It was difficult not to be brought to tears by that last moment of Tito Sotto, Vic Sotto, and Joey de Leon on Eat Bulaga! at once looking defeated and trying to contain their anger, as they said goodbye to their audience on GMA 7. It really was about the unceremonious ending and how these three men—icons and institutions all—weren’t even allowed to say goodbye to a time slot and an audience it has had for decades. For some of us, we grew up only knowing of noontimes with this show, our childhoods filled with memories of segments and jokes and moments that had it as backdrop, as subject, as familiar viewing habit.

That I cared at all was a surprise in itself. I had stopped watching Eat Bulaga! a long time ago. It could’ve been at some point in the Aldub phenomenon when admittedly, I couldn’t understand what the fascination was about. It is more clearly about Tito Sotto, when he took a strong anti-Reproductive Health Bill stance. Either way for over a decade or so, Eat Bulaga was ever only in my peripheral vision, a fixture in one’s popular consciousness.

Which might be why that goodbye, happening after the abrupt and disrespectful act of taking the show off the air, might have been emotional for viewers. It didn’t matter if you liked TVJ or not, or were watching Eat Bulaga! or not in recent years. To me, what was clear was that an injustice had been done to the people whose cultural labor went into that show. It didn’t matter what was happening behind the scenes, or whether we think they are the bane of pop culture (—to be clear, they are not). To have cut this team’s access to their audience, disallowing them a proper goodbye from a show that they had built for over three decades—that speaks to issues bigger than our beef with the show’s humour or hosts or mishaps. (more…)