The new season of "The Singer in the Mask" arrives at a wonderful time - as soon as the whole country has finished talking about the Korean "Squid Game", the singing reality that came from that crazy TV country returns.
South Korea also knows how to produce a masterpiece series that combines disturbed creative with social depth, as well as "The Singer in a Mask" - an inferior and artificial format like sour-sweet noodles swimming in a glowing pink sauce in Azrieli's dining complex.
No wonder, then, that panelist Ofira Asaig is so identified with the brand.
This is a TV that speaks Asaig - and it will press your noise and ringing glands for nothing and nothing.
The advantage of "The Singer" is that it is a "feel good TV" program for the whole family - it can be watched with fun with the children without fear of cursing and violence reaching the soft ears of the "survival" jurors, playing with them in guessing unrelated reality until they fall asleep, Another casual evening - but in a Purim atmosphere.
Ironically, that's exactly why it's a bad TV show.
It sells us a sense of “quality time with family,” but in practice it accustoms us to television based on fake emotions.
Ofira Asaig, the inventor of the genre, lives and breathes such content in everything she does, but the rest of the panel members seem at times as if they have been taken captive by an "excessive game in front of a camera" workshop.
There is no situation in which the brilliant stand-up comedian Shahar Hasson, who has directed several things in his life, really experiences the standard of emotions that Ofira has set for them.
The human mind is not really built to get excited about a costume that moves slowly with playback in the background, nor does Megdi Sukenik get hurt from a bear costume.
Although Ofira has no problem getting into ecstasy and excessive tension, the other judges simply align with her as required by the contract, and sound forced like Ben-El Tavori's styling.
Last Friday, just before the start of the new season, an amazing thing happened in "Ofira and Barco".
Ofira has mobilized screen time in favor of reasonable promotion, i.e. insanely blatant even by her standards, to the reality in which she is judging.
This time it did not end with a hyperactive weekly flight on every aspect of it, from the "mammam" costumes through the "mammam" production, to the "mammam" suspense it is in.
There was one ripping moment between her and Barco, who distilled the whole essence of the show.
Ofira jumped into the studio wearing the "mushroom" costume, and asked Barco to guess who was inside the construction.
Ignoring the fact that it's exactly the same costume from last season, we'll continue to the guessing game that lasted a full five minutes of painful screen time in his misery, and sigh at the fact that Barco was able to guess the mushroom identity because he remembered encountering Michal Amdursky in the bathroom.
Ofira, as expected, was in "Elm," and Barko remained indifferent.
It's not clear if the shock was due to the latter responding quickly and indifferently, or because Ofira realized that from all the little show she put up around the celeb's guess, there was a reaction from someone who came back from the bathroom with the answer.
From the reaction of Barko, who could not guess Michal Amdursky even though she has been identified with the costume for a year, and a banal visit to the bathroom revealed his identity, only one thing can be deduced: programs like "The Singer in the Mask" capture screen time of what we really expect from TV our.
They can also be reality, but why?
In "The Singer" there is not the personal journey that the contestant goes through in "Big Brother", there is not the extreme conditions and social challenge of "Survival" or even the sticky warmth of "Master Chef".
Tomorrow, for Keshet's morning show, they will bring an empty TV costume.
We'll see if you can guess what's in it.