What will they do for an encore?

MAINE Mendoza (left) and Alden Richards

For months now, we’ve been nagging “Eat Bulaga” to conclude the storytelling on its hit “AlDub” segment, because it’s overstayed its welcome.

Yes, it’s great to be able to run laughing all the way to the bank, but can’t we do it without boring viewers to tears with stretched-out material retold for the nth time mostly for profit’s sake?

Well, last Sept. 3, the show finally ended the “AlDub” kalyeserye with Yaya Dub’s lolas leaving for “abroad,” and Yaya now entrusted to Alden’s love and care. We guess everybody involved is rich enough, so logic has finally prevailed. Well, better late than never.

What will “Eat Bulaga” do for an encore to follow up on its recently concluded kalyeserye’s success?

Some people would just thank their lucky stars and not expect lightning to hit twice, but we suspect that “EB” will still try to come up with a similar phenomenon—just to make the competition even “gangreener” with envy!

What could it be? Riffing off from the “AlDub” experience, perhaps the show shouldn’t try too hard to micromanage the encore move.

After all, “AlDub” started rather casually, with no big expectations that it would prosper and last seemingly “forever.”

So, an ample margin should be left generally unplanned and unfilled for the next daily feature, and let the fickle finger of fate work its aw-shucks wonder and magic again!

Incidentally, “Eat Bulaga’s” future prospects were given a good “karmic” boost when the end of “AlDub” coincided with the return to the show, after seven months in “exile,” of its third lola player Paolo Ballesteros.  The positive vibe that the decision to “forgive” him generated resonated favorably with viewers—and, we daresay, with sundry auspicious industry augurers, as well.

Come to think of it, the decision was in fact par for “EB’s” course, because the two other lola players, Jose Manalo and Wally Bayola, were also suspended from the show for a time, for their own even more reprehensible sins of omission and commission. So, all that Paolo did was—join the club!

Back to Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards: They have been the “AlDub” phenomenon’s biggest beneficiaries, so they can’t be expected to rest on their laurels. What could their joint or separate follow-up gambits be?

For their hot tandem, it looks like they may star in a spinoff teleserye, most likely more rom-com than “heavy drama.”

Just make sure it’s written and directed by the best and savviest people, OK? Maine and Alden may be at the top of their game and fame, but the trouble with flying so high up is—there’s no place to go but down.

Thus, the best production support is needed to at least delay that inevitable downward denouement!