A letter to the makers of Indian Teleserials

STOP!

Please stop making these fully unrealistic and fully mental health impacted serials and marketing them as Family shows!!

Firstly, congratulations! You have successfully  managed to make a behavioral pattern in our society. All the mentally exhausted and mentally harassed women are ever grateful for you! Cos if it hadn't been for your quality content we might have considered being treated like equal human beings a fundamental right! Tauba Tauba!! On one side we celebrate the once in a year/years women empowerment based cinemas which goes to all the international festivals as the Indian entry but on the other side what we feed our own people on a daily basis is sub sub sub par content. 

The first villain is the serial Daughter in law. Yes, you read it right.. I said daughter in law and not mother in law. And no I don't mean the Komolika types DIL. I mean the Baakyalakshmi/Anupama types DIL who is normalizing a woman being a shit-taker. She takes shit from everyone around and smiles and puts up with more shit. Only when it is in difficulty Level 28759 of shitiness does she give up. And at which point the serial makers are now patting themselves on their back for a showcase of 'women empowerment'. Like seriously??? If the makers had tried even a little bit to make this character a human being they wouldn't have confused being treated like a doormat with resilience and grit! Every time she says 'XYZ might be rude and might seem aggressive, but they are actually very good within' she is actually conveying to the girls watching the 'ideal' bahu that irrespective of how rude or offensive someone is to them, they can put up with it cos in all probability this someone will do something very sweet (like bringing them water :/) sometime in the distant future and it will be a bed of roses henceforth! Of course communication and voicing out their feelings is all a strict NO. 

The Bechari/ Paavam serial MIL. Even if the mother in law actually wanted to be a sane guide to the girl. Your wonderful MIL prototype in EVERY serial has ensured that that is socially ostracized. So now we have a segment within your target audience segment thinking at every point that her DIL is out to get her and is hence plotting and scheming about how to ensure the DIL does not takeover the house and the family. Why on earth didn't you consider this plot line with the fathers and son in laws pls!! or the unimaginable.. why didn't you consider the situation of normalizing a family where everyone gets along with everyone.. ohhhh have i just mentioned Voldemort by name in the Indian Serial equivalent!!!

The serial SIL/step mum/ step sister/ all women characters. These characters have had the good and the bad. But again in the theme or normalizing a happy family. Cant we just have women get along with each other. Ideally it can be the easiest relationship but again the brilliant makers are the best judge. How else can they manage to make the serial run for 1000s of episodes. :/ Is it because you did not have any quality storytellers. I completely get it, it cant be easy coming up with new stories but does that really mean you just end up putting in the same MIL DIL fight plot and just make the characters wear wonderful clothes and jewelry/ else change the town/ change the family names/ to make the plot different?

You have clearly found your target market. The sect of the society which is mentally and physically unoccupied enough to buy anything that you sell in the name of entertainment. This segment has been dumbed down (courtesy: You) enough to accept these FAMILY shows as the norm. This segment now expects only this as entertainment. You have not only found your target audience, you have also managed to make them addicted to you hence repeat audience. Anyways, enough of my rambling. There was a clear pattern in all the serial watching MILs that my friends and me seem to come across.. so just wanted to put it across to the makers of these shows. Get ready.. this future generation of the MILs namely the present day DILs are waking up to your plot and already getting out of our addiction cycle. So you might have to come up with something else. And in this process if you can clean up the mess you've created with more positivity and general happiness it will be much appreciated. 

A very sincere TV viewer