Improves: Each Girl Is Equally Important

SATC was first and foremost the story of Carrie Bradshaw who was the undisputed lead protagonist of the series, around whom the rest of the gang revolved. Carrie was also the narrator, it was her inevitable voice-over, flowing almost like a stream of consciousness, that explained her inner struggles to the audience.

But FMSP! does not have one central protagonist. All four friends, viz. Damini, Anjana, Umang, and Siddhi, have an equal role to play without any one of them getting more footage or priority that the others.

9 Doesn’t Improve: Characters Inspired By Sex And The City

Touted as India’s own SATC, some of the characters in the series seem to draw inspiration from the celebrated HBO Max series, although they are heavily individualized.

For instance, Damini Rizvi Roy, played by the brilliant Sayani Gupta, is molded somewhat in Carrie’s image. Carrie, as fans know well, was a columnist with The New York Star. Damini too is a journalist, although unlike Carrie who dives into New York’s dating and sex scene, Damini is a hardcore realist believing in the principles of investigative journalism that would help her tell the dark truths about society. Another of the friends, Anjana, is a feisty, high-powered lawyer with a big legal firm, which is of course, reminiscent of Miranda Hobbes.

8 Improves: Not Everybody Is Acing It In Their Fields

Another thing that FMSP! does better than Sex And The City is that it doesn’t show all the friends as established in their careers.

In fact, Anjana is the only one of the gang who has already reached great heights in her career. Other than that, Siddhi is shown to be a happy-go-lucky girl from a wealthy background who is perpetually muddled about what profession would suit her best. She eventually discovers that her talent lies in making people laugh and decides to become a stand-up comedian, a line of work yet to become mainstream or even lucrative. Umang too takes time to settle down as a well-known celebrity gym trainer and Damini is at her wits’ end when she is fired from her own start-up.

7 Doesn’t Improve: The Uber Glamor

The high-end fashion that came to define the characters in SATC, especially Carrie, was criticized by many. The Amazon Original show doesn’t do much better here; the perfectly decked up women, irrespective of whether or not they earn well, seem a tad unrealistic.

All the protagonists in FMPSP! parade about in the most stunning designer apparel all the time. From bags to shoes to classy fabric, the girls ooze glamor all the time, making them distant from the middle class Indian audience.

6 Improve: Much Better Representation of The Queer Community

SATC made some regrettable faux pas when it came to its treatment of the queer community. Stanford Blatch, played by Willie Garson, was Carrie Bradshaw’s friend and at times a confidante. However, Blatch was more a caricature than a character, a stereotype meant more for comic relief than anything else. Gay women were also shown in a stereotypical light, and the friends often made quite insensitive comments about the gay community, as if they belonged to a different planet altogether.

FMSP!, however, has a much more thoughtful approach towards the queer community, with one of the main protagonists, Umang, being bisexual. The series created history by showing two women being involved romantically, even deciding to get married.

5 Doesn’t Improve: Being Judgemental

Remember when Charlotte decided to quit her job and become a full-time mom? It did come as a shock for both her friends and the fans, for Charlotte had a very lucrative job at a high-profile art gallery, a job she loved. But once the initial surprise was over, there was no reason Carrie, Miranda, and Samantha, who claimed to be her best friends could not support her decision.

In FMSP! too, the friends are judgemental about one another. From Anjana judging Siddhi for the way she responded to body shaming, to the whole gang judging Anjana for deciding to get involved with a man who claimed to be in an open marriage, these women are not above judging others despite being highly flawed themselves.

4 Improves: The Friends Have Already Conquered Turkey

It took Sex And The City more than six seasons and then two entire movies to shift the narrative out of Manhattan, New York. Yes, the city was definitely at the heart of the story but a change of scene once in a while, which came later in the movie Sex And The City 2, would have been a welcome diversion.

Four More Shots Please!, however, did not wait around for so long to take the girls out of their routine context. Season 2 itself began with three of the friends flying to Istanbul to find Siddhi, who they mistakenly believed was on the verge of a mental breakdown. Seeing the girls conquer a different city, even a different country, was a breather indeed.

3 Doesn’t Improve: The Ultra Privileged Women

One critical area for which Sex And The City drew flak was its ultra-glamor. True, Carrie was a glamorous lifestyle writer, and Samantha always mixed with the glitziest crowd in public relations. But in spite of that, the series seemed to focus purely on the ultra-privileged.

The women in FMSP! represent a very marginal, privileged, and exclusive section of society in a country of 1.32 billion people. That is not to say that the privileged do not have their own struggles, a fact the show actually mentions, but it does rather limit the relatability with the common woman on the street.

2 Improve: Men Aren’t Invetiably Generalized

One of the things Sex And The City didn’t handle too well at times was the stereotypical perception of men it promoted. True, dating in Manhattan was no walk in the park, but the friends constantly insinuated one way or another that men were biologically programmed to cheat on their partners or at least, to disappoint them in some way.

Yes, Samantha’s unapologetic sexual explorations were meant to prove that women too owned their sexuality, but that didn’t mean that men were not generalized. The Amazon Prime series, however, does not fall into that trope. Relationships here are complicated, from non-exclusive sexual partners, to open marriages, and women are as fallible as men.

1 Doesn’t Improve: Forced Plots

The series’s second season felt a little forced, something which SATC never felt even in its fourth or fifth season. The first season felt fresh, with the sassy girls in this female-led show taking charge of their lives.

But from the second season itself there was a mild sense of tediousness as if the writers were already running out of things to say. The entire plot involving Damini who got pregnant with her sex partner’s baby even while she was in a serious relationship with her boyfriend, as well as the one with Anjana and her complicated relationship with her married colleague, felt forced.

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