The opening skit of "Wonderful Country", December 19, 2023/courtesy of Keshet 12
"Wonderful Country" always runs in the tension between parody and satire, between the moments when it is claimed that it doesn't bite enough, and the moments when it is accused of biting too much.
Moments of the second kind are relatively rare, but they usually come in the opening sketch, where the group allows itself to bite more than usual, to express something deep and poignant more than in the political panels and the softer sketches that come later and usually deal with more everyday events.
Sometimes it's puzzling, but sometimes a particularly painful punch comes out of it, when the one that justifies almost everything that follows it.
Also last night "Wonderful Country" went on its way with a controversial opening skit.
At its center: the inequality in the burden in the background of the new law that will extend the service of regular and reservist soldiers, and in the shadow of the anger in the secular public, which overflows every few years and also this time, that this obligation is spared from ultra-Orthodox youth.
The anger only increases due to the very fact that a significant number of members of the government did not serve in the army themselves, but does not hesitate to impose more on those who are obligated to do so by law.
Wonderful Land, February 4, 2024/Screenshot, Sagittarius 12
Summary of the event, in a nutshell: two casualty officers in uniform (Mariano Idelman and Shani Cohen) knock on a door to announce the worst of all, and find in front of them a spirited young man (Yuval Samo) whose biggest fear is that these are officers who have come to recruit him into the army and invents every possible excuse for the army men Grief-stricken.
When he realizes that they are wounded officers, he says: "What a relief."
They realize that they made a mistake in the address: they should have reached the street in Ramat Gan and not in nearby Bnei Brak.
"You have to be careful with these mistakes," Haberach tells them.
The parable is clear: there are those who are not willing to take part in the defense of the land, at most to pray for the rest, and there are those who have no choice but to pay the heaviest price of all.
The knock on his door will come, and this time it won't be a mistake in the address.
This skit is blunt, and at its core is deep frustration.
The contrast between the mournful faces of the uniformed officers and the almost nihilistic clownish ultra-Orthodox caricature in front of them is sharp, certainly considering the horrifying message at hand.
Accordingly, he angered many and caused a small storm on the Internet.
This quickly took on the form understood in the sketch itself, with a barricade line atom.
Many netizens were outraged by the offensive representation of the ultra-orthodox and by pitting public against public, while others were quick to emphasize that this is a brave satire, while the reality is the one that insults.
But the debate about the bottom line of the skit is unnecessary and boring.
It is the beginning of it that is unbearable and nauseating.
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Wonderful Land, February 4, 2024/Screenshot, Sagittarius 12
Because the truth is, casualty officers at the door can't be the start of a joke.
Not right now during a war, not when the wounds are still so fresh, not when only a few hours before the broadcast it was allowed to be published that a female soldier had been killed in the north.
This knocking is the nightmare that accompanies multitudes of Israeli families, especially in recent weeks.
For hundreds of them, it also materialized in reality.
Much more than this opening skit puts a finger in the eye of the anxieties - justified or not, you decide - it can scratch a wound of many families that is far from healing, and play on the most terrible anxieties of other families, which is not what they were waiting for when they turned on "Ertez Fahadrah".
It is clear that this was not the intention of the writers and actors, and yet: this is a situation in which there can be nothing funny, and it doesn't matter what the point is that comes later.
It's just bad taste.
I watched it and felt bad.
I allow myself to bet that I am not alone in this.
You can hide behind words like "brave satire" or "humor knows no bounds", but that is cowardice.
These are not magic words that can convey everything.
The shock should have a justification, and here there really isn't one - what's more, not long after, the exact same punch was handled in a much more elegant and effective way with the characters of Goldknopf (Sharon Teicher) and Gaffni (Roi Bar-Natan), when the much more justified address to the jokes is Indeed that of the ultra-orthodox politicians who behave and express themselves shamelessly.
Give me a thousand times to insist on Goldknopf, and not only because of the amazing imitation of Sharon Teicher.
Let's keep the moment of the terrible knock on the door, which changed so many worlds in recent months, out of the satire programs.
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Wonderful Country