It is such a strange time for Philippine TV - and I’m not talking about reality television taking over our lives and creating many talentless stars in the process; nor about the fantaserye reminding us of how much we need to escape from the realities of rising oil prices and NFA rice lines. Both of these aren’t so much strange as they are sad.

What is strange is the rise of the Filipinized Korean-novela - a unique entity in a country where the Mexican telenovela Marimar was only Filipinized a decade after the original became a TV hit. This remake was something we actually had coming, given the too familiar plot of a poor simpleton turned rich powerful woman, ready to seek revenge, but is softened by her true love. It’s the stuff every other Pinoy soap opera is made of.

The Korean telenovela meanwhile is an unexpected entity that has appealed to Pinoy taste. When Meteor Garden became a big hit, it was a surprising thing - what with four chinky-eyed, pale yellow-white lead stars in the F4 and a simple-looking girl as lead stars, alongside a love story that seemed premised on cariño-brutal - not the usual Pinoy love story. Between the turn of the millennium to the present though, the Pinoy TV audience has taken to what we’ve come to call the Korean-novela like moths to a flame, even when the stories have evolved from strange love stories to complicated historical romances. And while it’s clear that the Pinoy taste for chinky-eyed Korean actors and actresses has much to do with the success these telenovelas enjoy, one can’t deny the possibility that there is as well an interest in the more complicated and unfamiliar plots that these stories keep. The kind that we rarely have in this country, fantaseryes notwithstanding.

Probably a testament to the appeal of the Korean story is the re-creation of these Korean-novelas into Filipinized versions, with My Girl on ABS-CBN 2 coming head-to-head with Kim Sam Soon (re-titled Ako si Kim Sam Soon) on GMA 7. These are two very disparate stories, with quite different target audiences, and now as Filipino versions of the originals, very distinct ways of taking on the challenge that is Filipinizing quite a foreign cultural product. How have they fared? And where do we find the Filipino, in plots that are so alien to us?

My Girl As Pinay Girl

It’s pretty clear from the way this teleserye was promoted that the decision to do it had much to do with the new-found success of reality show winner Kim Chiu and her team-up with co-winner Gerald Anderson. Never mind that neither are really actors, nor did their reality show Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition have anything to do with talent at all. In this land where star creation is about hype and the bombardment of images more than anything, anyone can be a star.

Or get their own primetime slot. Chiu, a typical Filipino-Chinese teenager with the right amount of conservatism and quirkiness, seems tailor-made for the lead role of Jasmine. In fact, half the time, you almost think she’s just being herself. In this Filipinized version of My Girl, Jasmine is a teenage Filipino girl, always trying to save her father’s skin from being thrown in jail, to the detriment of her own individual life which ideally would only involve getting an education and some good ol’ puppy love.

But one out of two ain’t bad at all, for while Jasmine didn’t go to school, she does have her own prince charming in the character of Anderson. And as expected, not everything is well in this love story. For one thing, Jasmine’s job, for which she is paid by Anderson, is to pretend that she’s the long-lost granddaughter of Anderson’s grandfather. For another, this charade (which so far has allowed her to keep her father out of jail, and from being killed) has recently been found out by Anderson’s ex-girlfriend - the kind who doesn’t go away.

My Girl had much going for it in the beginning, with Jasmine’s foibles including her lack of knowledge about the lifestyle of the rich and famous that she was suddenly a part of. And while the love story is what’s mostly sold here, much can be said about Jasmine’s ability to rationalize her existence within the “fairytale” that she suddenly lives in; there is too, value in Jasmine’s love for her father - regardless of his flaws. How Filipino can you get?

But the creative team of My Girl seems to be Filipinizing this a bit too much - at least to the point of it becoming testament to the need to serve a buffet table of artistas at any given time. In this case, it’s the addition of the new batch of teen winners from the second season of Pinoy Big Brother Teen Edition. A decision that might take away audiences who had survived the neophyte acting of the show’s lead stars so far, but now have to contend with beginner’s-acting from reality show contestants turned actors. Obviously the goal is to get a bigger audience share, not keep the story going - which in recent weeks, has really been only going around in circles. Because too, how complicated can you make a Filipino teenage girl’s life? How complex can you make life seem for Kim Chiu and her image of the sweet quirky - ideal - teenager of the times?

