"Warring Land" promo, February 7, 2024/12 Sagittarius
The cruel words "not funny" hung over the episode of "Great Country" yesterday.
It happens to even the best.
It's hard to be funny all the time.
Even if you have the funniest talents, the most polished writers, the most amazing makeup department in the universe and a reality that never stops delivering punches.
Sometimes, what to do, it doesn't work.
Usually in less successful "Eretz" programs, sometime towards the middle of the episode, there is some small spark that jumpstarts things and suddenly a worn-out girl rises from your lips with pleasure.
Actually, it happened yesterday too.
I found myself laughing in front of the voice of one of the biggest past stars of "Amazing Country".
The voice belonged to a guy named Nir Gerber, who most viewers of "Wonderful Land" probably don't know what he looks like, but will surely recognize his voice from the famous "Nir and Gali" videos, which he creates with his partner Gali Adelbaum.
And so, instead of laughing at Liat Har Lev's excellent imitation of Tali Gottlieb, I found myself laughing for the first time precisely during the commercial break, radiating yellow cheese.
The "Nir Vegli" advertisement is well written, well executed and does the simple thing that an advertisement is supposed to do: make you want to buy the product (not an easy task in my case, given the fact that I don't eat dairy products at all).
And above all, she's funny - and that's the most obvious.
Not because it's an advertisement, but because my watch showed the date as the 7th of the month.
In the most difficult time of my life, exactly four months since the most terrible date in my country's history, a talking piece of bread flirting with a piece of mozzarella cheese made me giggle for a moment.
And that's important.
Escapism is a much more important matter than we realize.
And this is actually the real problem of the last season of "Eretz", which has to navigate carefully between the difficult news about another soldier who fell in Gaza, and an attempt to make light of the situation.
The news that the families of abductees who have been languishing in the tunnels of Hamas for four months are sitting in front of the televisions at home, and they deserve compassion, hope and yes, a bit of blessed escapism - certainly does not take away from the pressure that is exerted on Moli Segev, the writers and the talents.
For the most part, they deliver the goods.
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Regev and Bibi/screenshot, Keshet 12
So what did not work yesterday anyway?
First, the biggest mine that clouds all the satire programs in the nation's history: the reality here exceeds all imagination.
There is simply no way that Yuval Samo's imitation of Miri Regev would be funnier than reality.
Reminder: Minister Regev, the member of the political-security cabinet responsible for making the security decisions of the State of Israel, decided to fly during the war (during the war!) to Sri Lanka to sign an agreement that any official from the Ministry of Transportation can sign (during the war!!), and to add insult to injury For a crime, the one who joins her on the trip will be her daughter (during the war!!!).
Yuval is a genius, but for the life of me, there is no way to make fun of Miri Regev's character more than Miri Regev already does herself, with or without popping a bag of popcorn in the process.
The same goes for the failed attempt to make the shouting conversation between Dodi Amsalem and Tali Gottlieb funnier than it was in the press reports, and in the shameful speeches of the two representatives of the public in the Knesset Plenum. Liat Har Lev's imitation is perfect, and Maestro Eli Finish also does a very funny version of Dodi Amsalem (who, unlike Bibi-Mariano, really doesn't make concessions to the object of imitation) but even the best screenwriters in the world can't write dialogue funnier than the original in their case. For some reason, they still tried.
Gottlieb/screenshot, Keshet 12
In addition, and this is just as important, something about the sharpness of the satire of "Eretz" has been muted in the last season, probably on purpose in light of the general situation in the country.
An understandable matter on the whole.
And on the other hand, what's the point of keeping an attack dog in the yard if you put a barrier on it that prevents it from biting?
From time to time, the writers try to give a small bite into the cunning of Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the character of Mariano - perhaps the most significant original sin of "Wonderful Land" - will never be able to do any favors with Netanyahu's greatness in the field of fraud. Instead of presenting him as one of the most destructive factors In the history of the country, Mariano's Bibi is a circus and almost lovable character who reminds mainly of Samson, the lovable fox from "Pinocchio".
Precisely at the time when we most need the bite of "A wonderful country", we receive almost a caress from her. It's true that Mariano's imitation was funny Or the punches weren't expected from a mile away. If you want to see a real (and laugh-out-loud) satire on Netanyahu, you just have to wait for the next question from Matan Khodorov from Channel 13 at one of the Prime Minister's press conferences.
Tamir Bar/screenshot, Keshet 12
At the end of the program, the smile returned to the face, with an amusing and completely escapist skit by Tamir Bar, who set up a stand offering to sign stupid petitions such as "recruit cats to sting" or "add a dwarf to the government".
Bar's lovable personality in these sketches - a kind of cute combination between Dodo Erez, Nathan Fielder, Sasha Baron Cohen and Yehuda Barkan - does its job, and no less important: the people of Israel who become an integral part of the joke remind us how worth fighting for.
Quite amazing, such a program rich in content, with such talented writers and tremendous performers - and still the only time I laughed (except for a commercial for yellow cheese) was when an elderly Israeli woman was convinced that cats really don't do enough for the country.
To the life of this people, how good it is.
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