The story is awesome. The characters are rich and vibrant, and everything seems to go smoothly. But why do these shows still suck? There are plenty of reasons for this mishap, but we'll only cover five, like...
5. Too many commercial breaks
Nobody likes commercials. Even the talents promoting the commercials don't enjoy looking like an idiot in front of a camera to help a retarded douchebag become less retarded.
Pacquiao: Honestly, I don't know why the fuck am I endorsing shampoos or speaking English.
If you happen to be watching a show in the Philippines, be prepared to take a break for every ten minutes. There are rare occassions of commercial breaks every five minutes, featuring products shittier than Head-On.
On the bright side, getting a break every ten minutes seems to be good for the fitness of Filipinos. After a commericial starts rolling, you can go to the bathroom, eat something, then come back before the show returns. That increases the frequency of walking, and everybody knows walking is the best exercise, right?
Above pictured: TV, without commercials.
4. Lame dubbing
If it's one thing Filipino TV is known besides fake reality shows, it's anime/Korean/Taiwanese/Chinese shows dubbed in Tagalog, because the majority of the population doesn't understand the show's original language nor English.
Here's an example of a dubbed show:
Holy shit! Could it get even worse?
Well, yes it can.
Strangely, Gost Payter seems a lot better. Genius dubbing I must say, even for a $10 mic bought at the market and 10-year olds on the microphone.
3. Repetitive themes
As a popular quip goes, Filipinos can't get enough. True, but for storyline plots, it gets boring and boring for every minute you spend watching.
You want a plot concerning children? Make one, and pedophilic women will embrace and hump the TV screen as it broadcasts. You want a plot concerning cheesy romance? Make one, and probably TV geeks will rival at the pathetic green-screening and think everything they see are real.
This is even more real than the hallucinations we get while snorting chemicals.
Hell, Meet Dave has a way better storyline than these.
2. Lame death scenes
A majority of Philippine TV shows, especially those of the soap-opera type, showcases death as an equalizer of the plot. However, sometimes the cause of death fails to equalize the storyline and instead baffles the critics and once again turns middle aged women into necrophobic hags, forcing them to pray the rosary 10 times a day to "not fall to the ground and dying after clutching the chest for no apparent reason".
WTF? Clutching your chest then dying? Heart attack, probably, but the one dying here is 28 years old in the plot, and has no record of heart disease of whatsoever. Skip to 1:10 in this video and you'll see what I mean.
Can't we have better and more realistic death scenes here? Can we have none of those insanely-retarded "small-car-at-20kph-instantly-killing-200lb-sturdy-man" twists and "getting-shot-in-the-arm-and-dying-without-even-bleeding" deaths? Can we have something a little bit more gorey, like exploding heads?
Much, much better.
1. Unexpected story line cutoffs
Let's me explain this in a more common scenario. Let's say you came to a concert of your favorite band. Now, the lead guitarist is already in his solo's climax when suddenly, the music stops, and the vocalist sadly announces that the stage will now be taken by some "lame singers who can't sing but pays money", much like Chris Brown. Then you stand up, leave the theatre, and swear to yourself that you will implode the heads of anyone who bites arms and makes wack music. I mean, really.
Yeah, that's it, keep punching yourself in the face.
In reality of Philippine TV shows, every timeslot needs something to occupy it. It doesn't matter if the show is the next big hit or the next big failure, something, anything that doesn't resemble a commercial should fill in that time slot. However, producers of TV shows seems to rush the production of their shows, which leads to shitty shows, which leads to shitty shows already being broadcasted on TV to have their plots cut and the vital parts skipped, to give way for the next shitty show to replace it. And the process goes on and on.
Lolcats are just plain awesome.
So if you happen to watch some Pinoy TV, be sure to take a piss in every commericial break (use that as an excuse to not watch the horrible commercials), try to understand the expressionless and bad dubbing, the same storylines, the lame deaths, and the capitalism involved in marketing television shows. All this writing makes me want to go back to good old Pinoy TV, where plots are plots and there's always 20 minutes of beatdowns every day.
