Ang Kape Ni LaTtEX

ABS-CBN’s Maging Sino Ka Man.

Despite it still suffering from some of Filipino telenovela’s perennial flaws and traditional subplots, e.g., dragging extender episodes, a rich-vs-poor love story, overly-”evil” antagonists, amnesia, convenient deaths, and even a sudden and almost immediate recovery from two decades of nervous breakdown (thank God there’s no facelift subplot, at least not yet), it is redeemed by one story-telling skill that’s completely absent in other telenovelas: character development.

Not only is this the only Filipino telenovela I have ever seen that explores, in great depth, why its characters are the way they are, but its characters constantly change places in the traditional antagonist/protagonist roles of tragedies:

The main character, Eli (John Lloyd Cruz), once upon a time gentle and righteous, is now a vengeful, spiteful man.

Eli’s wife Jackie (Bea Alonzo) knows that he’s a different person from the one she fell in love with, but hopes that one day he’ll have a change of heart, just like what happened to his father Fidel (Christopher De Leon).

Fidel, then a rich and powerful banking magnate who used his power to control the women in his life (he once harbored a deep hatred for his manipulative mother), has been humbled, but fails to receive forgiveness from his son-in-law.

Celine (Anne Curtis), best friend and cousin of Jackie, who at the start of the series was portrayed as a liberated bitch-type, is now a hurting foster mother, her husband Brian (Ryan Eigenmann) having recently died.

JB (Sam Milby), then a Vice President in his mother’s now-bankrupt shipping company, had accepted a lowly supervisory job at a smaller company, and is attempting to make amends for his treatment of Celine in the past.

These are just a few of the character transformations in the series, and despite its other flaws, I still think “Maging Sino Ka Man” is a huge leap beyond the traditional Cinderella-evil-stepmother/evil-stepsister-type antagonists that still plague the other telenovelas around.

For an unofficial rundown of its cast of characters and synopsis, click here.