‘El hormiguero’ returns calling for elections and ‘La revuelta’ announces “its final season”

To the rhythm of can-can and with a mention of Ceuta in the first minutes, but without relying on that drum that was focused on Valencia, what a pity, this is how La revuelta started its third season on TVE and “the last one” according to Broncano, who is one of those who puts the bandage before the wound. Grison was less defeatist. “We can flatter any government,” he added. There was no lack of mention of that future of chainsaws looming over the public broadcaster nor of its rival.

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“It gives me great peace of mind that, after so many seasons, I can look to this side and see Trancas and Barrancas one more year,” he said referring to Castella and the aforementioned Grison. Although the ratings will say if it fights with El hormiguero for first place or for second with Iker Jiménez. There are few differences in the program’s mechanics; there are differences in the staging: they premiered a new theme and theater, bigger, more stately, more bleak. Yesterday all the shows returning to the schedule premiered something: logo, graphics, decoration…, as if some viewer had ever said: “Wow, a thousand lux of lighting, this is the show I want to watch.”

El hormiguero started a few minutes later, unhurried; they don’t owe their audience, only their eternal commercials. It’s the 21st season, it has nothing left to prove and they know people are one or the other, that there are few undecided who choose the one that starts first. Motos began by thanking the Madrid City Council for the facilities for his grand start, but on television, the group of 14 humanoid robots walking down an empty street with the clumsiness of someone putting on shoes for the first time after a summer in flip-flops, looked a bit sad, as much as hearing one of them speak with the voice of Constantino Romero in T-800 style from Terminator.

It was supposed to be impressive, but it was just a long and soporific ad for a robotics company that sponsored Pablo Motos’ speech to the glory of AI and during which, more than the host of a show, he seemed the CEO of a semiconductor company from Taiwan. AI is wonderful, engrave it in your small and increasingly useless human brains; what does it matter if it depletes natural resources and the average citizen uses it to wonder how many pairs of panties he needs to go for a week to Zahara de los Atunes.

But, wait, is this a family entertainment show again? When the presence of the robots began to make us believe that maybe this season yes, Motos recovered the essence of recent times, called the ministers “charlatans,” asked to be able to go to the polls and showed us “the unquestionable facts” about Ceuta in a video that made me wonder if my cat had sat on the remote control and I was now watching Horizonte. I don’t know if the facts are really unquestionable, but certainly on El hormiguero they won’t question them.

To top it off, Carlos Latre appeared imitating Pedro Sánchez and what is “an unquestionable fact” is that you don’t die of secondhand embarrassment because I submitted this article a little later with my vital signs intact. Latre’s Sánchez went to “farm Ceuta,” sic. Television leaves many questions unanswered, but none is why his Babylon Show failed; that answers itself. There was a day when this gentleman tried to succeed in prime time, which was direct competition with El hormiguero, as Pablo Motos reminded him in a gesture known among dogs as “territorial marking” and among humans as humiliation.

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All the hours of television I have under my belt and I have never seen anyone ask a rival for explanations about the audacity of trying to take a tenth of their share, and that Telecinco monstrosity barely lasted 10 episodes. The discomfort in the air was such that I thought it would end like Robert De Niro in The Untouchables, with Motos wielding a bat over the imitator’s head. He preferred to let him babble while Latre got smaller before the viewers and exhausted the compliments to his new boss. If brown-nosing were an Olympic sport, yesterday a record more lasting than Bob Beamon’s would have been set. I always wonder how many bills people who endure this kind of treatment have to pay and if it’s worth it. “And what did you think when I called you again?” Motos snapped to finish because his ego is infinite and insatiable. He forgot to ask who was the fairest in the television kingdom.

They were not “talking about the behind the scenes of television,” as Carlos Alsina said, the first guest along with Rafa Latorre this season; it was a disgusting exercise of submission to a hopeless rival. Alsina left few headlines, but he threw a mild jab at Motos when he asked him why he had switched to entertainment: “You’re here to talk about politics.” That’s the point: this show no longer competes with La revuelta or La isla de las tentaciones, but with Horizonte.

Near the end, the robots returned to perform a choreography and I thought I heard Asimov’s cry. It was one of those shows that would move the eight-year-old children who followed this show when it was family-friendly, but what eight-year-old is watching television at eleven twenty at night and, above all, what eight-year-old is interested in a show that is already 90 percent politics and 10 percent advertising?

The finale of the premiere was the traditional video with the star guests who have appeared on the show and this year’s was inspired by Mission: Impossible. An excuse for Pablo Motos to dress up as Tom Cruise and show off his biceps, the only reason he spends money on these nonsense, with how cheap it is to upload a selfie to Instagram. The “mission” was that he and his team had to fight against brother-in-law syndrome, which is like sending the Pombo sisters to fight the posh crowd. I hoped that in their search for the vaccine they would discover that patient zero was Juan del Val, a joke that would somewhat redeem the unfunny joke, but if there is something El hormiguero lacks it is a sense of self-irony.

Something that La revuelta does masterfully, which yesterday boasted that for the first time there was a woman from the team in front of the cameras, the screenwriter Elena Beltrán. Making a defect into a joke is one of the strengths of the Encofrados Encofrasa team. There were few other novelties. Broncano went for the easy route, betting everything on Jorge Ponce’s humor and his show of 200 drones in which only one could fly — apparently they are not as friendly with the Madrid City Council as Motos — and Joaquín Reyes and Ernesto Sevilla, the first guests. Why complicate life if at any moment they start the chainsaw?

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