In my personal opinion, I am okay with the deal marriage that brought them together, instead of a cliched tyaag from FM ke side wala marriage. Some of my reason are as follows-
It was different (I didn't see anything like this in any other show) Their initial meetings and conversartions had their own charm and feel to it. These two brought something intersting on the table for a viewer like me.
Like mentioned in the post if these two came together for Kukki, under some other circumstances, for example Prerna accepting him like other 'Balidan ko Devi' like female leads, then it would look even worse than this marriage which is often described as a 'blackmail marriage' instead of 'Deal Marriage'. Which it actually was.
In the deal marriage, they both were equally involved and guilty (some of us might think they wrong and some of us may not). They both acted selfish, Bajaj for his daughter and Prerna for Anurag. They both looked equal in every sense in those pre wedding scenes. Agar wo mahan banke shaadi karti then it wouldn't be an equal partnership. Tab wo blackmail marriage lag sakta tha.
Things were aleady getting pretty interesting even after a deal marriage, so I don't thing they needed a different beginning to their relationship; all they needed was an organic and unconventional progress in their relationship. This happened for sometime but something got into CVs mind and they decided to take the route of Prerna's tennis match, leading to unneccessary and cringy mask and Knife scene.
Even if Prerna agreed to marry him under some other circumstances, instead of a deal; there was no guarantee that the EMA phase wouln't have happened. It could still happen, because Prerna is written as a character that has the capability to go back on her words, one who maintains different standards for different people. Jail sequence is the biggest example- she lectures RB and his family for right and wrong but took a U turn when it came to Anurag, with her famous 'wo dil ke bure nahi hai' dialogue. She could have easily gone back on her words if she married in some other way.
She is also a character that's written to imagine a romantic dance sequence with a person who almost killed her and was ther reason of her sepration from her 2 days old child. So the problem is less with the deal but her characterisation, that is ruined everytime to keep different sets of viewers happy (and I don't understand why can't they just take a side, even if it's Anurags. At least story to milega kaise bhi).
So I am rather happy, that they came together with that Deal, aur kuch na sahi but that made a part of this show interesting unlike most of the show which is monotonous with flashbacks repeated to death and nothing else. All they did was select a different Punjabi song each time for the flashback
Phewww a long post. š