Injudiciously early exit for drama series’ best actor

VALDEZ. Depth, texture and genuine passion.

The greatest loss in ongoing teleseryes last week was the early demise and exit from “Pasion de Amor” of its senior lead, the hacendero played by Ronaldo Valdez.

Just as we were delighting in his vigorous and textured characterization, he was ordered killed by his wife, played by Teresa Loyzaga, who was afraid of losing him to his new love, a lovely teenager who was as good as Teresa’s character was mean to the core of her corroded soul!

Despite the fact that she had cheated on her husband first, Teresa absolutely refused to give Ronaldo up to his young but loving inamorata, and felt that it was better to order his execution than to have another woman enjoy his embraces—and his vast fortune!

Trouble was, in killing Ronaldo off to make Teresa’s virago character happy, the series lost its strongest and most vital player, leaving dramatics and melodramatics in the relatively incapable hands of its younger lead players, led by Jake Cuenca, Ejay Falcon and Joseph Marco, and their female “love-hate” partners.

We say “love-hate,” because the three young women all play the daughters of Ronaldo and Teresa, and the three brothers have decided to avenge their only sister’s death not just by ruining Teresa’s inherited fortune, but by breaking her lovely daughters’ hearts!

That vengeance theme is all too familiar on local TV drama series, but more than the plot’s predictability, the new series’ biggest problem is its lack of a galvanizing mature lead player to keep its developments involving.

The young leads do try to up the show’s melodramatic ante, but their best efforts fall short

—so, what can the now floundering series do to compensate for its loss of Ronaldo? Will another gifted mature actor be hurriedly brought in to provide the depth and texture and genuine passion that the show now lacks? —Maybe Ronaldo didn’t really die, after all (it’s been known to happen in local teleseryes)? —What?

Diluted by teens

Elsewhere on the teleserye front, the GMA 7 series, “Let the Love Begin,” starring AiAi delas Alas, Gardo Versoza and Donita Rose, is now faring even less well, because its “teenage love” subplot has kicked in, and the callow, shallow “problems” of its teen players has diluted the show’s interest value in a major way.

Yes, we know that this is being done to keep young viewers watching, but what are older viewers to do while they’re spending so much valuable screen time with their endless galit-bati, tampo-ngiti antics—?

To a lesser degree, the same problem is also affecting ABS-CBN’s “Pangako Sa ‘Yo,” now that the similarly young and combative characters played by Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo have entered the series’ melodramatic picture.

It’s a good thing that Daniel and Kathryn are given less shallow problems and conflicts, so their performances are less callow and silly.

Powerful conflicts

Still, the series should keep reminding itself that its more mature leads have introduced powerful conflicts that need to be revisited more than just occasionally!

The key is to know exactly when and how to alternate between the series’ main “mature” plot and its “young” subplot—and then, most crucially of all, to fuse them together to the show’s best dramatic and thematic advantage!

‘Tomorrowland’

We make it a point to watch all new movies starring George Clooney, because he’s proven in the course of his “golden” career that he makes films not just for the money, but also to share an insightful dramatic experience with his many fans.

Clooney’s latest starrer, “Tomorrowland,” is no exception to this admirable and heartening rule: It takes us to a perfect future world—where most instructively, things are not what they seem.

In fact, it eventually turns out that despite the usual splendors of this advanced civilization, our planet is on the verge of shutting down, due to the irreparable ecological damage that has made life intolerable for the masses, temporarily “saving” the fortunate residents of this “city of the future today.”

The production pulls this complicated sci-fi conceit off with its adroit use of differing planes of existence. But, the bottom line is, everybody—even the favored few—will expire despite those prodigious technical achievements.

What’s the “unsolvable” problem? The human race has lost its ability to hope, and the downward spiral of despair is dragging even its leaders and geniuses down to helpless extinction—!

In fact, the situation has gotten so desperately bad that the human race is only given two months before the suicidal die is finally, irretrievably cast!

This is where Clooney’s character comes in: Like the advanced world’s other leaders and inventors, he appears to be helpless in saving the planet—but, to his credit, before he lost hope, he sent out some symbolic and totemic pins to a few brilliant and promising youths, in the last-ditch hope that a few or even just one of them still has the unextinguished flame of passion and hope still burning in his or her heart.

Luckily for all of “us,” one such optimistic exception (Britt Robertson) responds to his now flickering and fading call—and, with Clooney’s more knowing and experienced help, is able to turn the tide for the planet and the “suicidal” human race—by “infecting” everyone with her contra mundum flame of hope and optimism.

Far-out, fanciful resolution

Yes, it’s a far-out and fanciful resolution, but that’s what sci-fi movies are for: to take viewers beyond the limiting boudaries of logic and practicality, and invite them to dream and hope again.

Thus, “Tomorrowland” exactly vivifies what sci-fi productions do best—so, despite some “baggage” like too many visually dark scenes that contradict the film’s message of hope, the film eventually, finally works.