How to laugh at unfunny things and a year? While we hoped for a return to a form of post-pandemic normality, here is the world plunged into new and deep imbalances. These uncertainties have found outlets in sketches of a Bye with a sometimes tense causticity, the end point of a Canadian radio evening marked by the remarkable complementarity of the programs hosted by France Beaudoin, Philippe Laguë and Jean-René Dufort, all successful.
How not to imagine that the wink of Volodymyr Zelensky shot by Jean-René Dufort’s team in kyiv and punctuating the patriotic song ” Oi u luzi chervona kalyna intoned by many Ukrainians from various parts of Canada would not put an end to Infoman ? In addition, the instrumental accompaniment was provided by the show’s political speakers — Justin Trudeau, François Legault, Mélanie Joly, Pierre Poilievre, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon. Well no ! In a climax of rare violence, Michel Charette came to break the little party of Dufort and his acolytes slashing the champagne at the dawn of 2023 by vociferating in a few seconds the anxieties of the entire planet, while overturning the petit fours and destroying the decor.
severe discomfort
Discomfort no longer has the good fortune to be beautiful. And the Bye chained exactly like this, with this anguish of the next day, this “money that one takes out of the Celi to buy celery”, with this desire that one can have, simply, to yell.
Symbol of the 2022 vintage: Guylaine Tremblay’s big number as the mother of a young hockey player facing a representative of Hockey Canada, whose “petty cash of rape” she castigates. “Wouldn’t you just be tempted to prevent the rape?” We can’t do that, Madame, we have too many big seeds. […] Hockey Canada, go fuck yourself! »
We may find it vulgar, but it’s direct, pithy and it will be the same treatment for the Horne Foundry. Reduce arsenic? No way. A communicator instead suggests hiring Louis-José Houde to change the image of arsenic and promote its benefits. The administrator who points out that the money spent on communication could be spent on reducing pollutant emissions is rebuffed. Final slogan: “Horne Foundry: bitches ! Sometimes things go completely off the rails: one wonders how the sinister, scabrous parody of The grocery store passed the pre-screening test which obviously ruled out a sketch on the Canadian.
Pierre Bruneau (Pierre Brassard) and Céline Galipeau (Guylaine Tremblay) exchanged brief jokes, except for an interview with Éric Duhaime (Patrick Huard, a tremendous contribution) and a sentence that is worth the whole sketch: “Older men take their retirement, older women walk out.
At this level, there was also “Google black”, an application modeled on “Google map” calculating the travel time of black drivers driving a luxury car. This sketch on racial profiling ended with an arrest of the couple even before starting the vehicle: “You have been talking in a new vehicle for 3 minutes while being black. »
The hilarious therefore yielded to sarcasm, but more than once he was well sent, as in “Top Conne”, a synthesis of Top Gun and the Sunwing Flight Ostrogoths saga earlier this year; “Netflik”, rewriting Les Filles de Caleb with an inclusive sauce, or “Justin p’ti malaise”, a song tour of the events of the year by the duo Justin Trudeau and Gregory Charles (personified by Normand Brathwaite). The “tact” demonstrated in London before the Queen’s funeral was transposed, for example, to the Magdalen Islands after Hurricane Fiona to the tune of “Vive le vent”.
Back to autarky?
If the hour was at the gall, there was certainly matter with that, between the loss of the luggage in the airports (Guylaine Tremblay boudinant in her clothes until choking: “It is me the suitcase, try therefore to lose me!”), the Louis-Hippolythe-La Fontaine bridge-tunnel (winded sketch), the saga of the Free Cows (A-Vache-tar, successful), not to mention Bernard “Rambo” Gauthier (Marc-André Grondin) , the “pipine pitbull”, and Pierre Poilievre (Julien Corriveau), specifying “I am a human” in Rogatien’s taxi.
Hats off to all the actors: François Bellefeuille (unrecognizable, because shaved, as Stéphan Bureau in a sketch on Double occupation), Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais (major rookie, perfect especially in Stéphane Rousseau and Jay Du Temple), Patrick Huard, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse and Guylaine Tremblay.
The question arises whether the creative and production team does not begin, like the previous one, to turn too much on itself and in a sort of local audiovisual microcosm, with a parody of Statushomemade production, or a parody ofIndefensible. Quebec does not live so autarky, even if navel gazing sometimes becomes funny, when Guillaume Lemay-Thivierge (Guylaine Tremblay) prevents the dying Queen Elizabeth II from pronouncing her last words.
Infoman was there, in the overall perspective of the evening, to provide a broader and more open perspective. It was obvious, in the circumstances, that Jean-René Dufort wanted to mark the occasion in relation to the war in Ukraine by going to kyiv and meeting characters whose image marked this conflict. This did not prevent other perfectly well-defined subjects. The “express pope” with Chantal Lamarre was very funny, the “four per pope” designating the car and the commentators allowing themselves a “the Church washes its hands of it, as usual”. Added to this was the idea of testing traffic between Lévis and Québec during peak hours (33 minutes at 60 km/h); a “In the mind of Martin St-Louis”; a car distribution of trophies (Gémeaux and others) following the cancellation of galas and a series of well-targeted songs.
Rising
The most notable progress was to be credited to the TV version ofSee you next year who has finally found his air to go. The addition of Benoit Paquette to Pierre Verville, Michèle Deslauriers, Dominic Paquet, Véronique Claveau brings variety, the rhythm is more incisive and the TV product is no longer a reproduction of the radio show with a waste of time for games of constant noises. In addition, the texts touch on the goal, the prize going to speculation on the recent discussions between Justin Trudeau and Xi Jinping: “He explained to me all the functioning of Hydro-Québec”.
Funny, the incommunicability between Anne-Marie Dussault (Michèle Deslauriers) and Mariana Mazza (Véronique Claveau), and brilliant the imitation of Lara Fabian by Véronique Claveau. We also noted the little wink from Pierre Verville to Jean Lapointe at the end of a number where his colleagues imitated Mario Pelchat and Dan Bigras.
As in previous years, the evening got off to a flying start with the “New Year’s Eve special” version ofLive from the universe. The “kidnapped” Jean-Sébastien Girard, Hélène Bourgeois-Leclerc, Patrice Godin, Christine Morency and Paul Houde and the special guest Chantal Machabée, who made it possible to bring an expected tribute to Guy Lafleur, aroused the presence of known faces that we find more or less from one edition to another.
France Beaudoin and her team have a real knack for encompassing key themes of the year with hard-hitting winks in the entrance section (Pretty Woman accompanying images by Lisa LaFlamme, Hazard Area for the overthrow of Roe v. Wade by the United States Supreme Court).
Musically, the duo of Dave Fenley and Garou in Stand-by-Me marked the evening. Its emotional counterpart was the performance of a choir of Iranian women and then of Raif Badawi’s family, with a choir of Madelinots singing next. The weather will be nice tomorrow.
The very Anglophone musical cocktail seemed to reflect the fact that only four Quebec songs are among the 100 most listened to titles on on-demand listening platforms in Quebec. It would be interesting for the France Beaudoin team to put this general impression in percentage and, if necessary, to correct the situation next year.