So I had a chance to take a breather recently and found a pinoy teleserye on Amazon Prime and I started watching "Karibal Ko Asawa Ko" In a nutshell, it's a story about Nathan, a closet-gay, knocked a girl up and got married. He wasn't happy with the marriage, he later started cross-dressing, liked it. He faked his own death and the death of their daughter and ran away to have sexual-reassignment surgery and changed his entire appearance. He became a transgender woman, Venus. Venus would get involved with a guy named Gavin who is unaware of his real personal, break up, Gavin meets and falls in love with Nathan's ex-wife, Rachel. And Venus/Nathan tries to get Gavin back.
What really enticed me to watch was my curiosity in how they were going to accomplish the "transformation into a woman" part. Obviously, they'd be switching actors, and you can explain away the differences by saying he had extensive surgery but one thing you can't change is height. The transgender woman, Venus, should appear as tall as the person who played Nathan. The actor playing Nathan, aside from being tall, was also muscular so I really wanted to know how they were going to spin this.
I found myself engrossed with all 114 episodes - alternating between feeling aghast at Venus' propensity for evil and heckling the production staff for all the inconsistencies.
These are the things that I noticed, in no particular order:
1) Nathan was tall and his post-transformation character, Venus, looked tall too which is good, but why would the show, every now and then, deliberately show a closeup of her feet walking in platform stilettos (pa-suspense effect), edi nabuko na that she's not really that tall.
2) Home fixtures - at some point, the characters were supposed to be living in the Los Angeles and they were shooting INSIDE an LA home. Bakit yung light switch mukhang Pilipinas na light switch ?
3) The timeline for the transformation from man to woman was unrealistic. Nathan left for LA when his daughter was about 1. they didn't say how long the transformation took but at some point, he became Venus, met Gavin and they lived together for 5 years. They broke up, Gavin went back to the Philippines and some time later, they were celebrating Nathan/Venus' daughter's 7th birthday.
So if we backtrack a bit... if Gavin lived with Venus for 5 years, that means he met Venus just before the child turned 2. If Nathan left for LA when the child was 1, he became a full woman in 1 year ?
4) The surgeon they talked to for Nathan's transformation described the extensive procedures and what they were doing in Spanish. When the doctor paused, nathan and companion looked at each other and companion said "are you sure about this ? This is a totally new person na" (or something along those lines)... and my thought was, "teka, naintindihan nila yun ? walang translator ?"
5) Venus' child grew up in LA. Bakit hindi siya American accent mag English ?
6) In the beginning, when they showed Nathan living in his family home, the door frame had distinctive carvings / designs. Later, they showed Daniel in his rented room, the door frame had the same distinctive pattern.
I get that they used the same house for different locations but perhaps next time, they should look for houses with less-distinctive features.
After this, I wasn't sleepy yet so I started watching different episodes of Mano Po and I was flinching the whole time.
1) the Mano Po movies I've watched always had Teresa Teng's The Moon Represents my heart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XXTUJJIsfA BAKEEET ?
2) A lot of the characters wear CheongSams and Changpaos. Ours must not be a typical Tsinoy family because the only one I recall seeeing in a cheongsam was my Ama and it was a huge portrait of her and my Angkong. I have never seen - EVER - any of my male relatives in either the Philippines, China or HK wear a Changpao.
3) the way the elders speak in forced Chinese-accented tagalog. Annoying and a tad bit insulting.
4) And when the actors are try to speak their Hokkien ? hurts my ears.
5) And why do these people walk around in their homes in shoes ? Again, ours must not be a typical Tsinoy family because we walk around in comfy slippers at home. Shoes are removed at the door and we change into slippers.