"Keep the relationships alive no matter what" has been the criteria for assessing a woman's goodness and unfortunately not just in ITV. We might say we have progressed as a society but people still don't look at a divorcee woman favorably or at a woman who doesn't take abuse silently.
In ITV, this is the only criteria to assess a female lead's goodness. Whether the female lead is bechari aurat aur laptop dhone wali bahu, all have to prove their goodness by loving the people who abuse her. Whether the female lead is a police inspector, housewife or anything, she has to love the abusers.
In ITV, a woman's strength is seen in her ability to tolerate, in her loving her abusers, forgiving the people who wrong her, tolerate all the nonsense, keeping the relationships alive while her self respect is dying inside. One who does all this is female lead, one who doesn't is either a side character or a vamp. A woman's strength is not assessed by her ability to say enough is enough. Her strength is not assessed by her ability to break the toxic relationships. It's seen in how much she can take and still smile. No female lead has guts to say to her abusers (the family) I don't love you because you don't deserve my love, i don't respect you because you are not worthy of my respect. I'm breaking these good for nothing relationships because I don't want to spend the rest of my life serving you while i can do something much better with my life.
Coming to Anupama, she has taken divorce. But she's still shown pining for the toxic abusers. There's never 'enough is enough' for Anupama. Her strength is seen in her love for her abusers while it should have been in her breaking free of those toxic people and keeping her child away from them.
I wish ITV stop assessing a woman's character by her ability to keep the namesake relationships alive. And it starts it as a good quality to break free of toxic relationships instead of clinging onto their abusers in name of "sanskar, ye bade hain, parivar" etc. And keep tolerating it.
I might sound like Anupama here😆but ek aurat ki taakat hamesha uski sahanshakti se hi kyun maapi jati hai? Uski taakat zehreele rishton ko tod kar aage badhne mein kyun nahi hai?
Side note:
For male lead: to prove their goodness, they have to imbibe female lead's values and side with her all the times she's wrong. (And to show them bad, they are shown against the female lead when she is actually right🤣)
For side characters: to prove their goodness, they have to sing praises of the female lead no matter how stupid she is (and to show them bad, they wrong her when she's doing nothing wrong🤣)