Indonesian fans brace for `Meteor' shower

Indonesian fans brace for `Meteor' shower

Hera Diani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

At least 750 fans of Taiwanese drama Meteor Garden here could not
bear to wait four days to see the sequel of their favorite serial
back on local television.

Though Indosiar TV station will broadcast the sequel tonight
at 8 p.m., die-hard fans were willing to dig into their pockets
and pay Rp 45,000 per ticket to see the screening of the sequel's
first episode at Studio Cafe in Wisma Indocement, Jl. Sudirman,
Central Jakarta. Some 500 tickets were sold long before the
serial was screened both on Saturday and Sunday.

Other fans went to Pusat Perfilman Haji Usmar Ismail (PPHUI)
theater in Kuningan, South Jakarta, where the TV station held a
free screening on Sunday.

Be it at the cafe or the theater, the response was the same:
hysteria.

As the show started and the close-up shots of the four main
actors (played by Taiwanese acting-singing sensation F4) appeared
on screen, applause and screams were impossible to ignore.

Never before has a TV serial, especially an Asian drama, been
so highly promoted and commercialized here as Meteor Garden. Nor
has an Asian drama here ever reached the same heights of
popularity as this serial, a phenomenon apparently witnessed in
other Asian countries.

In August, when the first serial's last episode was aired,
cafes in big cities vied to stage a public screening.

Many theories have been offered to explain the serial's
enormous popularity -- from the saturation of Western idols to
the rise of Asia. But the simplest explanation is probably
because the serial is indeed entertaining.

Adapted from Japanese comic book Hana Yori Dango, it centers
around the romantic tale of a poor, high-spirited girl hooking up
with the head of a rich brat-bully pack at an elite Taipei
university.

Not an extraordinary story indeed, but the script is well
written with the right mixture of humor, fantasy and tragedy.

Plus, of course, the pack of boyishly good-looking young
actors: Jerry Yan, Vic Zhou, Ken Zhu and Vanness Wu.

Broadcasted since April on the same station, the first serial
attracted over 2.2 million viewers from all over the country, not
to mention those who watched it on VCD, both original and
pirated.

The success of the serial has also attracted dozens of
advertisers, whose commercials make the original around one-hour
episode stretch to a little over one and a half hours.

The battle between local stations over the rights to air the
sequel was reportedly quite fierce. Indosiar finally got the
rights, but then was very secretive about the exact date the
sequel would be broadcast.

"I'm not going to tell you the date until the end of this
media conference," Indosiar division manager Triandy Suyatman
told reporters after the Sunday screening at PPHUI.

According to Triandy, Indonesia is the first country after
Taiwan to broadcast the sequel (Meteor Garden 2 premiered on Nov.
11 on Taiwan television).

"Demand is very high for us to quickly broadcast the serial,"
he said, declining to reveal how much the station paid for the
rights.

While the first serial was aired every Monday at 10 p.m., its
sequel will air every Thursday at 8 p.m., prime time.

Dozens of companies have lined up to place their commercials,
but the station limits the sponsors to six.

What happens then with the main roles as the saga continues?

The new season brings 30 episodes, 11 more than the first one,
and the story is no longer based on the comic book.

While the first season weighed on the on-again-off-again
relationship between Sanchai (Barbie Hsu) and Dao Ming Shi (Yan),
the second season adds another girl to come between them.

The first episode opened with the F4 graduating from
university. It was highlighted by a corny scene in which the four
guys arrived at campus in sports cars, and then four helicopters
with F4 written on them flew over the campus releasing rose
petals into the air. Oh-kay.

Dao and Sanchai then return to Barcelona to celebrate, but
later on, while on his way to church to propose Sanchai, Dao has
a car accident and ends up with amnesia and meets another girl.

Judging from the first episode, it looks like the serial will
turn into a sappy and corny soap opera.

But that is for the audience to judge. From the reactions of
the fans who watched the premier of the new season, it seems
obvious that they will continue to watch the serial no matter
what.

"I've already ordered the VCDs. I mean, I couldn't stand to
wait 30 weeks to see the whole show! Yeah, the first episode is
kinda cheesy, but I'm going to watch it anyway," said a woman.