User blog:Pat141elite/Dante Madarang

This is the first time I'm doing a proposal focusing a villain from a Filipino media, in this case a police drama. Here is my proposal for Dante Madarang, a major antagonist from the seventh season of FPJ's Ang Probinsyano.

WARNING: For those who haven't watched this drama yet, expect some spoilers ahead.

What is the work?
FPJ's Ang Probinsyano is a Philippine action drama television series broadcast on ABS-CBN. It is based on the 1997 film of the same name, which starred Fernando Poe Jr. in the title role, and stars an ensemble cast top-billed by Coco Martin. It is the longest-running action drama series on Philippine television.

Ang Probinsyano has four story arcs. Book 1, which contained the first and second seasons, ran from its debut on September 28, 2015 to May 24, 2017. Book 2 contains the series' third and fourth season which aired from May 25, 2017 to March 14, 2018. Book 3 is comprosed of the series' fifth and sixth season and focused on the larger political drama, which involved the President and Vice President of the Philippines and ran from March 15, 2018 to April 5, 2019. Book 4 focuses on the lives of the Vendetta as they are given pardon and is now trying to fit themselves in society once again by serving the country under the care and appointment of President Oscar Hidalgo. It debuted on April 8, 2019.

Who is the villain?
Dante S. Madarang is a major antagonist of the series's seventh season. Known by his moniker "Bungo" (which means "Skull" in Filipino), he is a notorious psychopathic crime lord bent on revenge against Ricardo "Cardo" Dalisay and the police force for the death of his twin brother David. He commits some abrupt crimes such as robbery, theft and attempted murder.

What did he do?
We are first introduced to Bungo and his posse when they raid a bank and killed hostages and then the responding officers after they used human shields, not after suffering heavy casualties and wounding him. Then, they go recuperating and buying weapons. There, he wanted to challenge the police force, and wanted vengeance for his twin brother killed by Ador by killing Cardo and his family. One of his henchmen, sensed his boss Dante was deranged, which the others share after he killed a cashier after taking the whiskeys they sell in the convenience store, and his obsession of vengeance against both Cardo and the whole police force. He deliberately kills policemen and making crimes public. He was the first objective of Cardo and his task force. Bungo went on buying weapons, then killed the dealers, took the weapons and money.

Bungo, with his newly looted weapons, relocates his hideout and plans to kidnap Lily. They almost succeeded, but Lily leaves before they arrive. Instead, the gang looted the house of everything in value. Then he went to Sapang Bato, to confront one of the drug lords in the compound, when Task Force Agila arrives. Excited about the prospect of killing Dalisay, despite his goon's protests, went on the fight. A battle ensues, policemen suffered casualties both from the goons and even the villagers helping the drug lord. But the task force, alongside other police units recovered and neutralized almost all enemies, except Dante, who was stopped by Gimo at the last moment when the former was about to shoot Cardo from behind, then fled, and the drug lord and his aide killed.

Over the course of Bungo's character arc, he is responsible for the deaths of every member of Cardo's team and nearly killed Cardo during the hunt for him. At some point, Renato Hipolito offered an alliance with the psychopathic criminal as they share a common enemy in Cardo; but he's solely focused on taking on Cardo by himself.

Bungo's group drags the policewomen to their new hideout to be raped and killed later on. Bungo decides to make Tiongson the first victim and he does so by tying her on a wooden bed and assaulting her. After the assault, Tiongson berates Bungo and tells him that Cardo will eventually find and kill him. Bungo declares that Cardo will be the one who gets killed and not him and then stabs her with a knife in retaliation, killing her. Her corpse is thrown away afterwards. On the other hand, Parana becomes the second to fall victim to Bungo's dirty tactics. She is tied by Timo and is ruthlessly beaten up while Miranda and Almario are forced to helplessly watch. Timo later raped and killed Parana and leaving the rest to others.

Back at Camp Crame, Task Force Agila eventually knew the real reason why Bungo was after Cardo according to their intel. Task Force Agila inserted Domengsu to scout Dante's new hideout, after they investigated Dante's whereabouts. Domengsu finally heard where Dante's group is, then organizes a scout on his hideout. Dante and the gang however, always prepared for Task Force Agila and especially Cardo. David and Dante's mother was revealed and was having an illness. However, she hated him to the core, and wished that he dies just like his brother David for his crimes. Domengsu stoked the hideout until he finds Bungo and learns of the abduction of the women of Task Force Agila. Eventually, he is spotted by him and is taken by his men in front of him. While Bungo interrogates whether or not he is spying on them, Domengsu spontaneously attempts to outsmart him and his group by pretending that he is blind. This miraculously works and the crime group lets him go. Once out of Bungo's sight, Domengsu hurries back to Camp Crame to give Task Force Agila the information they utterly need. The task force, then, prepare themselves for another intense mission. They raided the safehouse silently, as Dante's thugs were busy with the 2 remaining policewomen. They did so until they reached the 3rd floor, where the deranged man's minions fired, alerting Timo and Dante. Their missions are to capture Bungo and rescue 2 policewomen, which Cardo did successfully and eliminates Timo. Unfortunately, Cardo was about to shoot Bungo, but was defeated by him using a knife stabbing him 3 times before firing 5 times and leave this place, leaving him for dead. Major Romero rushes Cardo to the hospital, with Cardo in critical condition. Meanwhile, Dante escaped successfully and relishes his "vengeance" on Cardo. He initially stole a motorcycle, then caused a ruckus in an eatery when he was not given broth, then shot a TV featuring Cardo's return to duty. He went to a drinking spree with his friends, but his friends wanted to betray him for money, which led him to kill his friends to avoid capture.

