‘Teleserye’ updates

ALCASID. Portrays a veterinarian in “Daldalita.”

Many new teleseryes have been starting their run on TV this final quarter of 2011 – but, what about the shows that have been on the tube for weeks and months, how are they faring? The question isn’t moot and academic, because longrunning series tend to slump or get into confusing storytelling detours and cul-de-sacs that they have a hard time extricating themselves from.

Hence, these updates:

On the plus side, “Daldalita” does have its share of excesses and insufficiencies, but when Ogie Alcasid’s veterinarian character started to work in a zoo, the show perked up due to the many colorful animals and other creatures that the production could “animate” and anthropomorphically enable to “speak.”

This “animated speaking” technique was first made popular on the big screen by the movie, “Babe,” and it’s great to see that local TV animators can now make good use of it, too.

On the other hand, we note with a mix of sadness and irritation that the plots of current drama series are too similar to one another, betraying a lack of original thinking on the part of our scriptwriters.

For instance, the story of “Budoy” revolves around a mentally challenged boy who’s kept away from his true parents and the new series, “Ikaw ay Pag-ibig,” also casts Zaijian Jaranilla as the child Dimples Romana has been looking for ever since he was born and similarly separated from her.

Granted, this melodramatic plot device can be relied on to tug at viewers’ heartstrings and to keep them watching to see when the separated characters will finally be reunited. But, must it be resorted to so often? There are so many other strings that can be strummed and twanged, to more diverse and pleasingly harmonious effect.

Too many ‘arias’

Of late, our teleseryes have also been guilty of making their characters launch into excessively extended “arias” or monologues to express themselves in emotionally and artistically “moving” ways. Recent examples include the deathbed “arias” of Timmy Cruz in “Daldalita” and Susan Roces in “100 Days to Heaven.”

More recently, even the much-admired portrayal of Janice de Belen in “Budoy” was marred last week by her overlong and overwrought series of “arias” related to her losing the affection of her adoptive son, when it’s revealed that ZsaZsa Padilla is his birth mother. Not all the talent in the world can distract from the basic unreality and thus lack of believability in extended monologues, which are too self-consciously arty for anybody’s good.

When success leads to excess

Finally, some teleseryes turn out to be so successful that they’re extended for two or three seasons more, thus going beyond the storytelling “arc” that was originally planned for them.

Thus, their writers have had to add new complications and characters, and the extended series’ pertinence is stretched too much and too far to sustain their logic and relevance. This is what’s happening on “Amaya” and “Munting Heredera” – and the stretch marks show!