‘Teleserye’ updates

VALDEZ. Stuck to his thespic guns. Photo:showbiz-portal.com

ON “Walang Hanggan,” the tables are turning for the series’ good and bad guys, with Dawn Zulueta about to set her big vengeance scenario in relentless motion. Her main “engine” for getting her pound of flesh is her young ward and protege, Coco Martin, who has his own reasons for wanting to get back at Richard Gomez’s family.

To make it all happen convincingly, Coco has to be believable in his character’s transition from farm boy to Europe-trained wine expert. Unfortunately, the actor has thus far failed to make that key shift. It isn’t just a matter of a change of wardrobe and the projection of a newfound sophistication and finesse, the change should go deeper for it to be truly convincing.

Attention

At this point in the storytelling, we still feel that the series is paying too much attention to its young leads, Coco and Julia Montes, when what viewers like us want to see is a stronger focus on the Richard-Dawn tandem.

Finally, the big question is, when will Dawn and Richard finally realize that their long-“dead” child is actually—Coco?

In the new drama, “Dahil sa Pag-ibig,” the characters later to be played by Piolo Pascual and Christine Reyes are still children, so the dramatic focus is on the story’s older characters.

It has been established that the wealthy Don played by Ronaldo Valdez looks down on his son-in-law (Christopher de Leon), pressuring him to “prove himself”—to the extent of acquiring a huge tract of land by (unintentionally) killing its new owner (Joel Torre). Unknown to Christopher, he ends up adopting Joel’s son (!), and this enrages Ronaldo further because the young “stranger” can now be an eligible part-inheritor of his wealth.

Last Tuesday, this seething conflict between Christopher and Ronaldo erupted in a protracted confrontation that Christopher should have “won,” since it gave his character the opportunity to express all of the righteous indignation seething in his heart against Ronaldo’s oppressive and hurtful tactics against him.

Unfortunately, however, it was Ronaldo’s portrayal that dominated the long sequence, because he stuck to his thespic guns, while Christopher tended to flail around to make his dramatic points.

Granted, the scene was a particularly challenging one for him to pull off—but, isn’t that what memorable acting is all about?