There is a scene in Desi Bling where chef Ranveer Brar stands in a kitchen, cooking for Tejasswi Prakash and her girl gang while they dissect the personal lives of women who aren’t in the room over a menu tasting session. Chef Ranveer stands there, entirely clueless, masquerading his sheer embarrassment with a frozen smile. His eyes practically scream how, exactly, his career arrived at this particular point. You will feel secondhand embarrassment for him. In fact, that is the exact emotion the audience experiences for the entire show.Desi Bling follows Indian TV couple Karan Kundrra and Tejasswi Prakash as they enter Dubai’s ultra-wealthy Indian expat circuit. The cast includes billionaire couple Satish and Tabinda Sanpal; the Sajan family, Rizwan, Adel, and Sana; Dyuti Parruck and wife Iryna Kinakh; and sisters Alizey and Lailli Mirza and Pamela Serena.The bling is very much present. Tabinda owns 40 kilograms of gold and buys three more every Dhanteras. Her daughter got a custom pink Rolls-Royce on her first birthday and wore a 24-carat gold dress to the party.Nobody watches shows like this for depth or nuance, you watch for the high-octane cringe, the gloriously staged drama. The KRA of the guilty-pleasure reality show is simple: be entertainingly awful. Desi Bling agrees to this but unfortunately, it doesn’t even know how to be trashy properly. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Netflix India (@netflix_in) The scriptwriters (and let’s not pretend this isn’t scripted) clearly didn’t try very hard. From the very first episode, every confrontation feels painfully staged. No one in this friend group can keep a secret for a single day. The moment one person hears gossip, they sprint toward the next person to reveal it, often in the middle of public events with absolutely no awareness of their surroundings. Every fight feels less like reality and more like badly rehearsed improv theatre.The show’s most delusional attempt at “reality” is the scene where the men gather to discuss their deepest personal struggles, offering each other careful, considered, emotionally attuned advice. As women, we know, we have always known, that this is not how men operate in a room together. Not Indian men, not Dubai men, not men of any nationality, income bracket. Men do not sit in a circle and carefully counsel each other through their marriage problems. They talk about cricket, change the subject, and order another drink. We did not buy a single second of it.ALSO READ: Drishyam 3 movie review: A close shave for Mohanlal, Jeethu Joseph as Georgekutty battles himselfStory continues below this adThe Tejasswi problemFront and centre of the show’s problems is Tejasswi Prakash, who decides to ham her way through the entire series. In a genre where people are supposed to pretend to be real, she stands out as a glaringly bad actor.Her entire vibe is a throwback to her viral Naagin 6 meme. If that was “Walk karte hain to time nahi dekhte,” her motto on Desi Bling is, “Reality show karte hain to real nahi dikhte, confrontation karte hain to situation nahi dekhte.”She pokes her nose into everyone’s business, demands instant gossip under the guise of “concern,” screechingly yells “SHUT UPPP!” at the end of every sentence. She inserts herself freely into other people’s fights and issues. But when the tables turn she becomes defensive, angry and loud.In one episode, after a massive fight with Karan, she turns to the camera before an event and says, “I started faking so the guests wouldn’t know.” Girl, please. We could see you faking through the entire series, not just there.Story continues below this adThroughout the show she and others take pointed digs at Pamela for “living off her ex’s money” — which, even if true, raises the obvious question of what precisely that has to do with Tejasswi, who just arrived from Mumbai and has opinions about everyone already.The proposal sequence at season’s end deserves special mention. Tejasswi walks into heavily production-managed setup. Karan stands under an arch. The guests are standing there. Any person with a negative IQ would read this room correctly within four seconds. And yet Tejasswi keeps on asking “what is happening, what is happening?” Her crying scene afterwards makes you wonder how she is an actor. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Netflix India (@netflix_in) Karan Kundrra, to his genuine credit, maintains a quiet steadiness throughout. His wardrobe, however, appears to have been sourced entirely from a drama company’s costume inventory.The rest of the castThen comes the endlessly exhausting marriage drama between Dyuti Parruck and Iryna Kinakh. Within a few episodes, it becomes painfully obvious why the relationship is falling apart. Dyuti carries the classic patriarchal mindset where parenting appears to be solely the mother’s responsibility, constantly criticising Iryna for going out and not being a “good mother” while conveniently ignoring his own behaviour. Iryna, on the other hand, spends most of the season discussing the problems in her marriage without doing much to address them. By the end, viewers are simply tired of hearing the same arguments recycled in different luxury settings.Story continues below this adInterestingly, the people who initially come across as “mean girls” — Pamela and the Mirza sisters — slowly emerge as some of the more emotionally honest cast members.During Pamela’s birthday party, her ex gifts her a Chanel bag. Pamela tells the camera: “I wanted this bag, I don’t know how he got to know this!” Cut immediately to the ex’s solo interview, where he says: “I took her to the store, asked her to pick a gift, and she chose this.” It looks as if the makers are trying too hard to show us how unscripted the show is. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Netflix India (@netflix_in) The Sajan family, Rizwan, Adel, and Sana, are the most subdued of the lot, never involved in any confrontation or gossip session. They appear to be on the show to use it as a giant, glorified billboard for Danube Properties.Then there are things said on the show that no amount of bling can distract you from.Story continues below this adTabinda believes a second child will stop her husband from partying and mentions this plan throughout the show. When she brings this up, Satish responds with the kind of tone-deaf billionaire banter that makes you want to turn off your TV, “Let’s go to London, wahaan humare 70 embryo pade hain (we have 70 embryos lying there)… Mera bas chale main 70 surrogate leke 70 bacche kar lun.”When Binda oversteps her boundaries and tells Karan that Tejasswi isn’t right for him, Karan handles this with considerable grace and politeness. But in his piece to camera afterwards, he says: “I only take advice from people who have achieved something in life, and Binda bhabhi’s only identity is that she is Satish’s wife.”One supposes that standing by your husband through the building of a business empire, raising a family, and opening your own company counts for nothing. But sure, Karan. No achievements.The celebrity guests, Ranveer Brar, Sania Mirza, Shilpa Shetty, Tiger Shroff, Tamannah Bhatia, Sunny Leone, Vivek Oberoi, each wear the expression of someone who has just realised the exit is much further than it appeared. We feel for them.Story continues below this adHere is the thing about reality shows, everyone knows they are scripted. The audience knows, the cast knows, the production knows. The agreement is that everyone pretends, and in return the show delivers entertainment compelling enough to justify the pretence. Desi Bling cannot hold up its end of this bargain.The bling is there. It is just not blingy enough to make you forget how hard everyone is trying.