Drama Crap

Ever since the days of free television and no cable television on site, I love watching local TV shows, from comedy like Palibhasa Lalake to cheesy action series like Aguila. The only thing I despise about local television is the goddamn drama series. Ever since the early 90s, the Mara Clara days they are all freaking the same, predictable, cheap tear generator and awful. Here are some things I hate on Philippine Drama series

One dimensional characters
The writers should give complexity in the characters that can make the viewers attached to. Drama life does not consists of one pure good protagonist, with no other traits, and one bad antagonist, with no other redeeming traits.

Remakes
The writers are responsible to create fresh drama story, not adopt a popular Korean drama shows with theme songs that the fans sing but doesn’t understand what are the lyrics mean.

Cheap production values
The company is making millions from these horrible one-faced-expression actors; they should invest in better production setup and memorable locations.

Same old cast with terrible actors/actresses
They have load of deserving talented actors stuck somewhere in their building, yet the producers have a fetish on putting the popular but super horrible actors. It’s refreshing to see new faces for each show and not to put this horrible monkey turds strutting their agonizing stuff, which consists of one single facial expression for all scenes, whether it is a happy scene or a sad scene, the facial expression is still the same.

Everyone’s related to one another
Oh man, the main character is the son of the maid who is the mistress of the grandfather who has a sister that has 2 sons, and one of them is the long, lost relative of the second mistress of the father, who is a close friend of the main character and in the end, he learned that this guy was his baby brother. Got it? Good

Titles were usually “copied” from a song title
Can they create original title for the show and not pick a random song title from a fishbowl? If they can write long script then they can brainstorm the title

The storylines were darn long
It’s like the old cartoon Dragon Ball Z, these shows have tendency to have 3 to 4 episodes for one major storyline that can realistically be placed in 1 or 2 episodes.

Putting 3 or more separate storylines in one sequence.
There are some shows that tendency to place at least 3 separate storylines in on sequence. For example, story A will have a normal conversation scene, then abruptly, story B will enter the screen and does their conversation scene, then story C will be in the screen, even the story B doesn’t have a closure yet, including story A. Then another few seconds, story A will return, continuing their conversation from their first scene and jumps to story B, then to C, then to B, then to A in just one to two minutes of sequence. Its freaking annoying and sometimes confusing.

The Killer Staircase.
Whenever two people are fighting near a staircase, 100% of time someone will fall, usually one of the good guys, and 80% of time he will die from the fall. The one who died usually has something important that the protagonist must know, but he cannot anymore due to the murdering staircase.

Showing major spoilers in the next preview.
They should tease the viewer on what will happen on the next episode and not ruining it. For example, I remember a last segment of the local show showing someone aiming a sniper rifle to the protagonist. Of course, the viewer can’t wait for the next episode, will he be shot? Will he be able to escape this predicament? No, instead, they show on the preview, shown on the end of that episode, the protagonist on a different scene, unscathed and no mention of the sniper-aiming finale. The cliffhanger is useless. They should at least show the preview having the sniper shoot his gun, fade to black and that’s it.