Emotional episodes are this shows’ forte.

I’ve observed this since Naksh’s time, this show/director/writer/cast excels in emotional episodes. Today’s episode each and every (*almost) character performed so well.

Harshad was so good in portraying the grief of losing his children and his brother. 

I don’t like the Manjari actor but today even she emoted well. Even that small scene of Mahima closing Neil’s eyes and crying was heart touching.

After a long time I felt invested in the emotional aspect of this show. 
But the cvs should have done the blame game part in another episode. This one should have been only about loss and grieving and the memory of Neil. 

I actually disagree here. Earlier, emotional episodes of this show could make me cry. Hina Khan was an exceptional actor in emotional scenes. But since then, the acting quality has gone down considerably. Not because of the actors necessarily, but because of the show's overall quality going down.

Harshad was pretty good, and Ami (Manjari) was also good in the scenes after Neil's dead face is uncovered. Her plight as a mother who has lost her son was really well portrayed.

But other than that, pretty much everything fell flat. Karishma was not convincing as a woman who has lost the love of her life and her husband. I was half expecting for Aarohi to go nuts. Scream and shout and bang on Neil's chest to wake up and come back to her. But there was nothing of the sort.

I have seen Pranali crying so much that her devastation here made no impact on me. She's turning into another Shivangi. Naira cried so much at everything that even in the episodes where it was truly called for, it did nothing to move me. 

I also actually expected the actress playing Mahima to show herself be more devastated considering Mahima lost her own child a while back. Even the actor playing Neil & Abhi's dad didn't show the kind of grief I had expected from someone who lost their kid (regardless of how strained their relationship was). I'm not a mother or a wife, but the idea of losing either my kids or my husband makes me want to scream. 

There was a quote from the show Falcon and the Winter Soldier, that there is no word for a person who loses a child. Someone who loses their parents is called an orphan; someone who loses a spouse is called a widow or widower; but there is no word for someone who loses a child, because such pain is so devastating that it cannot be described in words.

The Birlas have lost their second child in a span of less than two years and something like this should have been absolutely shattering and gut-wrenching. I felt none of it. 

Compare that to other actors in other shows. Sakshi Tanwar in BALH season 1 (during Pihu's custody track and when she is kidnapped), Hina Khan in earlier seasons of YRKKH (when Naitik goes into a coma or when Naksh is kidnapped), Divyanka Tripathi & Karan Patel in the earlier seasons of YHM (when Shagun snatches Ruhi away or when Ishita is injured in the earthquake)... They all made me cry like a baby in situations that were much less dark than the one the Birlas are going through right now.

Edit: In the next ep (27 Dec) Karishma had more space to act and grieve. She did much better then.

Exactly. In s1, the emotional scenes were really well done mainly coz they didn’t just focus on 2 characters. You could feel Varsha’s pain at being cheated on, Nandini’s when Rukmini taunted her pp depression etc coz we see these characters evolve in storylines and arcs that have nothing to do with Naksh.

However since s2, Kaira era onwards that’s not the case. The side characters hardly get any arcs or development. Everything they go through was made about 1 couple.

Even with Arohi’s grieving they didn’t focus on that but immediately made it about Akshu. That’s how it’ll always be. Manjari’s grief will be made about Akshu or AbhiRa separation. That is something I have accepted.

And it’s in this scenario (that despite of not giving them much) the characters in s3 (other than AbhiRa) did well. After a long time a s3 episode made me invested. 

(As compared to s1 many things will fall flat).

That's what I hated so much. Like I understand that the first reaction to loss, grief, trauma is to find someone or something to blame. Anger is one of the first steps of grief. But what didn't make sense was that they directly blamed Akshara. 

The first reaction should be "What the hell happened?!" "What went wrong?" "How did this happen?" "What changed in the span of a day?" 

How is no one asking questions or just confused about the turn of events?

In real life when there's a tragedy, our first reaction is shock and then we're looking for answers. Denial is the first stage of grief. Anger comes after that. 

They should've gone through all these questions and shock and denial BEFORE getting angry on Akshara. They can still go for the blame game if that's needed for the plot, but at least bring it naturally. The way they're doing it now seems like the only purpose of Neil's death is to blame Akshara. At least give Neil the dignity of a proper funeral and let everyone grieve before making it all about Akshara and Abhira separating.

The dialogues fell flat for me. The focus wasn't on Neil or grief, it was on accusations and on Akshara, which sucks.