Friday night, the year is 2041 and a traditional atmosphere is spreading in the country.
A kind of Israeli routine that does not change.
The shops closed early, the scent of cooking fills the stairwells, the sun as usual sets in time, and many families finish their Friday meal on the couch in front of a new episode of "Sabri Refreshing."
A tradition that is passed down from generation to generation.
And in the season that will air in 2041, Shai and Shani will travel in their autonomous car for a family meal with his parents, in an Ashkenazi nursing home with bland food and cool temperatures. Futuristic technology will go wrong in the middle of the road, and the automatic driver will lead them to the house of her Oriental parents, who have been sucked into some complicated plot of augmented reality and flying robots. And everyone will grin at the taste of the mazluf and the losers bachelors in the family, and someone will get entangled in insignificant nonsense, and everything will be solved without logic before the end of the episode. In the end, of course, we will return to the starting point: Shai and Shani will return to their home in the autonomous car, she will sting him in the context of his Ashkenazi family and everything will remain unchanged, just like 30 years before.
Back to 2021, yesterday (Friday) came the request for a new and seventh season of the longest situation comedy on Israeli television.
"Playful Sabri" has been in our lives since August 2011, and over the past decade, 245 episodes have been broadcast;
The count does not include an infinite amount of reruns around the clock.
Almost every day an episode of "Sabri" is broadcast at some point, and without Dvir Bendek's weight changes, we would not have been able to keep track of which episode belongs to which season.
The same punch from generation to generation.
"Playful explanations", photo: from the series
Because no matter how much you slander and insult, "playful explanations" are always here to provide the masses with the same thing.
Even before a new episode begins, we already know what we will get from it: a predictable and flightless plot, musty jokes and simple humor, a sitcom that seems to come out of a factory and is based on the most grounded conflicts in our culture, gaps between Mizrahis and Ashkenazis, between men and women or between parents and children.
This series makes sure to reflect the mainstream as its creators diagnose it.
She rummages through those corny conflicts of Israeli society, jokes about them, rides them for punches, and usually ends up where she started.
The characters do not develop out of the events, they do not come out of their box of banality but continue their casual routine from chapter to chapter.
"Playful Sabri" never tried to get out of the box or reinvent herself.
The furthest she goes is to add Neta Alchemister to the cast as a close babysitter.
Then, even when the series boasts a brilliant idea - say, in the episode yesterday they tried to pass on the characters the Tractate of the Ten Plagues of Egypt - it just is not able to crack it into a proper execution.
Among other things, because once again the plot was sucked into its usual stencil.
A decade on screen, and "Playful Explanation" is still at its starting point, whether in terms of the characters or the TV style, or in the plot lines it chooses to present each week.
Nothing has changed over 245 episodes, mostly because it does not need changes.
The above episode was the most watched show on television yesterday, because for many Israelis "playful explanations" are very relevant to the life they know.
The public discourse in Israel has been stuck for years - recurring debates, conflicts and social disparities passed down from generation to generation, and a general agreement not to agree on anything.
Maybe that's why a generation goes by and a generation comes, but “Playful Explains” remains the most stable thing in commercial television.
there are things that do not change.
Playful Sabri - New Season, Rainbow 12, Friday 9:45 p.m.
