MANILA, Philippines - We caught Wowowillie as the noontime show was bowing out of TV5. It premiered in January 2013 and wrought Monday to Saturday traffic havoc along Quezon Ave. with its multitude snaking every which way to get inside the P35-M Delta studio refurbished by host Willie Revillame. This is said to be the first noontime show that was rated with Strong Parental Guidance or SPG by MTRCB, wary of its progenitor’s colorful past, punctuated by a stampede in 2006 when it was called Wowowee and a child complaint in 2010 when it went by the name Willing Willie.
We were herded by burly security personnel with walkie-talkies and rubber stamps in the parking space below the building where, in our youth we used to watch Hollywood films. It was humid, but a throng of people from all walks of life with the patience of Job were waiting for their pictures to be taken, for the electronic raffle. Senior citizens were having their blood pressure taken for precautionary measures, but the sweating sea of humanity in the bowels of the building is one sure way to get hypertensive.
After our forearms were stamped, it was time to take our seats in the arena-like studio, where we were greeted by two gay show jesters with barbed tongues and whose sole purpose in life was to prime us up to be part of a frenzied mob dancing and clapping like we were in a state of drug-induced euphoria. The young floor director, who could pass for a celebrity himself, was bouncing up and down the galleries with what seems to be a celestial mandate to whip us into submission, himself prancing and twirling to the pounding music, always alert for the split-second time to click his fingers for his roving and crane camera men to focus on the group who could sing and shout the loudest, with wild abandon.
Randy Santiago (who originally plucked Willie from obscurity to become his sidekick in Lunch Date) and his lady co-hosts, Ruffa Mae Quinto, Mariel Rodriguez and Grace Lee were hamming it up with their regular opening spiels when the upper gallery crowd broke out into wild applause, because Willie, like a dues ex machina, suddenly materialized in their midst. He had been absent for nine days, and people were conjecturing if he was sulking in his yacht or private jet because the show will be folding up. The crowd heaved and shouted his name, and he mouthed expletives which we could hardly decipher, because he would not aspirate his labiodental ejective fricative consonants, specially the f’s and v’s.
For the next two and a half hours, the segments followed one another (BigaTEN ka!Rock ‘n Rollin’, Tutok to Win, JOK Sing, Mini Consyerto, Putukan Na!, ATN or Ayos The Number, Willie of Fortune and Pera S’ Wil), most of them capitalizing on luck, with a few on talent, as in the singing and dancing contests. We cringed in horror as one barangay captain from the province (placards were given to contingents from different parts of the country) threw caution to the four winds by gyrating like the wayward flock of Moses worshipping the golden calf. But come to think of it, those who compete in contests like these are really after the seconds of fame and glitter of gold that comes after one’s dignity is forfeited. The show’s spotters, with T-shirts emblazoned Tagasalo were very efficient and we were saddened, thinking of how they would fare once the show folds up.
But Willie, whose difficult childhood made him tough as nails, is only 52 and has much to look forward to. He rode on the crest of his popularity with the hoi polloi and built real estate for the rich and famous, as his fall back. His ritzy Wil Tower, has just opened to its well-heeled public the month before, with another in Tagaytay for the uppity, soon to be launched. This enigmatic man has shown us what show business is all about — taking life by the horns and grappling it for all its asinine tricks and vulturine tribulations. Even now, he intimates to this paper’s editor, Ricky Lo: “We should be happy because my parting with TV5 is a happy one.â€
We may complain about the scantily-clad dancers, the uncouth jokes, the feeding frenzy for jackpots and quick rich games but he is who the teeming masses idolize, their Kuya. If he forays into politics when he gets tired of the noontime show circuit, he will definitely be a Jason reborn from the Mediterranean crescent’s Bronze age, to champion the golden fleece. This epic hero and his quest tale (the ancient Greek’s mission impossible) will find its retelling with Willie so much richer. Await we shall, if and when the fleece (equated with kingship and prosperity, which the leader of the Argonauts must find in order to reclaim his father’s kingdom) is destined for this Jason in his life after Wowowillie.