I feel Barun was in character till the last shot of the serial!
He was excellent in the post kidnapping scenes too, be it to show his angst, flirting nature, turmoil or anger... he did everything wonderfully. It is just that the aggressiveness of ASR was lost after remarriage and he became too compliant to everything that Khushi wanted hence the judgement. i truly feel he did everything that was expected of him to do from the script!
Loved him in the videos that you shared TM, he was awesome in all the confrontational scenes with dadi!