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.