Jyoti!
I hate Bandini. One thing that I judge these shows on is values, and the very basis of Bandini - the romance between a fully grown, middle aged man with 5 kids - 2 of whom are now married - with a 16, now what, 18/19? year old, is just utterly repulsive to me. Not to mention that he's conceited and arrogant, and he's supposed to be one of the heroes? And the twists they have as a result - say, the romance b/w Hiten & Khemi being inappropriate because of the 'aunt' relationship becomes controversial, when what's perverted in the first place is the DM/Santo one. The other problem being that all the alternate proposals - be it Kadambari w/ Shashank, Hiten w/ that other woman, all get accepted and materialize. At least for me, there's nothing to celebrate about that show.
Jyoti, otoh, started well, w/ the whole concept of a daughter who chose to support her family and ignore the question of getting married, except that she'd do it out of love (at the time, for Brij); otherwise, the only reason Jyoti would have married would have been to clear that road for Sudha, Deepu & Sushma. I didn't like the Brij-Sushma marriage - that was somewhat less perverted than DM/Santo, but the idea of Sushma leapfrogging Jyoti & Sudha, I hated. I also hate Padma to this day for forcing Jyoti into a situation where she felt that she had to marry to get out of the miserable life she was in. Had Jyoti had a chance to explore Pankaj's family and find out about cm, she'd not have walked into it w/o pre-conditions about limits on what cm could or couldn't say/do to her.
I do think that the episodes sometimes drag on too long, and have too many twists - Brij Sushma should have ended after the fake hospital, and not involved a second round that got Sushma pregnant. Too much on that. CM has no character consistency, and the last week, the whole plot looked unhinged - out of nowhere, proposals start popping first for Uday, then Sudha, despite the fact that in Sudha's case, except Padma, everyone was opposed to her marrying instead of studying/working. I do hope they cleanly marry these 2 off, and going forward, run parallel plots concurrently in ways that make sense, and speedy conclusions - like Sushma's pregnancy advancing, Sandeep-Panchi warming up, Suday's marriage blossoming, PJ also getting closer, and ultimately Brij resurfacing.
Anupamaa
