Scripting flaws compromise screen moppets’ believability

One of the funny-pathetic flaws of local TV drama scripting that urgently cry out for redress and reform is many scriptwriters’ bad habit of making the child characters in teleseryes talk like adults! They do this to make the juvenile characters sound profound, poetic and wise, and thus give viewers a lot of food for thought, and “quotable quotes.”

But, this also betrays a basic laziness on the erring scriptwriters’ part because it’s more difficult to make kids sound like kids—and most of our writers just don’t bother to take that essential next step. After all, they console themselves smugly, local viewers just love it when kid characters come off as wise and loquacious and hyperarticulate and verbally expressive—so, what’s the big deal?

Well, it is a very big deal for viewers who care about believability in the dramas and comedies they watch on TV, so they can very naturally empathize with the “reality” they’re watching unfold in front of them. Yes, listening to super-wise and chatterbox kids can be entertaining, but only on an all-too-shallow and improbable level—so, who wants to go there?

Last TV season, the “Dream Dad” drama series featured a resident moppet, Baby (played by Jana Agoncillo), who talked naturally like the child she is—so, we thought that other series would see the light and follow suit.

Alas, the opposite has happened: This season, most drama series featuring children in principal roles make their resident cuties talk like pint-sized poets or orators! The “leading” perpetrators and exponents of this wrong-headed scripting “school” are “Flor de Liza” and “Nathaniel.”

Excuse

On “Nathaniel,” the excuse for the child title character’s propensity to talk like an all-knowing adult is the fact that he’s supposed to be an angel. Well, that alibi still doesn’t mitigate all of the “wise” and “deep” sentences and paragraphs that emanate from his precocious mouth.

Worse, Nathaniel’s solutions to the many problems he encounters are much too facile to be believed—so, where’s the real and earned emotional and thematic benefit?

Things are even more awesomely improbable on “Flor de Liza,” where the little “villain,” Liza, is made to cattily and lengthily chitter and chatter away in “clever” abandon!

In fact, she’s sometimes made to come off so bitchily that even her vile adult counterparts would be impressed—or depressed, as the case may be! It’s gotten so bad that it could be that the show is doing it intentionally, laying it out really thick because it feels that viewers dote on this strange kind of kiddie bitchiness!

A recent example of Liza’s amazing and precociously articulate expostulations: “Wala po bang matanda na nagturo sa inyo kung bakit ko ito ginagawa? Kulang lang po ako ng atensyon!” Wow.

And: “Excited na po ako na lumabas ang baby brother ko —’pag lumabas po s’ya, may kakampi na ako!” Gulp.

—Is this a tiny Martian sent down to planet Earth to do her worst and give human kids the lousiest possible example to “trendily” emulate? Liza—layas!