I am a bit baffled by the timing of PB's replacement as Anandi. It was quite obvious for quite a few months now, that body doubles were being used, not only for Anandi but also for Shiv, I first noticed it in the scene where Anandi confronts Shiv in front of the family when he refuses to marry her, it was Shiv's BD at that time, and then it kind of became a game for me to guess which scene was being shot with a BD, so it comes as a surprise to me that they took so long to realize that they needed to replace PB, which brings me to the question, why now, when everyone was anxiously waiting for the most important question to be answered, will she or wont she, take that final big step in her marriage.
Here I must say that the PH is very smart, they could have easily replaced PB before the marriage and romancing scenes, but they new doing this would be catastrophic, the audience would just stop watching as they would not be interested in watching a new Anandi fall in love, on the other hand if they would have waited till after the consummation, then again the same thing would have happened, they would have lost their audience as we would have been content in knowing that our Shiv consummated his marriage with the right Anandi and who would be interested in seeing him with the new Anandi, so they played on the audiences feelings and picked the right moment for the replacement…...post marriage when half of India is waiting for the consummation to happen….so even if you don't like the new Anandi you are curious to know will she, wont she and still watch, so in the meanwhile they will give you filler episodes showing plans of Jagya's third marriage(and we call this serial progressive)….lucky Jagya…he must be looking forward to ruining Ganga's life as well, so that Dsa can get him married a fourth time, oh wait a minute, the fourth one is already on her way, Saanchi...(Anandi must be wondering what did I miss here, all these girls crazy for my Jagya, should I consider going back to him) and then there is the servants union being formed….Makhan, Pappu, Nathu , Ghanshyam and what have you?? And if that was not enough we have to put up with Basant and Gehnas baby making plans….Oh BV makers, you must be laughing all the way, thinking what fools are these audiences made up of? Who would have tolerated these tracks, but we do, only because we want to know if Anandi will or will not bite the forbidden apple?
Which once again brings me to the question, why Toral? I have nothing against her, maybe I would have liked her had she played Anandi right from the start, but not now when you have us hooked to this other image of Anandi, why not someone who is more close in stature and looks to PB, someone like maybe Jennifer Winget (she would have nailed the role of Anandi from what I have seen of her in SC) or anyone else, the reason why Ansh took us by storm was the electrifying chemistry that Sidyusha shared,(I am almost sure my TV set smoked when they were on screen), the contrast in their personalities, one tall and broad, the other dainty and delicate, we had to fall in love with the two, there was no other go, you conveniently built up your audience base with the help of this chemistry and then right when it was time to show us the explosion, your bomb fused. You disappointed us big time, I live in the US and many of my friends who followed BV here are disappointed, many have stopped watching….. and if some of us are still watching it is only because of Shiv….we want him to be happy, hoping this new Anandi delivers what the old one had promised….just like you guys guessed, the TRP's will not fall until consummation happens and in the meanwhile bring on the junk….Jagya…Gehna..Dsa…Makhan….etc etc,we will tolerate all of those for the next couple of years until we realize that even Shiv has been replaced…….fed up of waiting for Anandi and all for the sake of TRP's.