Bringing civility back on TV

Personalan tackles what seems like mundane issues that — when all piled up and not addressed — may permanently destroy relationships.

Last Wednesday, the program (every 5 p.m. on News 11) hosted by Ali Sotto featured the problems of a married young couple with in-law problems. The real-life lead characters of this story were all there: Nyvia (the wife), Jeffrey (the husband) and Anita (the mother-in-law who is the mom of the husband).

The couple lives with the mother-in-law together with their baby daughter. Trouble started when Anita openly expressed her disappointed with Nyvia who she didn’t like even from the beginning.

From her end, Nyvia doesn’t make an attempt either to please her mother-in-law, who expects her to perform housewifely duties like cooking, cleaning the house, preparing her husband’s clothes to work — plus properly caring for the baby daughter, of course.

Nyvia admits that though she wasn’t brought up rich, she wasn’t raised doing house chores and there are so many pampered young women like that even in depressed areas.

She’s also presently caught in a difficult situation: her husband doesn’t have work at the moment and her father has give her dole-outs for the baby’s milk, but she repays that by attending to her own family’s store business. She actually spends more time in her father’s house and her mother-in-law frowns on the idea that the baby daughter is left in the care of Nyvia’s relatives.

One day, after an argument with Jeffrey, Nyvia found her daughter gone while they were in her father’s house and is told that the baby is in the care of the mother-in-law. She didn’t mind that at first, especially since the child is with her mother-in-law anyway — the doting lola. Nyvia though was unable to see her baby at her in-law’s place because the rift between the two women had already turned ugly.

But after two months and after finding out that the baby daughter had been sent up to Baguio to stay with Jeffrey’s relatives there, she sought the help of Personalan to recover her child.

During the on-air threshing out of this messy situation, the faults of each character all start coming out. Jeffrey is not the driven and responsible type who makes sure he is permanently employed to be able to provide for his young family.

Nyvia, on the other hand, admittedly has other priorities other than her husband and their daughter. She got pregnant at a young age and obviously was not prepared to be a wife and mother this early, but that is now water under the bridge.

As for Anita, her only fault it would seem is that she raised her standards too much for her daughter-in-law to reach. As per Anita’s account, she served her husband like a king — attending to all his needs. Unfortunately, her marriage still fell apart in spite of her sacrifices. Maybe her husband left her for a less traditional, but more exciting other woman. But that is another story.

With all sides presented, a psychologist was summoned to help resolve the family problem. As mentioned in the course of the discussion, there was a point when the young couple lived with Nyvia’s family and they were okay there. Jeffrey got along just fine with his in-laws, except that they had to move out since the house was too small for all of them. And so they moved to Anita’s bigger house, where trouble erupted between in-laws, which was to be expected because a kingdom can only have one queen.

The solution offered by the psychologist was for the couple to move back to Nyvia’s house (if only Jeffrey could be a good provider then they can afford to have their own home!) — never mind if space is tight there. Despite its physical size, it is the place where they can breathe more freely.

But the best resolution was Nyvia’s promise to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother. At one point both Nyvia and Jeffrey also pledged their love for one another, which only shows that their marriage is still worth saving. Anita also seems pleased with her daughter-in-law’s humility and promise to change her ways.

As a viewer I am very optimistic that this marriage will work out and thanks to Personalan, relationships were repaired and saved.

And now we realize that it is possible to resolve issues peacefully — without resorting to screaming, shouting, name-calling and physical violence.

Thank you, Personalan, for bringing back civility on TV It is a show that helps mend fences without capitalizing on the miserable situation of other people for commercial purposes — and, heck, for the sake of ratings.

That to me is true and honest-to-goodness public service.