Bigg Boss 14: Is Salman Khan irritated with the current housemates?

There was a time when watching Bollywood superstar Salman Khan as host during the weekend episodes of Bigg Boss was fun. He would, by turns, be in the mood for jokes and in the mood to tease the housemates. He would come down with admonition, too, once in a while, but things never turned dour, to the point of being off-putting.

On the ongoing season 14 of the show, Salman has mostly been angry and irritated, clearly unhappy with the way things are going on. In a season that should rank among the most boring in the brief history of Bigg Boss, Salman perhaps cannot be blamed.

There's more. Over the past few years, faced with bad box office for films like Tubelight (2017), Race 3 (2018) and Bharat (2019), Salman would invariably fall back on his immense popularity as host of Bigg Boss to maintain a connect with fans, who won't settle for anything less than rockstar form from their favourite star.

On Season 14, however, that has hardly happened. A house full of contestants is lost for a plot for controversies and the show is going nowhere despite star contestants of past seasons being randomly planted as toofani seniors and challengers. In a year when he had no release owing to pandemic-induced closure of cinema halls, Salman probably realises the no-show season 14 is no fall-back option to regale his fans.

In the recent Weekend Ka Vaar episode, Salman's irritation was clearly showing, as he went about explaining to contestant Abhinav Shukla that Rakhi Sawant's grotesque acts such as pulling his pant strings are "benefitting" him.