Salman Khan kicked off Koffee with Karan solo on season 9, just like he did 13 years ago on season 4. That was his maiden appearance, and kudos must go to host Karan Johar for roping him in to combat the perception that the infamous chat show is Shah Rukh Khan’s territory. Salman returned for the 100th episode alongside brothers Arbaaz Khan and Sohail Khan, who are better friends of Karan, thanks to their respective ex-wives Malaika Arora and Seema Sajdeh. But what convinced Salman to strike back on season 9?Salman claimed that Karan emotionally blackmailed him to open the new season by claiming it to be the last. Quipping that he doesn’t believe that, he slid in a brand mention — “What if JioHotstar asks you to do another season?” — but Karan claimed he’s hiding from them because he’s decided it’s time to put this baby to sleep. Karan then showed Salman his viral clip on trolling and body shaming from Bigg Boss 20, which he’s currently hosting every week.That’s when it struck the uninitiated that this is a cross-promotion — using Salman’s Bigg Boss persona to bring in more views for Koffee with Karan — a show which even Karan has maintained is losing its sheen because of excessive PR. When the host brought that up, the Bigg Boss shut him up. “When the PR tells me to not put out something, I tell them you’ve just come in. We’ve been around for decades,” said Salman.But despite such tall claims, Salman delivered arguably his most diplomatic and driest appearance on the Koffee couch yet. For all his recent pertinent monologues on Weekend Ka Vaar, Salman hasn’t been able to get rid of the albatross around his neck — his inconsistency. When Karan invoked Salman’s famous words, “It’s done bro!”, the superstar just passed it off with a smirk.Because that exactly seems to be Salman’s Achilles’ heel. “It’s done bro” may have evolved into a protest mantra now, amid the ongoing demands for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar after an Indian Express Investigation report. But it started at the opposite end of the spectrum. It was a symbol of Salman’s inconsistency and inability to see the bigger picture — the lack of home-cooked food wasn’t the reason why Sonam Wangchuk was on hunger strike. It was the lack of accountability.The myriad U-turns of Salman KhanBut Salman would not get that, since he’s barely been accountable for his actions or words. On the same episode when he doubled down on his tirade against the paparazzi for objectifying female actors, his own body-shaming lens was exposed by longtime co-star Karisma Kapoor. He kept harping on the allegedly inappropriate length of Karisma’s iconic dress in “Pyar Dilon Ka Mela Hai” from David Dhawan’s 2000 romantic comedy Dulhan Hum Le Jayenge — till she finally gave in and said, “But he’s always been very protective of me.”In another U-turn from Salman on the show, he claimed that like Sanjay Dutt, his life is an open book. But unlike Dutt, who has openly admitted to having 308 girlfriends (and even let Rajkumar Hirani’s 2018 biopic Sanju document that), Salman backtracked on his word during the show when he refused to acknowledge the women he’s dated over the years. “Wo kisi aur se shadi kar leti hain (They end up marrying someone else),” he said, probably referring to Aishwarya Rai and Katrina Kaif.Story continues below this adBut he doesn’t mind putting Karisma on the spot, breaking their self-proclaimed “bro code”, by hinting that Karisma never liked any of the heroines back when she was more active in Bollywood, including one that he’s dated (Aishwarya?). Karisma pushed Salman to take back his statement, but that was the only flash in the pan the audience witnessed of the foot-in-the-mouth persona Salman — and his big bad world of Bollywood used to be — back when Koffee with Karan started.Also Read — ‘Ranveer Singh had to control all his energy’: Salman Khan applauds DhurandharOnly serving nostalgiaAs it enters its final season, Koffee with Karan has been reduced to exactly that — a piece of nostalgia. The most heart-to-heart chats on the opening episode dated back to 1998, when Salman emotionally accepted Karan’s offer to do an extended guest appearance in his directorial debut Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. The most lived-in picture we got of the dreamland that Bollywood was was through Karan, Karisma, and Salman fondly recollecting their memories from outdoor shoots in Switzerland.And the most Koffee with Karan that the premiere episode felt was during Karan’s Rapid Fire segment. He candidly admitted everyone who appeared last season was guarded, and picked the episode with Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma as his favourite across the run (I agree!). It was a nice walk down memory lane to open the final season because memory is all Koffee with Karan is banking on now. Otherwise, why would they not get Karisma to compete with Salman in the Rapid Fire round instead? Why would he not call out Salman’s myriad U-turns?Story continues below this adKaran seems to have thus resigned to the impending fate of his show, winding it up with an “It’s done bro”. Dare he press the relic that is the ‘Lie-O-Meter’ on the almighty Bigg Boss! Had he done so, it’d have surely been music to our ears.‘Roast of the Week’ is a weekly column for the Koffee with Karan nerd community who love to dissect and decode every episode in great detail. Watch this space after every episode!