Cardo eventually gets out of critical state and recovers thanks to Major Romero donating blood to him. He reorganizes the Task Force to further their objective: to neutralize Bungo.

A few days after Parana and Tiongson were buried, Miranda and Almario return to Camp Crame. They tell Gen. dela Cruz and Alex that they are filing an indefinite leave, stating that they are unable to continue on with their duties as police officers due to the severity of the trauma they had experienced at the hands of Bungo. Dela Cruz understands their situation and tells them that the doors of the PNP are always open should they decide to serve again. The rest of Task Force Agila hear about the departure of the two policewomen and are disheartened. But they kept an understanding attitude and tells the policewomen to not forget them as they walk new paths.

Later, Gen. dela Cruz called Task Force Agila and the CIDG boys for a meeting. He voices out his disappointment over the recent mission's lousy outcome and tells Basco to do something about the insubordination of Amir's group. Basco takes responsibility of what happened. Nevertheless, Gen. dela Cruz commends the task force and CIDG for being able to capture Chloe and tells them to get information from her as soon as possible. The team were later tasked to transport Chloe to a court, but Jacob's men ambushed them with the team gaining the upper hand. Jacob was then shot by Cardo before Renato & Lance came to support him and his men. Unbeknownst to both sides, Dante was secretly hiding and watching them fight each other.

After the mission, Dante and his men ambushed and cornered Alex when she was alone in a parking lot. Alex tries to fight off Bungo's men, but is overpowered. She is abducted afterwards. Bungo sends a terrible message to Cardo and Task Force Agila that he captured Romero at Santo Hospital in Paco. Cardo and his task force has taken down Bungo’s henchmen, but he fatally shoots Alex while she was tied up the roof and he escaped their clutches. Dante and his men then returned to Lazaro who then confronted him with his psychotic behavior and the latter demanded to have his share of money from Lazaro after threatening them with a grenade, then they kicked him out of his mansion because of his betrayal. Cardo then vows revenge on Bungo to get justice for the death of Alex. Oscar later urges Cardo to take Dante out as soon as possible. Dante later goes back to his home in Sitio Kasagaran and offered money to the villagers living there in exchange of being part of his group against Cardo and Task Force Agila, which the villagers accepted. Unbeknownst to them, there are two assets that were sent by Amir to investigate if Dante was there.

The operation starts at Sitio Kasagaran, where Dante and his newly-acquired allies are. The Task Force fought them, but they were severely outnumbered, and the territory was too much. They eventually corner Dante. But the latter, apparently having no plans to surrender, takes Salazar hostage and threatens to shoot her. After a number of steps along with the task force who still followed him slowly, Bungo releases and quickly shoots Salazar before running for it again. Cardo gives the chase until he finds Dante in a random house. An intense fist fight begins with Cardo immediately gaining the upper hand. But Bungo blocks one of Cardo's punches and slams him onto a table, minimally stunning the latter. He makes his way to the rooftops but Cardo recovers quickly, catches up to him, and the fight continues. They fall into another random house due to a brittle roof. Bungo grabs a knife in an attempt to stab him a second time. But this time, Cardo dodges and disarms the knife and continues to throw punches and kicks to Dante. They end up in a basketball court. Cardo continues to batter a slowly weakening Bungo with more powerful punches, with each punch being dedicated to all of those Bungo victimized and murdered, including PLt. Tiongson, PSMSgt. Parana, PCpt. Chikoy Rivera, and PMaj. Romero before Basco told Cardo to stop. The rest of Task Force Agila surround Bungo, who was too injured to make another escape. It is then revealed that Bungo had bombs strapped around his jacket. He takes out the bomb's detonator in one more desperate attempt to kill the task force along with himself. Cardo quickly grabs a pistol and shoots him four times. But, gathering every last ounce of strength, Bungo detonates the bombs and he is obliterated in the explosion, finally ending his evil schemes and serving justice to his victims. Cardo and Task Force Agila successfully moved away from the explosion, with no member dead or critically injured, save for the injuries of some members, and deaths of separate units.

Mitigating Factors
Pretty much non-existent. Dante is a card-carrying villain through and through, plus a sadistic, bloodthirsty and vindictive psychopath to boot who will stop at nothing until he puts Cardo and the rest of his team out of their misery. Given his parallels to Cardo since they have both twin brothers who died through separate circumstances and desire to avenge their deaths; Cardo does avenge his brother with justice on his side, while Cardo wants everyone in the entire police force to fear his wrath for their part in his brother's death even going as far as to endanger innocent people. This makes Dante as the anti-Cardo.

Heinous Standards
Ang Probinsyano is by means controversial at times which puts the drama on hot water from other parties (especially from the Philippine National Police at one point), but the drama covers up crime, conspiracy, corruption in all of its forms, and even the on-going drug warfare here in the Philippines which has been implemented by President Rodrigo Duterte. So far that I have watched his character arc, Dante has managed to take the level of heinousness to extreme new heights. On top of his attempted killing of Cardo and having most of his teammates fall into his traps, Bungo and his guys even raped and killed policewomen of all things. This scene caused the drama to be on hot water as if it went overboard. Not to mention that the idea of women being abused (physically and emotionally), let alone sexually assaulted, wouldn't bode too well in an era where sexual harassment cases against high-profile personalities and even more disturbing stuff like children unwittingly exposed to inappropriate content are rife.

Final Verdict
Easy keep. Let me know your thoughts.