There’s so much going on, you don’t even have to look back. Today is the new yesterday. Instead of going back months to January or February, the always agile Markus Lanz picks up on the latest horror news of the day in his show for the year 2021: the lack of vaccines. That fits in well with the concept, a chronology of misery. Dramaturgically arranged in such a way that even the evils that might have been slipped into the year 2020 in an evolutionary-psychologically absolutely understandable process of repression, are dragged to the Hamburg studio in front of the investigative commission.
No, we owe all of that to 2021, says Markus Lanz and quotes Bavarian Prime Minister Söder about five times, who, for whatever reason, will have the final say: “That was a crazy year, that was a difficult year.” Whether Ahrtal or Afghanistan: Lanz does not want to close the files in 2021 without looking for the culprits and witnesses one last time: the nasty-sad emotions. Ouch.
Who would have thought that on a talk show the worried permanent warner Karl Lauterbach would be the most confident of the group? In addition to Markus Söder, who hands out the “counterproductive” recommendations of Stiko (“that is not a reproach”) and complains about the lack of Bavaria in the new cabinet, as well as the ethics council chairman Alena Buyx, the intensive nurse Ralf Berning and the rest of the show, the newly appointed Minister of Health acts like an energetic beacon.
“The way I am knitted, I initially have everyone on one big one, on one very big table “, announced Lauterbach when asked what he is going to do now, in order to then extensively very calculate the weekly rations Moderna and Biontech extensively. Conclusion: “The vaccine is not enough for an offensive booster campaign like the one we are currently running.” He is now trying to buy back vaccine as an emergency. After all, he delivers Ampel-Gossip from the coalition: Finance Minister Lindner has approved his order amount.
“We actually wanted to do a nice review of the year”
Lanz, whose red tie shines comfortably and festively, asserts, “We actually wanted to take a look back at the year,” but then, as you know, fourth wave, cloverleaf postponement, lack of vaccines. To get a “feel” for it, he lets the intensive care nurse Berning tell how quickly intubated Covid patients die, as they only had a single bed left in the greater Bielefeld area. Conclusion: “Rock hard”.
Then it becomes intimate. Lanz sends everyone out of the room with the exception of Markus Söder, who is in line with the pandemic, this time with the two towers of the Munich Frauenkirche behind him. After a clip about the history of the K question in the CDU, after surveillance camera pictures from Laschet and Söder at the closed conference, after a best-of of the Söder taunts (“I don’t feel like opposition”, “not with the sleeping car to the Chancellery “,” In the end they wanted a different candidate for Chancellor “), Lanz rubs his hands: What if he were Chancellor now? For the maneuvering artist Söder, of course, light branches: “I am generally a person who looks ahead.”
After the Franconian-soft granite, Lanz drills for emotions on the next topic. January 6th, storming the Capitol. Pictures of a red-white-blue pack, fur hat, horns. The eyewitness and US policeman Michael Fanone is now sitting on Karl Lauterbach’s chair and first testifies to political theories in which Lanz happily digs (“There are traces as far as the White House!”) That “some kind of organization” must have taken place.
Then Lanz wants to know how it was for him when an angry mob pushed him down the stairs, he suffered a heart attack and begged for his life: “I have children!” What did he feel there, when exactly did he have the heart attack, how was it for him that his daughter first found out about his fate from the media?
Lanz’s résumé: Such a review of the year puts a spotlight on “this sad world”
At this point, at the latest, it is clear that Lanz is pursuing two missions: A processing of this disaster year and those responsible. And a painful emotional revue for which the talk show host usually doesn’t have to do much. Brigadier General Jens Arlt, who was present at the evacuation in Afghanistan, tells of desperate people who used children to get into the airport and then simply threw them on the ground or into drains.
And when the former Afghan local politician Zarifa Ghafari speaks of the fact that the situation in her home country is “worsening every day”, people are being executed and two days ago a man threw himself in front of a truck in front of his children, Lanz is no different , than that such a review of the year would at least put a spotlight on “this sad world”.
The program ends with destroyed half-timbered villages, demolition edges, and floating cars. In front of the flood images from the Ahr valley, the science journalist and “Terra X” presenter Dirk Steffens can make a final appeal: “The world is a problem. We have to tackle difficult things. And that also hurts.”
Lanz does not allow the last funeral song to be taken away and quotes from Söder’s most recent book: “That was a crazy year, that was a difficult year.” Lanz’s annual review marks the start of a total of eight annual reviews broadcast by ZDF alone. There remains the mad hope that an edition by Jürgen von der Lippe or at least the honey cake gang will be moderated. The remaining doors of the advent calendar have already been kicked in desperately. The one from 2022 as a precautionary measure. Because in view of future past problems including recurring virus and flood waves: Tomorrow was the new today.
Marlene Knobloch is a freelance, streaming author, but dreams of televisions in the kitchen and bedroom. Every Sunday she could doze off linearly to the come-good-for-the-week wishes of the night magazine presenters with thousands of viewers in Germany. Until then, she watches old Harald Schmidt episodes on her laptop while peeling potatoes.