HAVE YOU noticed? When new shows are introduced on local TV, they put their best collective feet forward, pull out all the stops, splurge on budgets, production values and regular and guest stars, and generally come on like a house on fire. After their showy opening salvos, however, some new productions quickly turn lazy, slow and shallow. Talk about taking viewers? interests for granted.

In the light of this desultory tendency, we need to view and review, not just the initial telecasts of new TV shows, but also some of their subsequent episodes. Only after we watch a number of telecasts can we more correctly evaluate how these programs are really shaping up. And so, to re-view:

?Chances Are?

We found the second telecast of ?Chances Are? on QTV less dramatic than its initial episode, but it was ultimately more thought-provoking, because it focused on the broader topic of spiritual healing, specifically on the healing priest, Fr. Joey Faller.

As with the show?s first telecast, however, we found the long focus on just one topic tedious after a while, and we would like to repeat our suggestion that the otherwise exceedingly viewable show line up two features per week.

?Frankahan?

The debating program ?Frankahan? on ANC got a lukewarm review from us months ago. Since then, we?ve watched the show again on occasion, and found that our negative notes still hold.

Basically, the show isn?t an involving viewing experience, because quite a number of the student debaters it features mistake speedy delivery and loquaciousness for excitement and persuasiveness. How wrong-headed can you get?

?Tayong Dalawa?

On the teleserye, ?Tayong Dalawa,? our initial review focused on the over-the-top portrayals turned in by its young leads, especially Jake Cuenca. What do you know? After a few weeks, we caught a TV show that praised Cuenca for his outstanding performance in the show. Was this his handlers? way of offsetting our negative notes on his portrayal?

In any case, it prompted us to watch the show again, to see if Cuenca?s work on the show had dramatically improved.

Last April 1, the show featured a very melodramatic confrontation scene involving Cuenca?s character (who had come back from the ?dead?), his half-brother played by Gerald Anderson, and Kim Chiu as the girl they both loved.

After Cuenca?s character?s alleged ?death,? Gerald and Kim?s characters had become sweethearts?now that he had resurfaced, therefore, they had a huge problem to contend with!

To his credit, Cuenca handled his part in the scene with relative circumspection. However, in a subsequent sequence that required him to react to a hallucination, he went shrill and hysterical once more.

Of course, Cuenca?s handlers may point that he was simply reacting to the terrifying hallucination, so his hysteria was called for. We submit, however, that it was still an instance of excessive emotionalizing for emotionalizing?s sake.

More experienced and insightful actors have a keener sense of the thin line between drama and melodrama, and work hard not to cross it, because they realize that, in good acting, emotions are not to be indulged in, but to be purposively used to clarify a dramatic or thematic point.

Less is indeed more, because circumspection allows the thematic point to emerge, and not get swamped and upstaged by all that raw emotionalizing.

It turned out that, aside from Cuenca, Kim Chiu also had a problem in the episode, because she could not sufficiently vivify her character?s terrible moral and emotional predicament: She now loved Gerald, but couldn?t further hurt the already battered Cuenca.

Instead of digging deep into her terribly conflicted character?s thoughts and feelings, Chiu opted to play it safe and go the ?tulala? (numbingly confused) route, and thus ended up as another liability in the admittedly difficult episode. Anderson didn?t do great work either, but came off with the least deficient or distracting portrayal.

?Dragonball Evolution?

Leading Asian international actor Chow Yun Fat plays the key role of the wise Master Roshi in ?Dragonball Evolution,? a film based on the Japanese manga. Master Roshi guides his young protégé, Goku, a humanoid living on earth who, at age 18, discovers that he has a daunting destiny: To save the planet from alien invasion.

To be able to do so, he goes on a quest to collect seven mystical dragon balls. Justin Chatwin plays the film?s young hero, and James Wong directs.