Berde Doesn't Mean Envy (But We Know It Anyway)
In Tagalog, berde means green. The colour of leaves, unripe mangoes, the plastic lawn chairs at family gatherings where someone will always bring up who got which piece of land. The word comes from the Spanish verde, a remnant of colonial language that stayed literal in translation. We don’t say “green with envy” because the metaphor doesn’t exist here—it didn’t cross over with the word.
The English phrase never made sense to me growing up. I learned what envy actually looked like not from idioms but through watching Filipino telenovelas. Every night in the living room, my family would gather around the TV to watch women tear each other apart on screen, over who got to keep the surname, the inheritance, the mother’s love. The funny thing is, this side of my family, my grandfather’s side, has been fighting over land for years. Massive pieces of property, inheritance disputes that never end, siblings who don’t talk anymore because one of them got a bigger share. Watching telenovelas felt less like fiction and more like watching a slightly more dramatic version of family reunions.
The kontrabida (villain) is the only reason these shows are watchable. Without them, you’d just be watching someone suffer patiently for sixty episodes, which sounds unbearable. The villains are the ones who actually do things, who refuse to accept their lot and decide they deserve more. I was in Year 7 when Kambal Karibal (2017) aired—the title literally means Twin Rivalry—and I was obsessed. The setup is two sisters, Crisanta and Criselda, who are close until Criselda dies from a rare immune disease. Criselda then comes back as a spirit that only Crisanta can see. Things fall apart when they both fall for the same guy, Diego, and when their mother starts paying more attention to the living daughter than the dead one. Criselda’s envy eats at her so much that she possesses another woman’s body—Cheska—just so she can return and take everything she believed Crisanta stole. I remember this one scene where Criselda, inhabiting Cheska’s body, humiliates Crisanta at a party by pulling her hair and pushing her face-first into a chocolate fountain in front of everyone. My family was yelling at the screen. In another episode, Cheska is ungrateful to her own mother after receiving a sentimental birthday gift, but lights up when her dad gives her a brand new phone. My relatives were livid. Walang hiya (shameless), they kept saying. But we never missed an episode. Cheska was the kind of villain you love to hate because she was doing what everyone dreams about but won’t admit.
These shows work as morality tales, and they’re made for the Philippines’ mostly Catholic, pretty conservative audience. Within Catholicism, envy is one of the seven deadly sins, and telenovelas drive that home over and over. The kontrabida schemes, crosses every line, takes what isn’t hers, and by the end she’s punished. Always. Cancer, disfigurement, prison, death—something terrible happens to her. The protagonist, meanwhile, just endures. She’s mabait (kind), mapagpasensya (patient), she suffers beautifully like she’s being tested by God. The message is obvious: stay in your lane, be grateful, don’t want more than what you’re given. Waiting is holy. Acceptance is righteous. The protagonist embodies the idea that if you suffer long enough, God or fate will eventually reward you. The kontrabida’s sin isn’t just wanting more, it’s refusing to wait, refusing to suffer gracefully. She wants the shortcut, and for that she has to be destroyed. The shows treat class hierarchy like it’s natural, like it’s divinely planned. If you’re poor, that’s your cross to bear. If you’re envious, you’re sinning.
But the thing is, the shows also let you wallow in the envy for weeks. That’s what makes them addictive. You watch because you understand why the kontrabidas do what they do. Everyone knows the moral is inevitable. The villain always loses. The patient protagonist always wins. But we still tune in for fifty-nine episodes of scheming because that’s where the real satisfaction is. You get why Ivy Aguas in Wildflower (2017-2018) would dedicate years to destroying the Ardiente family, especially Emilia, the matriarch who ruined her parents’ lives and walked away clean. It’s not just revenge, it’s fury at how unfair everything is. Or The Legal Wife (2014), where Monica is the protagonist, the actual wife, and Nicole is the kabit (mistress). Nicole doesn’t just want the husband, she wants what Monica has. The legitimacy. The title. Being the one in the family photos. Being chosen first instead of being someone’s mistake. Then there’s Flordeliza (2015), which is just premised on two babies switched at birth—one grows up rich, one grows up poor. Two cribs, same nursery, but one got the green grass and one got concrete. The whole show asks: what if that was your crib? What if you were the one who got the good life? The shows let you fantasise about it, let you live in that wanting, before they smack you with the moral lesson at the end.
My family used these shows like warnings. When kids on screen got too greedy or acted spoiled, someone would turn to the younger cousins and say, “See? That’s why you need to marunong tumanaw ng utang na loob (know how to be grateful).” It was never just about what was happening on TV. It was about us. The shows were teaching us that moving up in the world is possible but only if you do it the right way. Patient. Virtuous. Grateful. The kontrabida’s sin isn’t wanting more, it’s wanting to take what’s someone else’s, trying to steal a life instead of earning one. But I think everyone has a bit of kontrabida in them, even if we don’t want to admit it. I’ve caught myself being envious; of cousins who got ‘nicer’ gifts than me during Christmas, of classmates who would do something cool over the summer, of people who seemed to move through the world with less effort than me. The shows taught me to recognise that feeling and bury it, because wanting too much, wanting the wrong way, makes you the villain. But I never wanted to be the protagonist, either. The protagonists were good, sure, but they were also boring. They just stood there and took it. The villains had hunger. They had rage. They refused to wait, and even though we knew they’d lose, even though they always lost, we watched them fight and destroy and burn everything first. We don't have a word that connects envy to the colour green. Berde came from Spanish and stayed literal—just a colour, nothing more. But we grew up watching shows that put every shade of envy on display.
Maybe the metaphor never translated because we weren’t meant to soften what envy is like. We don’t hide envy behind leaves or grass. We name it directly. Inggit. Sama ng loob. The shows taught us envy was wrong, but they also taught us it was real, understandable, human. We’ve spent our whole lives watching it unfold on TV, with our families narrating every betrayal, every punishment, every moment someone wanted too much. And sometimes, if you’re honest, you see it in yourself too—that wanting, that hunger, the refusal to accept what you’ve been given as final. We don’t say “green with envy,” but we know exactly what it is.