Introducing the Pinay Old Maid

What My Girl lacks in complexity, Ako si Kim Sam Soon makes up for. Starting off with Sam Soon planning her wedding to, and being stood up at the altar by, her husband-to-be, this Filipinized version of Kim Sam Soon was off to a good quick start. The first week established the complexity in Sam Soon’s character not just based on her experience of a broken heart, but also with regards to the emotional turmoil that her status in life brings: she’s a Filipina in her 30’s, overweight, jobless, and is pressured to get married.

Sam Soon’s also ruled by the presence of a social climbing sister (who, strangely enough, is thin as a rail), a noisy nagger palengkera of a mother, and a dead father who leaves her with more than just memories. The latter leaves her family in debt - the one thing that pushes her to find a job, and enter a deal with new-found boss Cyrus - the least likeable leading man possible. This deal allows for her family to survive through the debt her father incurred, but is also the source of complexity in Sam Soon’s life, stuck as she suddenly is with a pretend-boyfriend and a real-life boss.

Regine Velasquez’s take on Sam Soon’s character is a refreshing one, willing as she was to look the part (complete with a fat suit and fat clothes, bad hair, and barely any make-up), and become as “fat” in terms of mannerisms and attitude. Watching Velasquez dive into an overflowing plate of rice and adobo, or filling her mouth with pastries, listening to her travails as a Pinoy single woman wanting to find the man of her dreams, or as a discriminated overweight Pinay, is surprisingly believable.

Mark Anthony Fernandez’s Cyrus meanwhile, is by turns a touching character and an irritating one - kindhearted when he wants to be, but absolutely antagonistic when he feels threatened by Sam Soon’s knowledge of his pusong mamon tendencies. Much of what happens between the characters of Cyrus and Sam Soon, is fodder for the comedy that happens in the show, a feat in itself for Velasquez whose only experience with acting has been for light drama movies that tend to repeat themselves. Fernandez’s take on Cyrus’ character is that of the conventional Pinoy male who refuses to be tied down, but likes having a woman swoon over him - if only to keep his confidence intact. This becomes the perfect opposite to Velasquez’s Sam Soon who, at her age, is so ready to believe that prince charming can come in any package - even the antagonistic one that Cyrus appears in.

If there’s anything that drags Ako si Kim Sam Soon down, it’s the minor story about Sam Soon’s sister, which takes up too much time and only seems like an effort at putting in some puppy love story to cater to an audience of a different age bracket. The thing is, the show barely needs this, as the complexities of Sam Soon’s and Cyrus’ lives can stand on their own. In fact the activities and characters that surround the hotel where they both work is contextually enough to keep the show interesting. And downright funny.

Director Dominic Zapata has said that Ako si Kim Sam Soon, unlike the top raters of primetime, is a “slow burn”. What it has become is a good slow burn. Because while I can already imagine the ending to the Filipinized version of My Girl - focused as it has become on the teenage love story/ies and celebrities it wants to sell - I can’t quite say for sure what will happen to Kim Sam Soon and Cyrus next week.

Now that’s a Filipinization that doesn’t sacrifice the complexity of character or plot, originally Korean as this was. In fact what it proves is that Filipinization gives way to a different kind of complexity, one that’s grounded in a culture that’s anything but Korean, and just might be able to tear apart the stereotypes of the Pinay and the lives that she’s expected to live. That can only be a good thing.

Beyond ABS-CBN

It is therefore no surprise that gone are the days when any actor or actress could just gather enough gumption to hold a microphone and instantly become TV host. So much more is at stake now, given the fact that many of these reality shows are expensive franchises. And it is that one host who needs to keep audiences from changing channels at any given time.

But both ABS-CBN 2 and GMA 7 have yet to come up with anyone that’s close to Gonzaga’s stature, if one may call it that. Rodriguez and Gonzales, while both bubbling with personality, seem to be one and the same person, even with their different skin colors and shows. Much can be said about the fact that while Rodriguez has slowly started to move from hosting to acting, she isn’t really much of an actress; and both her and Gonzales’ upper class origins reveals itself when they’re made to relate with the mass audience. The same may be said for Manzano, whose personality has yet to shine in the context of hosting chores that’s predominantly done by females, at least on ABS-CBN.

