A wow hurrah ending for Budoy

We have often indicated in our notations of mainstream teleseryes that while they start off interestingly with the storytelling intact, they often peter off disappointingly in the end with often awkward obligatory happy endings. Not so with Budoy, ABS-CBN’s ambitious project involving a disadvantaged boy who won over a community with his positive values.

Not that Budoy didn’t have problems from the medical field who objected to the use of the term “advocacy-serye,” together with parents of autistic and mentally-challenged children who expected their kids to experience exactly what Budoy went through. Still, it seems that after all these complaints of misleading messages, raising of false hopes and medically incorrect behavior of the lead character, the positive effects of the story by far still outweighed its deficiencies.

To begin with, Budoy is a drama project on a subject never yet been attempted as a teleserye. It has been challenging to already experienced and tested thespians like Zsa-Zsa Padilla and Janice de Belen as the warring mothers of Budoy, childhood friend and Budoy’s love interest Jessy Mendiola, Mylene Dizon and son Enrique Gil as the villains, Tirso Cruz III, Barbara Perez, Dante Rivero, Christian Vasquez, Gloria Sevilla, etc. But it has been most demanding on rising matinee idol Gerald Anderson who took the risky assignment of portraying a special child which may wreck havoc on his leading man stature.

On the final episode, Budoy’s scene with Janice as she convinces him love will show him how to be father to Benjo (son of Enrique and Jessy); Mylene’s half-crazed, half-traumatized babbling; Tirso’s message for Budoy to be strong and let his natural goodness take over; are samples of great acting within a few minutes difficult to forget. There is still that happy ending, but a believable happy ending where Budoy as well as his friends have become comfortable and accept his stammering and stuttering as part of his physical makeup.

Graduation: Dream or nightmare?

With graduation around the corner, we can’t help but share some thoughts of helplessness for ourselves as a country and as people. As far back as 1999, the CHED (Commission on Higher Education) noted a slowing down in college enrolment, then zero growth in 2004 for all schools while enrolment in vocational/technical courses started jumping 116.6 percent from 2002 according to TESDA (Technical Education & Skills Development Authority).

With globalization, POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Agency) reported deployment of workers reaching over a million overseas by 2007 in construction, transport, nursing and care-giving, teaching, communications, as domestics often downgrading themselves for the relatively higher wages to send back home. With their facility for English, hard work, cheerful nature, Pinoys would soon be heralded as heroes, propping up the economy with remittances back home. Of course, this would destroy the family unit, but that is a separate story. 

Today, the middle class Filipino is under-educated and underpaid at home; and under-utilized in his capabilities abroad. The current government is gunning for a return home of Pinoys after numerous cases of criminal and drug-related offenses have clearly shown the honeymoon with overseas employers had ended. But that is easier said than done by a new dispensation saddled by many other problems, not in the least a need for more jobs.     

Meantime, Pinoys back home continue with bad habits of old inherited from centuries of being treated as minions by colonizers and decades of self-governing by ambitious leaders who never once considered the man on the street as a partner in running the country.

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