Cliches or exhausting rhetorical devices could now be used to excess: which basically LOL: Who Laughs is Out has never really made you laugh, that the first editions – there are those who will continue to repeat endlessly that after all it is only the first edition and those who even maintain that not even that one was actually valid – were just a stroke of luck due to the virality on social media of some moments, that it was only a matter of time, that if this is comedy in Italy then it’s better to leave it alone. We have read all sorts of things over the years and we do not intend to bow to any of these ridiculously superficial considerations, despite the fact that it is clear that when it comes to comedy, personal tastes reign supreme compared to many other genres. Having said that and remembering that in a program like LOL the goal is not to create refined comedy – but rather comedy that is at times very stupid but effective in that specific situation – or capable of upsetting existing canons, the fourth edition of Prime Video’s game show proved to be extremely disappointing.
Little pace, little inventiveness, some competitors didn’t even have that much desire to stay there, perhaps even an exaggerated attention to the competitive side – and then maybe someone was more interested in staying in the race and on screen than in participating – more than recreational, a selection, at least from our point of view, not very suitable for the context, in short, it is useless to deny that something went very wrong this year.
An undeniable desire
But, before we dive a little deeper, as always, let’s start from the list of competing competitors: Giorgio Panariello, Edoardo Ferrario, Aurora Leone, Rocco Tanica, Lucia Ocone, Claudio Santamaria, Angela Finocchiaro, Maurizio Lastrico, Diego Abatantuono, the winner of LOL: Talent Show Loris Fabiani and the unfortunate Fedez, unexpectedly thrown into the fray as guest of honor to be expelled directly at the first laugh. And it is precisely from here, from attempts of this kind that we want to start because, although the general mood of this review will not and cannot be positive, the truth is that LOL really tried to mix things upto invent something new and unexpected, to reinvigorate a formula that was biologically showing some signs of tiredness.
And we’re not just talking about testing with a hint of malice the limits of Fedezbut just in general to some refreshing finds, such as The Pearl which allows a competitor to laugh freely for a few minutes or at the interruptions of a very precise and punctual exhibitionist, let’s put it that way. There was a genuine desire, sometimes even too unbridled as it took away space from the competitors and their comic verve, to experiment within the limits of a very clear and stringent concept and, as always in attempts of this kind, sometimes the target was hit and other times much less – like why are Lillo’s interruptions all identical on a structural level? Unfortunately, everything else was missing in this fourth edition.
Disappointing performances
We talk about it with every single article we churn out on LOLbut first of all, the management remains largely insufficient, cringe, unnatural, forced. And, we also reiterated it in our first look of LOL: Who Rides is Out 4, it wouldn’t be a problem at all if it didn’t take up so much space within the program, time that could then be used in much more productive or engaging ways.
The Achilles’ heel, however, can only remain the selection itself of the participants or, as the case may be, their performances themselves: on the one hand, for example, we do not understand the choice to include an actor – not even a comedian – like Claudio Santamaria who naturally turned out to be a fish out of water, while on the other we cannot consider the performances of an Abatantuono satisfactory – who did nothing but sit and say a few sentences – or a Pavement.
Or Loris Fabiani’s “Lunanzio” turned out to be more of an annoyance in the background than anything else, Rocco Tanica put in at least a lot of effort but little return, Ferrario confirmed the curse of stand-up comedians at LOL – but it seemed surreal to us that didn’t use the characters he created, incomprehensible. Many things didn’t work and Aurora Leone’s friendliness, Lucia Ocone’s charisma or Panariello’s long comic history cannot be enough to sustain an entire edition.