GMA 7 would seem to have one over the former channel when it comes to male hosts, with its usual suspect Paolo Bediones, but also a new set of younger hosts Raymond Guttierez (for Pinoy Idol and Showbiz Central), Moe Twister (for Showbiz Central), and Drew Arellano (for Unang Hirit and Balikbayan).

Of this batch, it’s Guttierez who got the coveted Pinoy Idol hosting stint, for reasons beyond anyone’s understanding. Suffice it to say that he lacks the maturity and credibility for the job, and one actually reminisces about the witty repartee and personality that at least Ryan Agoncillo leant to the past incarnation of the same franchise.

Meanwhile, it is Twister and Arellano who are more engaging to watch, successful as both are at traversing the line between their fluent-English upbringing and class origins, and the mass audience that the network banks on for profits. Both also reveal much of their personalities in the shows that they do, proving that Gonzaga’s style of silly and quirky - her realness - does work across genders, and networks, even shows.

And yet, both Twister and Arellano are relegated to the shows that they have, all of which aren’t on primetime and really do limit them insofar as flexing their hosting muscles are concerned. Here, it does become clear that as far as GMA 7 is concerned host-creation is at best a flimsy concept that’s barely important.

Something that’s proven further by their decision to have singer Karylle and actress Rhian Ramos, to co-host Pinoy Idol with Guttierez. This trio’s barely there when it comes to keeping the show and its sub-show Pinoy Idol Extra interesting, as the three bank on their pretty faces and articulateness (and obviously their very good managers who got them the hosting stints) instead of on credibility or personality.

Something in turn, that ABS-CBN seems to consciously build in their roster of hosts. Where credibility in contemporary times is represented by the number of product endorsements and projects that the hosts are given, and personality is about selling everything and anything possible about these hosts - talent and skill notwithstanding.

And if the ratings game is any indication, then Pinoy Dream Academy undoubtedly has one over Pinoy Idol - that is, it has Gonzaga, Gil and Crawford, over Guttierez, Karylle and Ramos. It’s really no contest.

The reality show taking over local television has been lamented often enough; what has gone unnoticed is how this has also brought upon us a set of faces and voices that have become television show hosts. Unlike their predecessors, these hosts are usually created from scratch - they’re not primarily actors or singers who have ended up hosting one variety show or another. Instead, they are groomed to become the “ideal” hosts for any given show, any given network. Ultimately allowing for the hosts to become symbols of not just the shows they hold together, but of the network they are part of.

Toni Gonzaga country

In recent years, ABS-CBN 2 has become Toni Gonzaga country - even when Gonzaga has consistently gotten bad reviews for her use of ungrammatical English, Filipino and Taglish, and the over the top, almost irritating, delivery of her spiels. For most of the year, Gonzaga’s on TV everyday for a reality show (Pinoy Big Brother and all its incarnations, as well as Pinoy Dream Academy), and on Saturday afternoons for showbiz talkshow Entertainment Live.

In all these shows, Gonzaga holds things together as host - even when we are made to believe, as probably her co-hosts are, that everyone who holds a microphone is on equal footing. So while Mariel Rodriguez, Bianca Gonzales and Nikki Gil are usually in these shows with her, they are mere secondary hosts, doing pre-taped, usually negligible segments. Even with Luis Manzano (in PBB Teen Edition) and recently, Billy Crawford (in Pinoy Dream Academy), Gonzaga is allowed to man the fort as she controls spiels, and particularly with Crawford, practically carrying him and his awkward hosting skills through most of the show.

But Gonzaga isn’t just a reality/talk show host. On Sundays, she shares the stage with other ABS-CBN stars on variety show ASAP, where she also proves her singing and dancing chops. She’s also an actress with a string of movie hits, a singer with a couple of CDs to her name, and a concert performer. So while she seems to be the same as the rest of ‘em ABS-CBN stars who are expected to do everything, Gonzaga’s edge is that she actually really and truly does everything.

To the best of whatever abilities she has, even when limited, which apparently has paid off, if product endorsements are to be a measure of her credibility as celebrity.

