It’s not a matter of forgetting rather it’s because they have messed up the timeline from the get-go by starting the season with the 38th anniversary celebrations.
By that timeline, Gautam should be 37. Shobha and Karan are younger than him and should be 35/6 too. Karan is shown as a father of three with his eldest son per this season being at least 18 years old. Even if we consider Karan is 36, then it means he fathered Parth at 18 per this timeline and so everything he did prior to the introduction of Nandini, Tanya and Ansh as characters was done by what… a teenager barely out of school per this logic? Then Damini would be his high school girlfriend and not the girl he was about to marry, because remember Gautam has Karan attacked and then married Damini in the very mandap meant for her marriage with Karan under the guise of protecting her and her family’s reputation. And Damini is his THIRD wife!
The only changes to the current plot that would have occurred if they had maintained the original timeline and made characters age appropriate would’ve been that Mihir Tulsi would’ve been at least in their late 70s or early 80s while their kids could have adult children of their own without it looking too weird.
Sameera and Raunak could have still be shown as Karan Nandini’s children but probably adopted or born via surrogacy rather than naturally conceived once they reunited and started their life together again post getting married a second time around. They could’ve explained that the couple wanted to explore parenthood together for once from the inception and so they either adopted two children or somehow they got help from some fertility experts and had children via surrogacy, or maybe Nandini got treatments and could carry children herself with medical attention and care round the clock.
It’s this need to mess up the timeline to have Mihir be chased by a woman even now as a grandfather that makes things worse. They probably thought a younger looking grandpa in his 60s can still be considered a catch but why would any woman chase a man in his 80s if she’s also in the same age bracket and knows either of them can kick the bucket the next hour let alone the next day, so even if she carries a torch for him since their college days she would likely not act on it or maybe considered senile if she does.
I genuinely don’t know what to make of their reasonings here to mess up the timeline but that’s what this is about.
Honestly, they could’ve still given Mihir a girlfriend or whatever in his 80s as well by keeping the original timeline intact. The previous season ended with Mihir losing his mental faculties; he could have been shown as suffering from dementia or some other mental illness that makes him confused enough to forget about Tulsi and his condition bad enough to admit him to a facility. There he meets a woman he bonds with simply by spending time with her and in their declining mental state they both assume they’re a married couple or in love or whatever.
Pari, her brothers and her boyfriend and all that nonsense could have been worked in just by making sure Pari is someone else’s niece raised by the Viranis with her brothers after their parents died rather than make these kids the Kapadia orphans.
Mihir himself had so many cousins at the beginning of the show. Pari and her brothers could have been the grandchildren of one of them - Chirag, Suhasi, Sejal, Hemant and even his own younger brother Kiran had a daughter Karisma. Could have shown these kids are immediately related to one of them and were raised by the Viranis as they got orphaned and had no other family left to take them in.
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