‘Got to Believe’ ends on a ‘magically’ rollicking note

BERNARDO (WITH PADILLA, RIGHT). Got more stellar career mileage than her screen consort.

The final telecast of “Got to Believe” last Friday, March 7 gave us a chance to add  up the teen drama series’ plus and minus points in the course of its long run.

First off, the show boosted its resident “Kath-Niel” love team’s popularity, which is one of those “reel and real” team-ups that could, if handled right, go the distance as far as TV-film popularity is concerned.

In a sense, however Kathryn Bernardo got more stellar career mileage out of the show than Daniel Padilla, because her bright and sunny screen character was more “eventful” than his morose, withdrawn role. Other key players who benefited from the show’s popularity included Manilyn Reynes and Benjie Paras as her parents, and Ian Veneracion as his dad.

Carmina Villaroel didn’t do as well in the role of Daniel’s perennially miffed and dissatisfied mother, due to her thin speaking voice and occasionally “nega” onscreen disposition.

Resident villain

Yes, every teleserye has to have its resident “misunderstood villain” to keep things productively off-kilter, but Villaroel’s sourness was too unrelieved.

The series’ last telecast finally revealed why she was so testy and sometimes even tormented: In the storytelling’s biggest “twist,” it was bared that the bullet that had impaired her son’s brain and personality had come from her gun—and that this horrible guilty secret was the reason why she had behaved so badly all these years!

The actress did her level best to make the belated confession painful and poignant enough for Daniel to forgive her, but the unexpected denouement still came off as too implausible to be believed.

But, all teleseryes have to have a happy ending, so as we watched the final telecast, we instinctively sensed that a wedding was coming on—after all, there’s nothing like a huge and happy nuptial sequence to chase all hurts and tragedies away!

It turned out that we were only partially correct: Yes, the series did end with a wedding, but the principals weren’t “Kath-Niel,” but his parents, Ian and Carmina!

—Why not the teen couple? Could it be that their onscreen nuptials are being reserved for a future film production, for even greater impact and a boffo box-office slam-dunk?

In any case, the young leads had their chance to get lovey-dovey with one another at their TV-series’ “final-final” conclusion, when he pulled a novelty “magic” trick on her by “amazingly” descending down the side of a tall building and proposing to her—upside-down!

Thus did Daniel “do a Spider-Man” to end their show on a “magically” rollicking note! We just wished that his character could have been as entertaining, instead of glum and moody, throughout their teleserye’s run.