Why Ranveer-Arjun on Koffee With Karan was EPIC television

The Gunday costars show Bollywood how it's done, says Nishi Tiwari.

Karan Johar, Bollywood's inimitable social butterfly, has left no stone unturned in making every single episode of the new season of his celebrity talk show Koffee With Karan a major television coup.

So while he kicked off the season with Salman Khan, he got the famously reticent Aamir Khan to make an appearance with his wife Kiran Rao and star cousins Kareena and Ranbir Kapoor to share the couch.

While there is more to come -- former screen rivals Juhi Chawla and Madhuri Dixit are slated to make a joint appearance soon -- the real ace up Karan Johar's sleeve was the episode with Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor, arguably the most epic 45 minutes (minus the ads) we've witnessed on Indian television in the recent history.

So good was the camaraderie between the Gunday stars that the entire episode, in hindsight, appears to be one giant canvas of candid moments, played out by refreshing honesty and that uber cool swagger we associate with 20-something men.

So, if this dynamic duo's jaded contemporaries and predecessors care to take notes, here's a brief how-to guide for working it on a television chat show.

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To say that self-deprecatory humour is a criminally under-appreciated talent in India would be an understatement of criminal proportions.

So you can imagine the pure joy it brought us to watch Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor kick up a storm on the show.

When reminded of his morbidly obese phase with a rather long description from Ranveer and a picture of his former bulky self, Arjun -- who responds with a wince first -- quickly recovers and does the 'Pehle main bahot mota tha' impression of that generic televised shopping networks voice we so love to imitate.

Then came the fat jokes and how he wasn't as sexually active then because of his heft and how he's making up for lost time now.

Then came Ranveer Singh's exceptional and hilarious impression of Jewish girls he came across while working the counters at a Starbucks outlet in the US and the stereotypical Indian accent he put on (Apu from The Simpsons) to charm them.

We, of course, always knew that Ranveer is, like, so 'exohtic' and 'dreamay'.

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We'd all heard stories of Arjun and Ranveer sharing great camaraderie while shooting for Gunday, but nothing had prepared us for the kind of chemistry we witnessed on the talk show. It was explosive, heartening, wildly funny, generally all kinds of awesome.

Their impromptu jigs, common love for 'massy' songs and the story of how they bonded over them was easily the best revelations made on the show.

Their rendition of the Do Mastaane Chale Zindagi Banane song from Andaz Apna Apna at the end of the show was so legendary a sight, it should be preserved for posterity.

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Unlike almost every single star who has made an appearance on the show, Ranveer and Arjun really showed that they're 'with it' when it comes to buzzwords and are creative enough to include some quirky words of their own at just the right time.

While Arjun's supposedly new-found sexual appetite gets him a new moniker (the alliterative Rampant Rabbit), when Karan fumbles at one point, the duo remark that they've made the host 'fufflao' on his on show.

This duo is a collective 'talent ka vul-cay-no' we can't get enough of!

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Lastly, what really mattered at the end of it all is the fact that there was no obligatory talk of rivalry, snide remarks about past loves or digs at detractors.

Henceforth proving that ugliness alone doesn't make for great television.

That the boisterous Ranveer Singh and rude-looking Arjun Kapoor are two regular and extremely likeable guys and the put-on chemistry of their predecessors -- Saif Ali-Shah Rukh Khan, Ranbir Kapoor-Imran Khan -- is not a patch on them.

As Arjun Kapoor fittingly said at the end of the show -- it'll take years to top this.

We aren't holding our breath.