Here we are in 2022, debunked by Omicron’s misdeeds, the pale curfew, our rubberized bubbles and the dreaded load shedding in hospitals. A moody thriller atmosphere. This perhaps explains that … Without wanting to break the partyI might as well admit it: the end-of-year shows will have bored me more than anything else.
Difficult, it is true, in our fragmented universes, to find outside the circle of frenzied viruses, subjects capable of striking the collective imagination of Quebec. Television references fall flat among those who are not addicted to the small screen 12 months a year. As for spectators allergic to political upheavals (it does exist), they drop out elsewhere.
How to please everyone? We sympathize with the prime movers of those shows. Especially since the only activity allowed on this bombing night was indeed to watch the Bye and other farewell ceremonies to 2021 on his TV. No way to miss them.
The fool’s ball
Still, the numbers would have seemed generally nice to me, without the findings of last year when the resurrected Bougons were leading the way. When, the day after the day before, the pastichés of the show congratulate the performers and the designers in chorus, it is because their parodies lacked claws and horns. Often salt, moreover. And cayenne pepper, a kick start.
Not to mention that the language withers from one cuvée to another. Remove from Bye the words “marde”, “penis”, various coronations from the Catholic past and all-French expressions, there are not many terms left on which to base sustained dialogues.
No big deal, some might say. Hmmm! Rather a reflection of our French in disarray on our land. All the same, we hung on here and there with a smile on our lips.
Aside from the larger-than-life David Goudreault Bye, the best hat-trick sketch in 2021, nestled in my eyes at Infoman. I named The 3e link addressing the Legault government’s project for a new sub-river route between Quebec and the shores of Lévis.
The resumption of the epic The ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille (1956), with the talking heads of Quebec politicians resting on the bodies of the main actors, was downright hilarious. At least, for those who still know the Bible stories (and that classic movie). Another divide between audiences, generational this time. Still, it was well sent.
Sweet words as you wish
This metaphor of the tribulations of the Hebrew prophet Moses in Egypt was obviously inspired by Jean-René Dufort by the sentence of the liberal leader, Dominique Anglade, who had qualified the project of the 3e pharaonic bond. Moreover, with his head firmly pegged to his shoulders, dressed as a courtesan, his echoed words became as smooth as one could wish.
When the biblical waves opened to let the chosen people flee during the passage of the Red Sea by sowing the Egyptian army, the parallel with the possible Quebec – Lévis tunnel sprang from the screen. François Legault, as pharaoh, was not lacking in panache, nor Geneviève Guilbault as queen Nefertari.
As for Régis Labeaume, also powerful mayor in this universe of the thirteenth century BC. AD, it did not lose its colors, which caricaturists will miss a lot.
On images of the wicker basket of little Moïse thrown by his mother among the rushes of the Nile, then scenes of orgies and assaulting guards, the words of the narrator Dufort explaining that the urban crowd forced them to “launch the young children in ridges so that they arrive in time at the Dagobert and that they are burned above afterwards by the royal guard ”, was a hilarious echo of the recent clashes in the capital.
The Hollywood blockbuster with 20,000 extras and special effects of yore offered a perfect niche for this satire.
The funniest skits
It’s not the complicated skits that are the funniest. The exercise first requires a rich starting idea, lit gags, a finely written text, a sense of collage, references, imagination and wit.
But the inspiration is not always at the rendezvous of humorists, cautious, often agreed in their charges, so many lawyers watch to the grain to avoid them unfortunate prosecutions.
With his 3e link, Dufort seemed at least to perpetuate the art of yesterday’s “patenters” capable of recycling a material or an object to offer them a new use. Like that of the “storytellers” who wielded the verb in front of an audience hanging from their lips during the evenings.
So, facing this new year with a crooked look, we wish ourselves to become “patenteux” and “storytellers” to patch up an earth upside down that squeaks! squeak! under our frozen feet.