We cried - to laugh, to play - when Claude lost in the spring.
We cry for real when we learn this Thursday morning that Bertrand-Kamal, candidate for the new season, lost his fight against cancer, at the age of 30.
We don't play anymore, even if the show continues.
Even if Bertrand-Kamal Loudrhiri, to whom many had already become attached, will appear on the air this Friday evening on TF1 and perhaps many other weeks.
So goes "Koh-Lanta", the adventure game which fascinates but even more accompanies the French for nearly twenty years.
During confinement, the stratospheric audiences of the flagship program of the One - 7.4 million fans for the final - showed that it was for viewers an entertainment, an escape, a blanket.
But also a mirror.
Koh-Lanta does not benefit from a drama immunity totem.
Injuries and returnees, that's the game. The death of candidate Gerald Babin during the first test, in 2013, followed by the suicide of the show's doctor, could have put the program out of play.
If resilience was possible, it's because millions of fans wanted it.
“Their” Koh-Lanta, even struck by tragedy, was not going to disappear from the Friday night hut, the one where you take a deep breath to enter the weekend.
In 2018, another edition was canceled when filming began, due to an accusation of sexual assault committed by an "adventurer" against a candidate.
The information then opened by the Nancy prosecutor for sexual assault continues.
"When we fall, we get up and we stay up"
But the show always comes back.
Heroes are never tired.
The old guys reappear in "gold" editions, new faces, new clashes but also new idylls and even great love stories are born in the show and continue after the broadcast.
This unique bond of the “adventurers” with each other and with their audience is reminiscent of a slogan of the world champions: we win, we lose, we suffer together.
“It's the very content and the Koh-Lanta spirit: it's hard but we stand up and we move forward.
This show does the same thing as the candidates: when you fall, you get up and you stay up.
These are the values that make it resistant to the blows of fate, ”explains Nathalie Nadaud-Albertini, sociologist at CREM Lorraine (Center for Research on Mediations), specialist in television.
VIDEO. Koh-Lanta: death of Bertrand-Kamal, adventurer of the 2020 season
How will this edition of “Quatre Terres” recover from this terrible shock, when the broadcast had just started and Bertrand-Kamal could remain on the air for many more weeks?
This Friday, Denis Brogniart will pay tribute to him.
“At the casting, he illuminated the room with his smile, his ponytail and his backpacker look.
He was so happy to be there… ”recalls producer Alexia Laroche-Joubert.
"He marked the entire production team with his fair play," adds Julien Magne, program director of ALP, the production company.
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Death of Bertrand-Kamal from "Koh-Lanta": our reporter had spent two days with him
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The editing of this edition will not be changed.
Which, for the faithful, promises to be another ordeal.
Mounia, a fan living in Lourdes, "is a little apprehensive" to see her "favorite" of the season on TV again.
“It's going to be super weird to see him on the show.
It will be sad every time he appears in the image, "opines Jonathan, a Lyonnais" of the same age "as the candidate.
This Friday evening, Black Friday, Elegie in Fiji.
And the old-fashioned TV, at 9:05 pm, will sound the reminder of the flock, the faithful and the familiar.
The tribe, as they say in Koh-Lanta, will try to tame the mourning.
In each household, but all together.