The host as celebrity

This is the way Gonzaga has redefined what it means to be a successful host on contemporary television. The host may have always been celebrity, but Gonzaga pushed it further by becoming feed and fodder for everything else that goes with being actress and singer in this country: she revels in intrigues, bares all about her life and love, allows for a real quirky and silly self to be revealed through her shows - and once, even as a houseguest in Big Brother’s house.

It is here that one finds the Gonzaga may have redefined the notion of the host by selling not just her ability to keep people glued to their TV screens, but also by using her personality and person as that which sets her apart from the rest.

And so even when Nikki Gil can hold her own (she’s a MYX VJ after all), she seems to have something missing compared to Gonzaga. Because the latter shows that hosting isn’t just a skill anymore; it’s about everything else but that.

Next time: Beyond ABS-CBN

The past couple of weeks, Randy Santiago has been pinch hitting for host Willie Revillame on noontime gameshow Wowowee. Suffice it to say that it has been a breath of fresh air, a relief and respite from the kind of hosting that Revillame has been allowed to do on nationwide (worldwide!) television.

Because where the latter is abrasive and disrespectful of the show’s contestants, Santiago maintains an amount of compassion when dealing with Wowowee’s mass audience. Where Revillame would imagine it entertaining to poke fun at his co-hosts, the show’s contestants and audience members, Santiago’s kind of funny doesn’t even brink on bastos.

Without a doubt, Santiago proves that Revillame’s kind of comedy and hosting isn’t the only way to do a show like Wowowee. In fact, there’s no reason to do it the way Revillame does.

Because although Santiago also jokes around with the female co-hosts of the show, as well as the dancers in skimpy clothes, he is able to maintain a certain distance that dispels whatever sexist undertones the show’s format maintains to begin with. With Revillame, everything seems inappropriate, from his body language to the words he spews out without thinking them insulting.

With his penchant for drama, Revillame also likes reducing his contestants to tears, as he forces them to tell the stories of their lives - sad as these are, if not downright horrible. And yet more often than not, Revillame will respond with a punchline that pokes fun at what the contestant has gone through, or at what she looks like, how she sounds. It is here that Revillame always seems to be taking advantage of the contestants’ class origins, using it to illicit tears - and maybe money - from the richer members of the audience, or maybe to get higher ratings (who knows?).

Santiago, forced to stay within the show’s format, also asks about the contestants’ lives but with more sincerity, and responds to their stories with more compassion. There are no punchlines to be made here, and Santiago seamlessly segues onto the game that the contestant is joining in the hope of making her life better, instead of trying to illicit laughter about the sad story he has just heard.

In the process, what shines through is Santiago’s breeding - his sense of propriety in terms of dealing with the contestants and mass audience of the show, his notion of what’s funny and when to use it, and a keen sense of where he stands relative to the rest of the show. More often than not, Santiago pokes fun at himself, using as premise his own silliness instead of other people’s deficiencies.

It would do Revillame well, and the makers of Wowowee, to see the light. Santiago proves there’s much that can be done within the show’s format; that there’s no excuse to be abrasive or disrespectful for the sake of comedy or entertainment. And definitely no reason to romanticize - and make money out of - their mass audience’s stories of poverty.

for something that ABS-CBN hyped up to high heavens, and advertised like anything, there was nothing new or extraordinary about Kidnap, the story of how Ces Drilon and her cameramen Angelo Valderama and Jimmy Encarnacion were abducted in Sulu. in fact, it was so much worse than the standard Correspondents episode that the network churns out weekly, or even a Probe Team segment - which says a lot if you’re familiar with the usually shallow and biased (for big business and hacienderos/elite) slant that these two shows usually take.

