"Connected": Going Down Lower Than Ever | Israel today

Dor Refaeli takes a shower, Michal Ansky breastfeeds and Doreen Atias reveals Ciprofloxacin - HOT's new season of docu-reality dives into the thrash districts

• The program does not solve problems, only exposes them.

  Michal Ansky in "Connected"

You can learn a lot from the first sentence of any opinion column you read. There is no dispute about the importance of the first impression, nor are they just saying that the first ten minutes in any movie or series are the most fateful. These are actually the moments when the viewer decides, among himself, whether he wants to continue watching or flicking on.

Now, let's examine what a first impression the new season of "Connected" provides, which aired last night (Monday) on HOT3 (Monday through Wednesday, 8:30 p.m.). The exposition chapters dived straight into the depths of the yellow swamp, and they opened with Dor Refaeli, the heir to the Israeli royal family. At the first moment he showers in front of us and the water drips on his swollen and tattooed body, and a moment later - and before you can say "laying a celeb" - he is already smeared on the couch and opens up anxieties and fears due to the entry of his mother, Tzipi Refaeli. 

After him appeared Michal Ansky. It took her ten seconds on screen to extract a breast and breastfeed her child in front of the viewers. After a few minutes she cried in front of the mirror and confessed to the medical difficulties she was suffering from. The complex relationship with her father Alex Ansky was also present in the first episode with her. And so on: Doreen Atias reveals in the first scene the distress of residence, debts, loneliness and the use of Ciprofloxacin, while Lucy Aharish opened her deal with two abortions from the beginning and added an ultrasound examination, reading violent talkbacks and cuddling with Tzachi Halevi.

It can be exaggerated to say that this is a season of new beginnings because Ivri Lider's mother moves to live next to him in the moshav, and Doreen is looking for an apartment with the number 3 because that is what the spiritual caller demanded, and Lucy will go to the delivery room, and Tzipi will go to jail. People who share our private lives with us anyway.

"Connected" promises to dig into the bowels of its subjects, press on sensitive points and make sure the camera is recorded as much as possible, even if a significant portion is staged or pre-planned in great detail. "Connected" wants to be a psychological treatment in front of a camera, but at the end of the season the effect it does is reversed. It does not solve mental problems, but only pulls them out and presents them in public.

If in its first seasons it concentrated on the lives of anonymous characters, in the ninth season "Connected" already goes hardcore on celebrity A-list. It invites you to go lower than ever, or at least makes such a first impression.