There are many ways to say “thank you”. Postcards, flowers, Pacific islands, a dinner with homemade goat cheese ravioli on pumpkin puree. RTL says “Thank you” with Atze Schröder. The station organized a free open air event for the “everyday heroes” of the corona pandemic – including cashiers, teachers, nurses, doctors and psychologists. For this, the “crème de la crème of the German comedy scene” (RTL) was brought onto the stage. Or more precisely: Mario Barth, Sascha Grammel, Oliver Pocher, Ilka Bessin or Mirja Boes. But as much as the crème also says “Thank you, food!” roared – around 7000 (at least vaccinated) people at the Baldeneysee became quieter and quieter. Instead, the question of whether you want to enrich yourself with sympathy here became louder and louder.
First of all, everything is “great”. Mario Barth runs up the ramp to the audience and can “cool” even “cool” not “cool” understand how “cool” it is to appear in front of real people again – and thus makes it clear who is benefiting from whom here. “NUUUDELN” he shouts when he talks about his hamster shopping, a story whose grand finale consists of the fact that his girlfriend was in the nail salon during this time. A chapter from Barth’s sex life follows without every second level. It must have suffered from the pandemic.
Granted, retelling gags is never fair. But given the lack of punch lines of the evening, one wonders what the comedians have been up to in the past 1.5 years. The Ehrlich Brothers babble on verses about a trick that is a simple picture puzzle: “In our four walls / everything should end now / with our disinfected hands”. Paul Panzer also rummages in the women-come-from-Venus box and takes out his wife Hilde and her algae masks. Sarah Connor takes off her shoes in a let’s-all-be-crazy-mood, sings unmistakably live about her pandemic life, “cold-pressed olive oil”, about the herb garden she planted, that she “didn’t laugh enough” and “Only halfway through learning with the kids”.
It could have been so nice: laugh out of the Ruhrpott throat, plunder the “Beach Bar”, a few immature punchlines
And Oliver Pocher’s appearance consists of holding an iPad in the camera and showing half-witted internet clips, such as Dieter Bohlen dancing in the garden on TikTok with an umbrella. As much as everyone would like to thank those present and assure them how important their work is – who is giving presents to whom?
It could have been nice after such a time, on such an evening, in such an area, to laugh out of the Ruhrpott’s throat, to plunder the “Beach Bar”, to tell anecdotes and to say a few immature punchlines give. But the broadcaster not only fails to technically coordinate the transmission, it also fails to circumvent the suspicion of hypocrisy that such an event entails. And instead of an honest gesture, it shows advertisements, superficial interviews and emotional mockery.
In the audience is the presenter Lola Weippert, who, at first one thinks, lets the “heroines” have their say. Once the head of an intensive care unit is allowed to say that they have had “intense times”. He remains almost the only witness, instead the woman who laid Atze Schröder’s house connection is interviewed. The internet magician, a down-to-earth person, is happy that Atze Schröder is brought down from the stage in her honor, but Atze Schröder is not Robbie Williams and the woman who suffers the presenter is not built close to the water. There the two stand, arm in arm, laughing embarrassed, while presenter Weippert, in view of the epochal moment in the life of the connection woman, thrashes on the lacrimal gland, which cheekily does not want to jump.
“Pocher! Where are you?”
When, towards the end, Oliver Pocher roams through the audience and a chemistry and physics teacher tells him how difficult experiments via homeschooling are, the kind of easy, funny anecdote, the comic relief that one waited for the whole evening, his otherwise sugar-sweet roar smiling colleague Weippert through the accidentally audible headset: “Pocher! Where are you?” She then chokes the teacher to – “Wuhu” – to switch to the Ehrlich Brothers, who have to quickly bend iron under fountains of fire. When the camera pans through the audience, some of the faces resemble those of the cardboard constellations known from the pandemic.
At the end, the main presenter Daniel Hartwich thanks the heroines again for “holding out” for so long. Whether he means the past year and a half or the four hours that he has just passed is relative, the way time is.
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.