Crying all the way to the bank

I THOUGHT I’d seen everything—until I watched a TV show last month that gave a lot of prizes to the big winner for the day, a domestic helper—who, instead of laughing and happily shouting for joy as expected and presumed—kept bursting into tears and heaving sobs!

—At first, the program hosts who visited her in her employer’s home to shower her with over P100,000 worth of cash and goodies were caught off-guard and nonplussed by her unexpected “tragic” reaction!

But they quickly and creatively opted to turn the awkward moment into a “funny-pathetic” viewing experience, crying along with the recipient as they kept giving her prizes—and a weirdly good time was had by all! —Only in the Philippines, indeed!

The unexpected and unintended comedy was due to the usual expectation that winners laugh instead of soggily cry a river of pathetic, bathetic tears. But, the winner in question was so fixated on her “miserable” life that it took her a really long time to realize that her misery—was history!

The program cohosts smartly opted to mine the TV moment for all of the “hapless instead of happy” humor it was worth, by empathetically “crying” even more soggily and loudly as they sequentially announced the yummy prizes the weeping woman was getting.

Slow on the uptake

She may have been slow on the uptake, but they were really quick to see the “moment’s” comic possibilities—and played them to the hilt, to viewers’ ditzy delight!

To her credit, the weeping winner didn’t appear to mind being played by the visiting hosts to such “funny-bathetic” effect. In any case, by the time she realized what was really going on, she had all those distractions in cash and kind—to finally bring a smile to her lugubrious lips!