Kids call the shots on ‘My Dear Heart’

Coney Reyes (left) and Nayomi Ramos

The good news is that Coney Reyes’ focused lead portrayal continues to bolster the ongoing drama series, “My Dear Heart.”

But, raining on Coney’s stellar parade these days is the series’ even stronger focus on its kid content, with its child characters, led by Nayomi “Heart” Ramos, setting the storytelling’s main “agenda.”

What’s wrong with this? The kids’ point of view may be charming, but woefully simplistic and predictable, so the series’ unfolding events don’t sustain older viewers’ interest; and mature and acclaimed thespians like Coney are similarly given little that’s truly substantial and challenging to bite into.

This is a poor use of well-honed acting talent, so we hope that the “kids call the shots” rule on “My Dear Heart” is rendered null and void as soon as possible so the series’ storytelling will become less simplistic, predictable—and childish?

Another negative consequence of the show’s excessive focus on its child characters is that they’re made to sound too mature and profound in the dialogue they spout, which makes it inappropriate and implausible.

Kid characters should think, feel and talk like the little children they’re supposed to be—no self-consciously profound and “knowing” statements and insights, please!

This lesson was admirably taught and learned in a past ABS-CBN kiddie drama series, “Ningning,” so we thought that it had been permanently imbibed.

But, “My Dear Heart’s” scripting has taken a step backward in this regard, so it looks like another “reminder” is in order.

Other hopefully “constructive” notes: Aside from Coney, Robert Arevalo and Susan Africa, the adult performers in the show, come up short.

Part of the problem is the excessive, “controlling” importance given to the child characters that we’ve been complaining about, but individual actors’ deficiencies also come into play.

Ria Atayde is given her thespic break in the show, by way of the pivotal role of Coney’s estranged daughter, but she fails to measure up to its “possibilities” because she focuses mainly on “externals.”

Let’s hope that she finds her conflicted character’s true core before the series ends.

But, the biggest problem the show now faces is the approaching resolution and “exposure” of its biggest “secret,” revolving around the true identity of Ria’s “dead” child.

The show’s viewers have known all along that she’s actually the title character, Heart, but Ria has been told that she died in infancy, a coverup that Coney has also been led to
believe in.

Now that the series is about to end, the secret will have to come out or be outed—and, when it does, Coney’s character could be mistakenly hated and condemned—not just by Ria, but also by the show’s other principal characters.

How will the show be able to credibly “redeem” her, as all protagonists must be vindicated at the final fade?

Too much has happened to make that redemptive outcome plausible and convincing—so, good luck to the writers who got the storytelling into this huge narrative fix, in the first place!