Kidnap lacked focus, sold a false sense of truth (or the limited one that ABS-CBN wants to feed us), and really was a perfect example of journalism turned propaganda - and tribute.

the latter being the one thing that’s used to begin and end the documentary.

it starts off by establishing Ces as well-respected journalist, who worked her way to the top, and in the process found herself the head of a team that includes Angelo and Jimmy, both of whom she’s been with to Sulu before, and everywhere else including the Manila Peninsula siege. having established, at least the writers hope, that Ces is no pipitsugin journalist and is in fact at the forefront of the search for truth, they then start on the story of that fateful trip to interview Sahiron, the purported leader of the Abu Sayyaf.

the story is told through the interspersed voices of Angelo, Jimmy and Ces, with the latter insisting that she was warned by her superiors Chari Villa and Maria Ressa that what she wanted to do was too dangerous. Ces insists it was her sole decision to go through with a live meeting (as opposed to just sending go-between Prof. Dinampo with a list of questions she wanted to ask), and that she dragged her team down with her.

and then the show dragged all good sense down with it, too.

for one thing, it started to show reenactments of what Ces and her team went through, which really only meant showing us a group of actors walking through some forest, ending up in some makeshift camp, periodically being threatened with death, and being taken over by fear and tears and prayer. suffice it to say that showing us a random forest was pointless, missing as it did the rough terrain that the team seemed to have suffered through; in fact, showing us reenactments when there was real footage from Jimmy’s camera of life in the camp and of some of the traveling they did on foot, was a poor journalistic decision.

all the docu proved by interspersing the reenactments with real footage was the fact that they wanted to stretch the show, and waste all of our time, really.

and although the docu did have its high point in its use of both Jimmy’s real footage and the recordings of Ces’ cellphone conversations with brother Frank, as well as Ressa and Ces recalling the first conversations that they had about the kidnapping - all of which gave us a new sense of what was going on - this was all it had going for it.

because the truth stopped being the point at that very moment when the docu revealed that a 2-million ransom was paid by Ces’ family before Angelo was released, and at that very moment when Sen. Loren Legarda suddenly entered the picture - the one thing that seemed to have saved Jimmy from a beheading.

at this point, the docu’s chronological telling of the abduction becomes interspersed with a reenactment of Ces breaking down in the middle of the night, complete with a flashback of lighter moments with Jimmy and Angelo. and then Ces in the present, starts talking about taking responsibility, and insisting that she too, die with Jimmy, because she couldn’t let anyone die because of her, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

then suddenly, they were free, and all we see is footage that we’ve seen in the news before, with the same story that ABS-CBN has allowed us to know, nothing new, nothing special, just ABS-CBN’s brand of journalism with a penchant for covering up the truth, not revealing it - or at least revealing their interest in big bucks and sponsors and saving face, over and above anything else.

the docu ends with what sounds like a tribute to Ces, where Angelo and Jimmy say they don’t blame her for anything, and they would work with her again, no questions asked; and Ressa talks about why they only gave Ces a 3-month suspension because it’s Ces’ kind of journalism that ABS-CBN stands for and respects.

for more drama, the docu ends with interspersed images of the actors who played Ces-Jimmy-Angelo disappearing from the forest they used as setting, and the real Ces-Jimmy-Angelo disappearing from their seats at the end of their interviews.

in effect, the docu ends with silence. it ends without telling us what led to the team’s freedom from captivity; without giving us a sense of what Loren did or didn’t do; what ABS-CBN paid or didn’t pay; what role the military and PNP played; what technology they used, and at whose expense. it didn’t answer any of the questions we’ve had about the abduction - so much for the public’s right to know.

without knowing it, this uncalled for dramatic ending was symbolic of what it is that this whole show was about: the disappearance of the truths that surround that abduction, and a network’s news and public affairs arm protecting its own interests, conveniently forgetting that at any other time, given any other issue, they would insist on the public’s right to know.

what an absolute waste of time and i imagine, good money. but what does one expect with executive producer and writer Patricia Evangelista, who seems to have been given too much too soon. her brand of journalism - with no clear interviewer or narrative for Storyline, and often self-centered columns in the Inquirer, where she seems shallow and sophomoric more often than not - may work for certain subjects some of the time. but as Kidnap proves, it doesn’t work for everything, and certainly not all of the time.

and then again, maybe Evangelista just proves that she’s perfect for the kind of journalism that ABS-CBN wants to spread around: self-centered, shallow, usually ill-informed, and not at all about the public’s right to know. in fact, as with the case of Kidnap, it’s also quite insulting.  what, they thought we would be happy enough with some raw footage and taped conversations?  how little they think of their audience. how full of themselves they can be.