You can’t keep a good TV host down for long

SOTTO. More enlightened and truly enlightening thrust.

Some months ago, when Ali Sotto lost her new TV show after only a few weeks of telecasting, she felt lost, scorned, rejected. When she reached out to us, we shared that, in our own, much more abridged TV career, we had also been on the receiving end of some low blows and raw deals, but we didn’t lose heart, because—“talent will out.”

We were sure that something else, perhaps something better, was in store for her, because she was a competent TV host, a relatively scarce “commodity” these days, so it would be only a matter of time before other producers would come knocking.

—Are we prescient, or what? Only a few months after the undeserved demise of her last show, Ali is back on TV with sweet vengeance by way of a weekday show on GMA News Channel, “Personalan”—and it looks like this one has “legs.”

Aired at 5 p.m., “Personalan” has Ali interacting with real people in conflict, trying to resolve  painfully emotional and divisive issues without the screaming, swearing, hair-pulling, shoving and chair-throwing that have become the nasty and cheesy norm for the ugly local versions of US TV slugfests like “The Jerry Springer Show.”

Difference

That more circumspect and unexploitative difference alone makes the arrival of “Personalan” a TV event worth celebrating, so we hope that viewers support this show and its more enlightened and truly enlightening thrust, over its “wash your dirty linen in public” counterparts, which is “least common denominator” programming at its cynical and exploitative nadir.

Last Monday, the show’s buena mano conflict involved a lola who had adopted two wards who didn’t get along with each other. One of them accused the old woman of favoritism, and hinted at an unseemly relationship between her and her favored “son,” which of course she absolutely denied.

For his part, the favored ward denied all of his gay kuya’s  nasty allegations—and added one of his own, that the complainant had the hots for him! —Whereupon the gay caballero laughed out loud, because his “sibling” definitely wasn’t as dishy as he imagined he was!

In any case, Ali and a guest “expert” tried their best to cut their way through the squabbling “family’s” many seething disagreements, resentments and misunderstandings, and at the end of the show, they succeeded: The combatants apologized to each other, pledged to be kinder and more truly loving to one another, and all was well with their world—at least for the nonce.

Even better, they were able to air their resentments and express themselves without being vile and vicious and loud, consequently teaching viewers that they too could resolve their own disagreements without being nastily disagreeable.

“Personalan” benefits greatly from Ali’s genuine concern and interest in people’s lives and problems, and from her ability to sort out complex and even contradictory issues to arrive at the truth—and an outcome that’s at least acceptable to everyone.

True, not enough can really be done in an hour’s time to really solve some festering and deeply rooted problems, but Ali’s “personal touch” program is a good first step in that direction.