(4TH UPDATE) – Ricardo Dalisay’s long, national nightmare will finally be over.
It seemed that Mr. Dalisay’s ordeals would never end, sacrificing his personal liberty and enjoyment for the betterment of the country. And he has demonstrated immortality that the people routinely mocked.
But three weeks from now, his story will come to an end.
Coco Martin, the man who played the character for nearly seven years, announced tonight, July 22, that “FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano,” the television adaptation of Fernando Poe Jr.’s 1997 film, will end on August 12, after 1,695 episodes.
In the teaser, an angry crowd surrounded the presidential palace after Oscar Hidalgo (Rowell Santiago), the president in the series, divulged that the first lady, Lily Hidalgo (Lorna Tolentino), had been manipulating the country for years to serve her personal interests. It appears to be a rebuttal of “Maid in Malacañang,” the film promoting historical distortions about the waning days of the Marcos dictatorship.
Reactions from netizens were mixed, with some melancholic that their viewing habits would be radically changed with the series’s finale, while others wanted to ensure that “Ang Probinsyano” would really come down to its final days.
“Ang Probinsyano” teetered between drama and action so prolonged that audiences complained about its forced storyline to stretch the series this long. Even The Edj View was its critic back in June 2021, when the blog described the series as “repetitive, dull and unwatchable.” But despite some illogical sequences that became fodder for critics, viewers kept glued because of the tension and excitement every time Cardo Dalisay and the Agilas and their opponents were embroiled in a gunfight.
In real life, Mr. Martin’s creation has endured three presidencies – Noynoy Aquino, Rodrigo Duterte and Bongbong Marcos – and survived the shutdown of its network, ABS-CBN, in May 2020. After dominating primetime, much to the consternation of rival GMA, it migrated successfully online to record viewership, topping the 350,000-mark recently.
It has become a running joke that Mr. Dalisay was a cat with nine lives – or probably much more. He was mercilessly stabbed and shot by antagonists eager to tear him into pieces. But none of them successfully ended his life.
Just this June, Richard Gutierrez’s character had pounced and threw him so much that any ordinary person would be killed the moment their bodies were laid on the ground. But not Mr. Dalisay, who was able to drive a car and jumped by three feet to put a halt to Mr. Gutierrez’s evilness.
With “Ang Probinsyano” coming to an end, the question now revolves around whether Mr. Dalisay will survive his final battle as three antagonists are mustering enough forces to take him down.
Probably the first squabble that defined his life was that between him and Joaquin Tuazon, the role chillingly played by Rep. Arjo Atayde of Quezon City. Mr. Tuazon shot Mr. Dalisay’s twin, Ador, to death in a drug operation at the beginning of the series. Their grandfather, Gen. Delfin Borja (Jaime Fabregas), went on to orchestrate a plan: Mr. Dalisay would act as his twin to continue the latter’s mission of cutting the drug cartel that Mr. Tuazon and his family secretly operated.
For more than a year, starting in 2015, Mr. Dalisay grappled with the intricacies of the drug menace and, eventually, the everyday life of a policeman. The messiness of his mission would eventually drag his family – primarily her grandmother, Lola Flora, played by the late Susan Roces, who gave the blessing to jumpstart the series.
After Mr. Tuazon’s death, “Ang Probinsyano” turned into an implicit political scolding, exhibited by the tumultuous presidency of Mr. Hidalgo. Betrayals. Temptations. Manipulations. The series tried to demonstrate a society enmeshed in a battle between corrupt leaders and wary citizens, powerful criminals and a partly demoralized police force, and rebels tired of oppressiveness and a determined, hostile military.
Renato Hipolito (John Arcilla) was the embodiment of the societal and political devil that had lured Mr. Dalisay and the Agilas. Possessive. Ambitious. Pure evil.
Rumors about the finale of “Ang Probinsyano” came about last year when the Inquirer first reported that ABS-CBN would pull the plug on the show in April 2021. The network denied it. Soon later, veteran actors like John Estrada, Sharon Cuneta and Charo Santos-Concio came into the fray.
With 15 episodes left, the nation is about to be gripped in a fictional society gripped by revelations perfectly formulated for a drama series. The country awaits whether Mr. Dalisay will live on or breathe his final.
Featured image from ABS-CBN News.
The Edj View 