‘Stretch’ marks are showing

PARAS. Incredible state of suspended animation.

Over-the-top scenes are par for the course in local drama series, but some really extreme—and extremely clumsy—examples are simply begging to be singled out:

On “The Half Sisters” last week, Thea Tolentino’s savagely kontrabida character was incensed over the fact that her crush, Andre Paras, had chosen to go to the prom with her meek sibling, Barbie Forteza, and not with her. So, she devised a really nasty plot to humiliate her: At the prom, a lot of smelly stuff was poured over poor Barbie’s little head, humiliating her—to the max!

What made the scene galling and dramatically “off” was the fact that, right after the nasty deed was done, Barbie’s friends, Andre included, didn’t immediately rush to her defense!

First, the “humiliation” factor had to be stretched and played out, as Thea and her evil amigas were shown “deliciously gloating” over Barbie’s extreme misery for minutes on end.

Only after they had luxuriated in their dastardly delight long enough did Barbie’s friends belatedly come out of their incredible state of suspended animation to help her.

Andre ended the long and awkward sequence by manfully getting doused himself, to show Barbie that she wasn’t alone—but, the harm had been done.

In full detail

On “My Destiny,” the big booboo last week was the production’s decision to dramatize, in full detail, the beauty pageant in which Rhian Ramos was a contestant, and which she eventually won.

That’s right, most of the stages of the pageant were acted out, taking up a lot of TV time, when the pageant’s actual dramatic function was to depict Rhian’s gutsiness and eventual victory, which made her envious enemies shut up.

This could have been accomplished in a few minutes, but the drama series chose to stretch it out to about half of its telecast’s running time.

What for? Did the production spend so much on the pageant sequence by way of “production values” and extras to play the other contestants in the pageant that it felt it had to “show” the expense in full detail, on-cam?

Trouble is, viewers are already only too familiar with how beauty pageants go, so the detailed treatment was both predictable and boring.