The comeback episode leaned entirely on the film's promotional push, but early reviews say the laughs promised in its new title jingle never showed up.
The Great Indian Kapil Show is back for a fifth season, and it opened its account by pulling in the entire Drishyam 3 unit just days before the film hits theatres. Ajay Devgn, Shriya Saran, Ishita Dutta, Mrunal Jadhav and Jaideep Ahlawat showed up alongside director Abhishek Pathak, all in festive mode for the season opener.
It's the kind of booking that makes sense on paper. A big ensemble cast, a franchise with real box office weight behind it, and a premiere slot that guarantees eyeballs right when the film needs them most. The show even gave itself a new catchphrase for the season, folding a laugh into the title jingle itself: Hasi Ka Tyo-ha-ha-ha-haar.
But according to a review published by Koimoi, that promise didn't hold up. The outlet called the opening chat between hosts and cast flat, saying it failed to generate either laughter or interest before the sketch segments even began.
Sunil Grover's return in a new avatar was pitched as the episode's big card, and he closed things out with an impression of Ajay Devgn. Koimoi's review argued the bit misfired, noting that Grover doing a star impression is usually a safe bet on this show but didn't land this time. The review singled out one moment that did work: a dance segment featuring Jaideep Ahlawat, an actor built on intensity, roped in with the revived Sona-Mona duo of Krushna Abhishek and Kiku Sharda. That, per the review, was the one stretch of the episode where the audience actually got its Ha-ha.
Ajay Devgn's dry one-liners, scattered through the runtime, were flagged as another rare bright spot. Everything else, the review said, suffered from what it called format fatigue, with Kapil, Krushna, Kiku, Grover, Archana Puran Singh and Navjot Singh Sidhu all visibly trying without the material backing them up. The recurring banter around Archana's laugh and her appearance came in for particular criticism as tired ground the show keeps returning to.
None of this changes what the premiere was built to do. Drishyam 3 needed a high-visibility platform to put its cast in front of a festive-season audience right before release, and the Kapil Sharma stage remains one of the biggest such stages on Indian television and, by extension, on Netflix where the show streams. Whether the episode itself worked as comedy is a separate question from whether it worked as promotion, and on the second count it likely did its job.
The real test now shifts to the film itself. Drishyam 3 opens in theatres within days, and its opening weekend numbers will say a lot more about whether the promotional run paid off than any single television review can.
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