Local TV drama takes ‘sibling rivalry’ route, not always efficiently

THEA Tolentino (left) and Barbie Forteza are frisky but awkward in “The Half Sisters.”

Don’t look now, but TV drama series are going in for the theme of sibling rivalry in a big way this season. GMA 7 has its concluding series, “The Half Sisters,” which has overstayed its welcome on the tube, due to its predictable and strident developments.

It also doesn’t help that its young leads are frisky but awkward actors and its female leads are excessively made up—to within an inch of their lives!

On the afternoon soap, “Flor de Liza,” the resident half-sisters fare better, but the show is also hobbled by the fact that its child stars are made to utter dialogue that’s much too mature and “knowing” for their tender age. Still, the show has been successful in launching the comebacks of Jolina Magdangal and Marvin Agustin.

The new teleserye that’s currently going the sibling rivalry route to best effect is “Bridges of Love,” in which Jericho Rosales and Paulo Avelino are cast as long-separated brothers. In fact, they don’t even recognize each other since they move in contrastingly different circles.

Not aware of their real relationship, they even end up falling for the same woman (Maja Salvador)! Initially, she’s Jericho’s girlfriend, but his sudden departure to work abroad grievously hurts her, so deep she dumps him.

Enter Paulo, who’s now a very rich man’s adopted son, and he unfeelingly exploits Maja’s vulnerability and financial problems to get her to “service” a wealthy and powerful scion whose favor he’s trying to curry.

Unexpected developments

This happens in Japan, where unexpected developments “force” Paulo to discover his hitherto inaccessible “feeling” side—and save Maja’s life!

This perplexes and touches her so the once-combative pair find themselves “grudgingly” falling for one another!

All this while Jericho is having to cope with his own huge problems in the Middle East, where he ends up being bludgeoned and tortured in prison on a trumped-up charge. When he’s finally freed, he learns that Maja now has a new love, and he goes berserk—until she pointedly reminds him that he was the first to leave her—high and dry!

All this has been happening without Jericho and Paulo discovering that they are siblings, so we can only imagine the heights the show will reach in terms of perfervid melodrama when they do!

“Bridges of Love” is Jericho’s stellar comeback to television, so we were initially pleased when he registered strongly in it. He was at the top of his thespic game and left his costars far behind.

Later, however for some strange reason, the series didn’t build up this key advantage and instead shunted his character off to the side as it focused more on Paulo and Maja in Japan. We trust that, now that Jericho is no longer in jail, he will be able to regain control and focus in the show’s storytelling, because he needs it to effect a truly successful comeback—and because he’s the production’s lead star, after all!

Why is the theme of sibling rivalry popular with TV producers and viewers? Because brotherly and sisterly bonds are more seminal and complex than most other relationships, so their resulting domestic confrontations can be relied on to flare up to “satisfying” hyper-heights of mega-melodrama when their conflicts are finally resolved!