When it comes to the heist genre, silly plot details are often acceptable. Whether it's The Italian Job or the Ocean's film franchise, there are always loopholes or silly sequences somewhere in the plotline. Even the attempts of Tarantino and the Coen brothers were not devoid of narrative flaws.
So for The Unusual Suspects, the heist masterplan having a silly blueprint and an even sillier execution was completely excusable. What was not forgivable however, was its characters and its lame attempt to pay homage to the Filipino culture.
The series claims to have the first major involvement of Filipinos on Australian television, both behind and in front of the camera. However all it delivered was exaggerated stereotypes and unfunny caricatures. [This, coming from a Filipino-Australian who has lived in the Philippines and Australia.]
The show features four major Filipino characters. First is Evie, the nanny who, between dialogues, switches from having a flawless American accent with highfalutin vocabulary to having an amplified thick Filipino accent with broken grammar. Then there's Roxanne, the self-made businesswoman who becomes unintelligible when speaking in Tagalog. And then there's Amy, the biggest contradiction in the show, who plays a stay-in housekeeper to one of her best friends, Roxanne, because of her illegal status in the country. Yes, a stay-in housekeeper who wears a maid's uniform serving her best friend (and sending cans of Milo at that, to a country already overstocked with Milo.) Lastly there's Gigi, supposedly the Millennial representation of the bunch, who comes from a rich family in Manila but has a history of shoplifting. Surprisingly, she's the most realistic character among the four Filipinos, yet statistically still unlikely to exist as a real person in Australia.
Not one of these characters is simply realistic within the Filipino diaspora in Australia. If anything, it's a mishmash of Filipino archetypes in other countries, desperately forced to be out-of-the-box Australian characters.
Despite these complaints, there are still some merits to the show. The way the direction played with creative flashbacks added style to the action and thrill. The imagery of the affluent areas of Sydney was also one of the visual highlights of the series.
In the end The Unusual Suspects just left a terrible taste in my mouth. It is unfortunate to see interviews of the cast and crew so excited in bringing this representation of Filipino talent into Australian screens, but if this is the best Australian TV brings to the table, then definitely Australia still has a long way to go in portraying characters and telling stories from the different Asian subcultures in the country.
