Ikaw Lamang (Tagalog: “Only You”) is a 2014 Philippine television drama produced by ABS-CBN and Dreamscape Entertainment Television, which focuses on two generations of the Hidalgo family of sugar barons from Salvacion, Negros and the people around them. The first season is set from 1964 to 1984, with the second season taking place from 2005 onwards.
This series contains the following tropes:
- Artistic License – Geography: Negros is referred as a single province rather than having two (Negros Occidental and Negros Oriental).
- Artistic License – History: There weren't any local elections in the Philippines between 1980
and 1988. In 1984, only parliamentary elections were held. - Big Bad: Maximo Salazar, during most of Book 1.
- Berserk Button: Never insult Samuel's mother or his wife, especially if you're Franco or Maximo.
- Dragon-in-Chief: Franco becomes this in the 1980s, going as far as set up barricades in his own house to prevent his wife from escaping his cruelty.
- Generational Saga: Each season of Ikaw Lamang revolves around a particular generation of the Hidalgos.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each season is called a book, and the commercial break bumper of each episode contains a hashtag that describes the episode (this convention is seen in most ABS-CBN dramas of the time). For example, the first episode's hashtag is "#IkawLamangGrandPilot".
- Starting with "Passage", the hashtag got simplified to "#ILPassage", using the abbreviation of the series title.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the series finale, after Gabriel and Franco fight in the ship, Franco falls out and is impaled on the ship's anchor.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Maximo gets buried alive in a snake-infested coffin by Gonzalo.
- The cross planted on top of that coffin reads “Justitia Servierunt” (Justice Served).
- Period Piece
- The '60s: The first five episodes take place in 1964, while the sixth episode features two major events from 1969. Samuel, Mona, Franco, and Isabelle are kids in this decade.
- The '70s: Episode 6 is titled after the year in which majority of it takes place: 1975.
- The '80s: Focuses on Samuel and Franco raising their children with Mona and Isabelle, respectively, the province-wide sugar crisis and the gubernatorial elections, the latter two being set in 1984.
- Turn of the Millennium: Book 2 takes place from 2005 onwards. Gabriel, Natalia, and Andrea are in their twenties.
- The first episode of Book 2 contains a brief scene set in 1990 showing how much Gabriel has grown up under the care of Lupe and Calixto.
- Time Skip: Two major ones, the first from 1964 to 1975, and then from 1984 to 2005 in the first episode of Book 2.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Eduardo Hidalgo, as mayor of Salvacion in the 1960s, governor of Negros in the 1970s, and father to Samuel and Franco.
