As my Instagram and Snapchat followers may know, I have recently been getting into the Filipino teleseryes "On the Wings of Love. Though I've only been able to watch the first three full episodes, the clips available on Youtube give me a pretty good idea of what the show is about.
"On the Wings of Love" stars Leah Olivar, a young woman headed to San Francisco with her choir from the Philippines for a competition. She also has other motives for going: her mother died when Leah was a child while working overseas, and Leah wants to find her grave and feel closer to her mother by visiting the city she worked and died in.
While in San Francisco, she keeps running into Clark Medina, a Filipino-American boy who works at the hotel in which the choir competition is taking place. Neither of them realizes this, but they have met before as children: before Leah's mother left for America she gave Leah a bird to take care of. One day the bird went missing and Clark found it. His cousin Jigs (we'll get to him later) wanted to cook it, but Clark insisted on bringing it to its rightful owner. Clark returns the bird to Leah but before they can become friends, he has to leave for America to meet and presumably live with his American father.
After the competition, Leah is determined to stay and work in San Francisco, as she'll earn a lot more doing menial labor in America than in her office job in the Philippines, to send money back to her family. However, she needs a green card to stay.
She gets to know Tita Jack, the mother of her ex-boyfriend Jigs (yep, she ended up dating him for a couple of years), who helps her find a job and suggests that Leah marry her nephew Clark so she can get her green card. Clark, needing money to pay for his siblings' education in the Philippines, agrees. She moves into his apartment and they start to get to know each other so they can fool the people that will be interviewing them to determine if their marriage will be real.
As they live together, they discover each others' annoying habits but also come to appreciate and truly care for one another. All the while, Tita Jack tries to create a fake history for them via staged romantic photos and a proposal video. As they are still kinda prickly around each other these are hilarious to watch. She also warns them not to actually fall in love with each other because it would hurt Jigs. I still don't understand this part because Leah very clearly broke up with him and told Tita Jack that they weren't together anymore, but it creates tension. Especially when Jigs comes to visit and he and Clark have a testosterone battle at the breakfast table.
The actual falling in love part of "On the Wings of Love" is a slow burn, which I can appreciate because we get to see their relationship develop. If you're looking for a good love story with a couple that grows together, give this one a watch.
