Last Friday, Kapuso fans watched the ending of Strawberry Lane, the series that was supposed to be about four girls committed to a reformatory institution whose assignment there was to care for a part of the garden called Strawberry Lane.
The series though took a lengthy detour that tracked the lives of two sisters, Monique and Elaine played by Sheryl Cruz and Sunshine Dizon, while the three girls the latter adopted from the institution watched and got tangled in the rivalry of the two.
Bea Binene, Rita De Guzman, and Jhoanna Marie Tan bids
audience goodbye
It was interesting to watch and see how the writers of the show struggled to keep the girls from the institution still get speaking lines despite their characters’ worthlessness in the conflict between Elaine and Monique who was merely on a revenge mode after their mother (Boots Anson Roa) replaced her with Elaine to manage their fashion business. It was my dose of black comedy every night, watching how Cruz portrayed Monique so over the top while Dizon struggled to maintain a respectable dramatic mode in every scene.
The three girls—Bea Binene, Kim Rodriguez, and Jhoanna Marie Tan—all tried so very hard to act like critics were watching them with keen eyes and hoping some of them would throw in a word or two in their favor.
They really were amusing, so typical of actor wannabes. They were forgivable though as they were not on the soap front for many years. In fact, the three are still greenhorns on the soap front. So were the boys—Jake Vargas, Kiko Estrada, and Jeric Gonzales—who were nothing but necessary “extras” or background artists in Hollywood parlance playing suitors of the girls.
But, the biggest “extra” in the series was Christian Bautista whose wooden acting (take note Aljur Abrenica, you are not alone) neither contributed to the dramatic tension between Monique and Elaine nor loosened their tension as the writers set the series up for an explosive ending.
I think it will be best for Bautista to focus more on his singing career than try his mettle as an actor. It might just be an epic failure if he tried.
Whatever happened to the characters played by Tanya Garcia and Tessie Tomas? Only the writers know, as they were obviously not important, too, in the detoured plot development.
Strawberry Lane, in fact, was merely a title. It had nothing to do with the story that began with Sheryl’s lose of a daughter and ended in her own death.
Funny, right?