What’s a wedding car rental owner doing in a car that’s supposed to bring Yaya Dub to her first date?
The story behind the record-breaking Twitter hashtag #AlDubMostAwaitedDate
Twitter records have been broken in succession by a most-unexpected turn of romantic fate in Philippine lunchtime television. The melding of mainstream TV and online social media has served upon us a splitscreen phenomenon known as the “AlDub Nation,” the aggrupation of TV and social media fans of Alden Richards, a host of the long-running daily noontime variety show “Eat Bulaga,” and YouTube dubsmash sensation Nicomaine Dei “Maine” Capili Mendoza, now more known by her onscreen TV persona as YayaDub, the energetic caregiver to “Eat Bulaga” co-host Wally Bayola’s eccentric and rich matron “Lola Nidora.”
Together with “All for Juan, Juan For All” segment co-hosts Jose Manalo (who plays “Lola Tinidora”) and Paolo Ballesteros ("Lola Tidora”), the equally eccentric and zany “sisters” of “Lola Nidora,” these five principal characters form the nucleus of the largely impromptu, unscripted “Kalyeserye” comedy-drama street-theater series that has caught millions of Philippine free-TV viewers by storm.
At the center of this all is the budding on-screen romance between Alden and YayaDub, who have supposedly never met in person. Their supposed fondness for each other’s company is fed by their comical interactions via split-screen.
Alden is almost always with the main group of the “Eat Bulaga” hosts (anchored by comic legends Tito Sotto, Joey de Leon, and Vic Sotto) stationed at the show’s studio in Broadway Centrum in Quezon City, while YayaDub, along with her doting godmothers, is on remote broadcast anywhere in Metro Manila or its outskirts, in keeping with the “All For Juan” segment’s mission of bringing the show straight to communities and a chosen family for the day most in need of financial assistance.