Thomas Gottschalk moderates “Wetten, dass ..?”. How nice to see the imaginary Franconian back where it belongs. The lustful backwardness of the show is a safe space for boomers, thinks Micky Beisenherz.
The Cringelord is back. Saturday evening, 8:15 pm: Thomas Gottschalk steps down the show stairs in the exhibition hall in Nuremberg and around 2,500 people applaud so emphatically that it is immediately clear: They want it. They really want it.
“Wetten, dass ..?”: There is a lot of applause
They bring the “fair” into the exhibition hall. “Bet that..?” is back and with him a moderator who seems so satisfied that he has just been successfully released into the wild. Here in Nuremberg they applaud Himmler, who is the ZDF program director, the mayor (“ah, there isser!”) And above all: a lot of yourself. It’s an impressive mass psychosis. As if Peter Hahne had written “The Perfume”.
Markus Söder canceled at short notice – “Schaunsie, it’s not about people, it’s about Germany” – which is virologically justifiable at this superspreader event. He’s generally not the type who likes to cheer others on. And there is much applause. The zealous white German majority society collectively applauds its way back to a better time. And the blonde pause button in a brocade jacket is happy to serve these longings. There is no Corona here, only Karina.
How nice to see the imaginary Franconian back where it belongs, instead of watching it like last time on Bild TV, which frankly felt a bit like watching the once rich favorite uncle collecting bottles. Hello Austria. Hello Switzerland. Europe is more than walls and fences here. Michelle Hunziker is here. Giovanni Zarrella stands in a battle arena, dressed as inappropriately chic as Armin Laschet in the Ahr valley and generously distributing a few Italianisms.
Right at the beginning there is the expected gender joke, a few pleasurable backwards turns and the obligatory grip on the knee. This time, however, Hunziker arrives at their boss with Gottschalk. Probably a political statement on the zeitgeist. The top Twitter crowd has long since drooled. “Der Thommy” has always been known for making faux pas every now and then. For someone like him the world is now a kind of Mount Splashmore – fat bowl landscape – and he prances through it with relish.
A dog that separates rubbish: Welcome to Germany
There is also betting. A Jack Russel Terrier named Uno who separates rubbish. Welcome to Germany. Even the dogs recycle on ZDF. The audience is spellbound. Some hold up signs. “Uno, you can do it.” Uno cannot read it.
Helene Fischer is there and if you didn’t know better, you would think that she got pregnant on the spot. “The best in the world are the children”, Giovanni Zarrella confirms in her fertility. Who wanted to contradict? Standing ovations. In any case, the audience rises to applause so often that the orthopedic practices should be full tomorrow.
They are all there. Helene, Udo and Abba. At least the male part of the Swedish jacking coalition. The men go to work, the women stay at home. Women scrub toilet brushes rhythmically, the future competition king Leon Krampl in a Kai-Ebel memorial shirt documents his geographic knowledge by throwing darts and a delegation from the volunteer fire brigade bets that they drive around a sports field faster than a sprinter with a go-kart powered by fire-fighting water -Series. The inventors and inventors that Armin Laschet always talked about really exist. A couple of people wave at the camera.
The production invited the moderator Lisa and Lena to participate in the reality check, and a YouTuber named Vinny Piano is coming to the delight of the inevitable children’s competition candidate Emil. Vinny piano. That used to be Elton John. Or at least Lang Lang. The atmosphere in the hall is excellent. Over and over again thunderous applause. The exhibition hall 2 as a gigantic bathtub, filled with comfortably warm nostalgia.
Twitter is watching eagerly
Joko and Klaas stop by too. The two that Thommy relatively openly envied for being attested seriousness in addition to all the nonsense. Sucks. The Kulmbach punch line recently had to face some linguistic mistakes and takes a lot of time to talk again and again about what he does not want to talk about. While Twitter looks a little too eagerly at what you definitely don’t want to watch. You need each other. A relationship of dependency spanning over 50,000 tweets.
Gottschalk used to moderate and foamed the features section the next day. Now that social media has democratized the features section, they are all foaming in real time. Suddenly they are all Götz George 1998. Separating rubbish and scrubbing the toilet is a high-performance sport. When does a bodybuilder come and sort receipts? Who cares.
Safe space for boomers
We want Abba, Udo, and if Helmut Kohl suddenly came in woman’s clothes, no one would be surprised. The evening is getting late and a feeling arises like in lignite villages in North Rhine-Westphalia: the crowd is raging and waiting for the excavator. He then comes and snaps his shovel at thrown Frisbees like the host of the show for the zeitgeist. Sometimes it works better, sometimes worse.
For Generation Z, it all has to feel like a Teutonic Squid Game. For everyone else, the lustful backwardness of the show is a safe space for boomers. When Frank Elstner arrives at the latest, some of them have tears in their eyes. The show ends around 11:47 p.m. and Claus Kleber turns on the light: “Sorry for the change in mood.” Around 14 million Germans forgive him for the informative nuisance grudgingly.
“Bet that..?” is antiquated nonsense. Lived standstill. A time capsule. A booster shot against too many 2020s. ZDF would be crazy not to act out that from time to time.