THE CURRENT popularity of teleseryes has spurred yet another new performance category?the ?first day, last day? talent. This specialized category is for actors and actresses who work on a teleserye for only a single taping day, only to be summarily killed off at the end of their one and only taping stint. Ouch, that hurts.

The ?one-day? actor has become in demand for teleseryes, because many new series believe in starting their storytelling at the very beginning, with their lead character?s birth.

That means there have to be grandparents and parents and other relative or subsidiary characters who don?t have a function in the storytelling proper, so they have to be expediently bumped off or blithely forgotten.

Quite often, precisely because the characters are so short-lived, they are assigned to rather well-known actors, to give them enough ?importance? or ?emphasis? before, like fruit flies, they all too quickly have to expire.

Tight spot

If we were popular performers, we would probably refuse to accept such ?kleenex? role (one ah-choo!, and that?s it for you!). But quite a number of name performers do agree to play those radically abridged roles, so we must conclude that they get paid extra for doing so, or they?re just wonderfully obliging people who are ready to help a director-friend out of a tight casting spot. Three quixotic cheers for them, therefore!

The TV scene is rife with examples: Just last week, on the very first telecast of the new version of ?Mula sa Puso,? the estimable veteran actress Perla Bautista agreed to play Dawn Zulueta?s mother?and ended her brief stint on the new show by getting hit by a truck!

This gave Dawn?s character a huge reason to cry copious tears and bemoan her increasingly tragic fate. (This was on the show?s very first telecast, mind you, but she already had a lot to caterwaul about.)

In addition, Perla?s abrupt demise deprived Dawn of a loving relative who could help her when she needed it most, and thus made the tragic heroine come off as even more pathetic and defenseless.

To make things worse, Perla?s shocking exit was even made horrendous by the fact that she died?while trying to run away from a pack of killer dogs!

They were set loose by the series? resident super-villain and uber-virago, played with distressingly great relish by Eula Valdez. Her over-the-top, take-no-prisoners portrayal is one of the new production?s most unsubtle come-ons.

Meanwhile, on the new ?Captain Barbell? series, there have been two ?one-day only? guest stars: As lead villain Christopher de Leon?s wife, Isay Alvarez intoned only a few lines of pained dialogue before she jumped to her death.

And Rhian Ramos played lead actor Richard Guiterrez?s pregnant wife, who in similarly efficient and sped-up fashion died in another flashback sequence in one of the villain?s fierce, ?end of the world? attacks on the metropolis.

Rhian is a popular, young actress, but she agreed to quickly expire during the ?war? scene. We cheer her readiness to boost the new production?s start with her added star value?but we rue the fact that she decided to do her protracted death scene by incredibly intoning so many ?dying? lines?and by choosing to wear a most distracting pair of extra-long false eyelashes.