A lunch date with #AlDub

We finally have a popular noontime TV show that gives the audience what it wants (love and laughter; prizes and pesos) and gets an award from a Catholic Church group as well.  That’s making the twain of “entertainment” and “education” meet while taking the producers and cast of the show on a limo all the way to the bank!

Unless you’ve been living in a lungga these past months, you’d surely know what I’m talking about. Some people pretend not to know of it (impossible) — or not to have watched it (possible for day office workers) — because it sort of lassoes you into what was known pre-Facebook and pre-Instagram as the “bakya” crowd. Now who in their right LVs would want that?

But Eat Bulaga’s Sa Tamang Panahon [has] officially broken TicketWorld records for first day sales, TicketWorld announced over the weekend on its Twitter account.

The goal is to fill up the 50,000-seat Philippine Arena on Oct. 24 for a show that would probably be the climax of the phenomenal kalyeserye (In a nutshell, a TV series that plays out on the streets instead of in the studio). The socio-civic silver lining is that the proceeds will go to the building of three school libraries.

Last Saturday, my husband Ed decided to watch the AlDub portion of Eat Bulaga out of “curiosity.” Hearing my hubby chuckling as he watched two men in exaggerated “lola” costumes (oops, some lolas nowadays look like supermodels still), I tuned in to Eat Bulaga to find out what the hype was all about. I ended up laughing and chuckling; hoping and swooning.

Those two lolas, played by Wally Bayola (Lola Nidora) and Jose Manalo (Tinidora), are hilarious, especially when they try to be serious. They don’t shout, do slapstick or do dance numbers (yet). They just talk in the way two women talk in the beauty parlor. (By the way, there are two more lolas in the kalyeserye named Tidora and Isadora both played by Paolo Ballesteros.)

According to the concept (which is all but cookie cutter), these lolas go out to the streets, interview the everyJuan and give him/her the luck of the draw. Unlike Oprah or Ellen, these lolas play fairy godmother to the underprivileged. By no stretch of the imagination can they be called “middle class.”

Last Saturday, the lucky one, plucked out from the innards of the city, doesn’t have a full set of teeth, sells homemade rags on the streets to augment her husband’s income as a construction worker. And yet five of her six children are in school, two in college.

Alden (left) with Jose Manalo as ‘Tinidora’, Yaya Dub and Wally Bayola as ‘Lola Nidora.’ Screengrab from GMA-7

In her I saw the everyJuan who longs for a better life and works for it; who doesn’t just depend on alms or game shows or relatives in Saudi to jumpstart a better life for her family. She and her husband flex their muscles as part of the country’s labor force. She gives me hope about the future of this country. All these nationalistic thoughts — wait, was I really watching Eat Bulaga not Heneral Luna?

* * *

Finally, Maine Mendoza as Yaya Dub comes in and she is like the typical twentysomething girl you bump into inside the elevator. She has a pretty face but is not the type who’d easily land a movie contract on that basis — so already you have millions who can easily identify with her. She is the quintessential twentysomething that is of the median age of Filipinos (23 to be exact) today. She belongs to that powerful demographic, a socio-economic tsunami that drives up to the height of coconut trees the prices of burgers and lipsticks.

And she sings and performs in a very novel way (hence the “dub” tag).

Due to the serendipitous “hello” from the studio of cute bedimpled Alden Richards (who can land a movie contract for lead male with just the way he smiles) and the creative dynamo who seized this split-screen concept between two potential lovebirds, we have the AlDub phenomenon. Cinderella is the oldest love story on earth, the most tried and tested happily-ever-after. And you have Alden Richards as Prince Charming, Maine as Cinderella, and the lolas as a modified version of the stepmother and stepsisters.

When they kiss and form a heart with their fingers even though separated by a TV screen, something young and hopeful in you flutters.

So you have Oprah and Cinderella in one show. There’s a game of chance (the same high that attracts people to casinos) that can make you go home with a lot of prizes (last Saturday, the winner went home with P50,000 in cash on top of several other sizeable prizes), there’s a chance at love.

Always, we seek the jackpot, in life, in love. AlDub seems to be making them within reach for at least one person from Monday to Saturday, and for all the Yaya Dubs on the lookout for their Aldens every day.

Their love team is making fast-food store history as well. Alden and Maine endorse McDonald’s Chicken Fillet a la King and according to McDonald’s, the impact on its sales is “incredible.”

In an article by Richmond Mercurio in The Philippine STAR yesterday, McDonald’s marketing director Christina Lao also revealed that within 24 hours of posting, the AlDub commercial was viewed more than 1.5 million times on the company’s FB page.

Lao said the Chicken Fillet a la King AlDub is endorsing has already exceeded sales targets threefold.

Asked why AlDub is such a hit, Allure columnist psychiatrist Angela Halili Jao says, “It has a mix of humor and Filipino values and tradition regarding courtship, respect for elders and women.”

Hence the hashtag, “SaTamangPanahon.”

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In the ‘80s, it was the sitcom John en Marsha that was a mirror of Filipino values and sentiments. A hopeful John who never lost his sense of humor showed the Filipino’s resiliency crisis after crisis. A supportive Marsha was the ideal Filipino wife who stayed at home and stood by her man. Doña Delilah was the meddlesome but well-meaning mother-in-law who constantly dinned into her son-in-law the importance of hard work as a bridge to one’s dreams.

Wally Bayola, the actor who sees a new beginning and a second chance in real life (his reputation was once stained by a sex video scandal) with the kalyeserye he helped make a big of it, once wondered if there were so many sad people in the Philippines. Because their need to laugh was so great, he pointed out.

Yes and no. AlDub is opiate, alright. Laughter, after all, gives you a hot-air balloon that lets you get away from it all. But the show throws in extras with the laughter. Love, which makes you dream (“A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep...”). Prizes, which excite you and bring you back to the games you played in children’s parties and town fiestas. Pesos, which buy you food and help pay your child’s tuition.

The everyJuan isn’t sad. He’s hopeful. AlDub makes the everyJuan feel his hopes and dreams are within reach. #SaTamangPanahon.

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