The show must go on

STA. MARIA. Art imitates life.

The inexorable demand for new material to keep “feeding” the ever-hungry maws of our TV sets drives producers and directors crazy. Especially if you’re churning out episodes of a daily TV drama series, you have to tape dozens of sequences every working day just to be able to show something new—or else, there’ll be the devil to pay!

Of course, you could tape episodes way in advance, so you aren’t running everybody ragged just to keep up with the daily demand, but that usually doesn’t happen, for any number of understandable and less comprehensible reasons.

Everyone involved in taping a regular series does his best to keep up with the hectic production schedule—but, what happens if somebody important gets sick? The show has to go on, as per the trusty, old show biz tradition and mantra.

—But, what if something as serious as dengue strikes a star? That, in fact, appears to have recently happened to Jodi Sta. Maria, the lead player in the hit daytime soap, “Be Careful With My Heart.”

Jodi’s spirit may have been willing, but when dengue hits you, you go down—so, what was the production to do? Well, we happened to be watching the show that week, and we witnessed this strange sight: With art forced to imitate life, Jodi’s character, Maya, was similarly depicted to have gotten seriously ill, so a supine form that was supposed to be Maya was caught by the TV cameras in a hospital bed, whispering a few words very weakly, but her face was kept hidden from view.

Thus did we surmise that Jodi was indeed indisposed, but the production couldn’t stop producing new material, so a body double was used for the key scenes that had to be shot to establish the lead character’s falling seriously ill.

After that, the cameras concentrated on how the other characters were reacting to Maya’s unexpected illness, so in terms of production demands, the worst was over.

Much better

In succeeding days, as Jodi was herself slowly recovering, we would get to see shots of her weakly but resolutely fighting the illness and subsequently improving, until she felt much better—and the show was, at long last, home free!

As this medical and production crisis played itself out on-cam, we admired the hit show’s production team for making the major plotting and shooting changes needed, without skipping a beat.

Jodi should also be commended for bravely soldiering on despite her getting sick, thus proving that she was a true-blue show biz trooper.

We trust, however, that the appropriate lessons were learned, and that this and other series would strive mightily to tape at least a week’s episodes in advance, to give themselves some breathing room, and time to adjust to unexpected problems and crises.

By the way, TV insiders share that “Be Careful With My Heart” isn’t the only TV series that was recently faced with a medical challenge. We hear that “Akin Pa Rin Ang Bukas” also had to do some creative improvising when one of its original lead players unexpectedly fell ill and had to drop out of the show—and she had to quickly be replaced!

Kudos to our TV people for being able to swiftly and smoothly cope with unexpected exigencies, without distracting viewers with their internal crises.