Running out of time–and good judgment

ABELLANA AND RODRIGUEZ. Ardent but sketchy search.

As concluding drama series hurtle to the last few weeks or days of their storytelling, some of them are coming up with less than acceptable work, visibly running out of time—and good judgment.

On “My Destiny,” both Tom Rodriguez and Kuh Ledesma fared badly in a recent “confrontation scene” between mother and son, before he flew off to Singapore to look for the girl (Carla Abellana) she had persuaded to leave his loving arms.

The entire “looking for Carla” trip to Singapore was even harder to take, because Tom did it blindly, with no clue as to where she was, just accosting people in the streets and showing them her photo. —No, really, in this day and age!

Here was this supposedly modern and intelligent guy just going on “pure love” alone, and expecting to bump into Carla, ASAP! —Well, this being a teleserye and “coincidental,” “fated” and “predestined” encounters being everyday occurrences on local drama series, that’s eventually what happens—so much for basic believability and logic!

The way the entire “Singapore search” group of sequences is coming off, not much real thought and scripting has been put into it. Very vaguely and sketchily, Tom’s ardent search is shown in awkward bits and pieces, and we quickly lose interest—and patience.

Also very roughly, it’s intimated that the owner of the club where Carla has found employment could become a problem, since he is initially shown to paw her, and stuff. Will Tom have to rescue her from this predictable den of iniquity, on top of everything else? Spare us.

As for Carla’s sister, Rhian Ramos, she’s left in Manila, and reacts dully when she belatedly finds out that Carla has dropped Tom, so who knows what she could be thinking? Frankly, Rhian’s performance is so unhelpfully involuted that—we really don’t care to find out!

It’s a good thing that the situation on the similarly concluding “Ang Dalawang Mrs. Real” is turning out to be more believably eventful. Yes, it’s lividly over-the-top, as many of its characters come to verbal and physical blows before the whole shebang finally resolves itself in time for its imminent finale (next week). But, we prefer the “over” on “Mrs. Real” to the “under” on “My Destiny”—by a long shot!

Most recently on “Mrs. Real,” the big thespic treat was seeing all of the series’ mature actors having a loud and feisty go at one another. A recent scene involving all of its three family patriarchs, played by Robert Arevalo, Jaime Fabregas and Tommy Abuel, in a big, heated argument was a really big treat.

Soon enough, it was the mature ladies’ turn to come to verbal and physical blows—complete with sabunutan!— as Celeste Legaspi and Susan Africa lunged at each other in full, stylish froth—with Lovi Poe simply trying to survive in the middle of the pair of deliciously mad and raging matriarchs! It’s all excessively overwrought TV—but more of the same tomorrow, please!