Keeping viewers interested, involved for the long term

CAST of “Be Careful With My Heart” should be given more challenging scenes to bite into.

How does a weekday TV drama series that’s been running for close to two years keep viewers watching up to its “last two minutes” (We hear, in November)? The hit family series, “Be Careful With My Heart,” offers some interesting and instructive answers:

After Maya and “Ser Chief” finally got married (thus fulfilling the palpitating fantasy of many domestic helpers), Maya moved up in the world, had twins and even managed to have her own career.

For his part, Ser Chief unbent a little and learned how to find joy again in the little things in life.

In addition, Maya’s family problems were eventually sorted out, and the show was “dangerously” sliding into the plateau of predictability, never a good outcome for TV drama.

So, to generate fresh interest in the long-running series’ progression, the older kids were given crushes to dreamily pine for. And, when that ploy started to lose its appeal, even the show’s household help were given subplots of their own—especially, the old mayordoma played by Gloria Sevilla, who was made to reconcile with an old beau!

To make the mature love story “accessible” to teen viewers, flashback scenes had the lovers played in their youth by no less than young faves Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo! That made for freshly exciting viewership, but even that special “chapter” had to end recently—so what now?

Not to worry, the focus has shifted back to Ser Chief, whose high-flying business career has finally been beset by some unexpected reversals, which are currently being played out, with great risk and foreboding.

This may be bad news for Richard Yap’s character, but we’re glad that the mature actor is finally being given some relatively more challenging scenes to bite into. For much of the long-running series’ storytelling, Ser Chief has been too perfect for his own good, a fantasy character and life partner that many deprived women can only dream of.

Well, now that Ser Chief is finally being confronted with some of the harsh realities and setbacks of the business world, we hope that Richard will be able to prove that he’s capable of doing more than just “perfect fantasy” acting!

What about Jodi Sta. Maria’s character, Maya? She’s had her own fantasies fully realized in the course of the series, but we trust that she, too, will be given “revelatory” acting challenges before the series ends.

It’s great to be in a popular and long-running show, but the series’ cast can benefit even more if they’re given the opportunity to score extra points as thespians.

In this regard, our most fervent hopes are for the character played by Aiza Seguerra, whose performance has made up for the series’ excessive “fantasticating” with its warm believability, edgy contrariness—and “bite”!