Coincidentally’ speaking

RIVERA. Improbable confluence of characters rush to her rescue!

Local drama series are often rapped for the mind-boggling liberties they take with “coincidental” tieups that are highly illogical but “needed” to make an important plot development or confrontation possible.

For instance, different characters may separately travel all over Metro Manila, but when they they “need” to meet, you can bet that scriptwriters will find a way—any way, no matter how implausible—for them to “just happen” to be at a specific street corner so they “fatedly” run into each other, often with a literal bump!

That’s why in a recent review, we tongue-in-cheekly concluded that, as far as some of our TV scriptwriters are concerned, all of Metro Manila is conveniently just one very long street with a single corner at its end, where everybody walks—and collides into one another!

The reason for this discombobulatingly unreal state of affairs is plain laziness. Instead of thinking and working hard to make everything in their scripts believable, some writers think that their job simply isn’t worth all the extra effort—so, they cynically don’t bother.

An extreme example of implausible “coincidence” was recently provided by the ongoing drama, “Carmela.”

Let us set the scene for you in detail, so you can appreciate the complicated somersaults of logic that had to be performed for four of the series’ principal characters to “coincidentally” be at the same place at the same time to pull off a very dramatic confrontation:

DOM Roi Vinzon desires Marian Rivera’s character, so he’s arranged to get her drugged and brought to a secluded room, where he hopes to either seduce or rape her. Luckily, Marian regains consciousness and puts up a feisty fight to defend her virtue.

Some minutes earlier, Vinzon’s grandson (Alden Richards), who loves Marian, is cluelessly riding his motorcycle when he sees his lolo’s car parked in front of a hotel. He looks for his grandfather.

Long-missing mother

Even earlier, Agot Isidro, who later reveals that she’s Marian’s long-missing mother (and Vinzon’s previous victim many years ago) “just happens” to drive her car to the same place—and the ensuing sounds of struggle and a shot being fired (that hits Marian in the chest) make her join Alden in looking for the source of the sounds that eventually lead them to the wounded Marian!

More creative scriptwriters would have realized that the exact confluence of four characters’ whereabouts would be much too much of a coincidence, which would be rejected by viewers who need to believe in the “reality” of what they’re watching before they agree to get emotionally involved in the proceedings.

So, why did these writers (and director, and actors) think it was OK or “sige na, pwede na” for them to try to pull it off, no matter how implausibly?

Aside from the “deadline-beating” factor, it could be that they believed that what they were making was just “TV popcorn,” which is not important enough to make such a big deal of.

Hmm, is that so? Viewers should reject that attitude and demand better and more professional work from these and other “popcorn” exponents on TV!