Program updates and puzzlers

AGONCILLO.Her ‘teleserye’ sometimes goes off into seemingly unrelated directions.

AFTER ALL the praises we’ve heaped on the “Ningning” drama series, recent developments in its storytelling have puzzled us with their noticeable and even radical change of tone.

Right after its title character’s (Jana Agoncillo) mother died, the series has been quite erratically going off into different and seemingly unrelated directions, like a neighborhood fiesta, a barangay beauty pageant, etc.

It’s as if the show is trying to lighten its treatment by focusing instead on some secondary characters and their minor substories.

While it’s good to focus on other people in the cast of characters, to show how everyone in the drama’s small urban neighborhood is “connected” to everybody else, this shouldn’t be done at the expense of the story’s main protagonists, and by no means should the leads be limited to merely reacting to the other characters’ stories.

Did somebody “up there” in the production decide that it was becoming “too serious” and thus needed to take a break and lighten up for a temporary change?

We’ll never know, but the shift in tone could end up working against the series’ major themes, and their intended fruition and resolution.

On “Doble Kara,” it’s been hinted at for weeks now that the time will soon come when the twins portrayed by Julia Montes will end up fighting and even hating each other.

Well, that time came last week, when Sarah finally discovered that Kara’s “adoptive” dad was in fact their real father.

Aside from feeling betrayed and deceived, this shocking discovery added to her lifelong feeling of being second best—less loved and appreciated compared to her more fortunate sibling, whose illness in childhood necessitated her being brought up in the States, where she was cured by the best doctors.

We can expect the “twin rivalry” twist to be mined for all of the melodramatic pyrotechnics it can whip up, but the emotional square-off won’t be fully realized unless the show finally fixes its main problem—the fact that Sarah is a more interesting character than Kara, because Julia feels more of a snug fit in depicting her.

It’s with the more well-born and educated Kara that she’s been having problems with—a limitation that, if it remains unaddressed, will continue to hobble the drama and adversely affect its thespic balance.

Lying cad

On “MariMar” the fact that Sergio (Tom Rodriguez) has turned out to be a lying cad has also negatively affected the series’ progress and effect on viewers.

Now that everybody knows that MariMar is being grievously deceived, the bloom is off the rose, and the show’s “romantic value” has been depleted.
We know that Sergio is now feeling guilty and is realizing that he loves his new bride, after all—but, if and when he does abjectly beg for a second chance, he may not be able to gain the viewers’ trust and forgiveness again!