"The Summer House of the Stars" opens its doors again. But two candidates from the 2020 scandal season are now being traded as new jungle camp personnel. Vip Vip, Hooray!: Andrej Mangold and Lisha are back!
"Just shut up about Lisha! Eva (Benetatou) could forget it and you act as if she had murdered someone! Andrej (Mangold) was probably much worse. And what about Yeliz (Koc), who is a man slapped in the face? You bloody filthy hypocrite!"
Wow, what kind of nice comment landed in my inbox? Trash TV fans are eagerly awaiting the new season of "Summer House of the Stars" these days. At the same time, more and more information is leaking out about who should move into the jungle camp in February 2023. In addition to candidates like Djamila Rowe or Yeliz Koc, the new potential jungle campers read like the "Who's who" of the "summer house" from 2020. It has to be said in no uncertain terms that many viewers have bad memories. No other season hit trash TV fans as much as the fifth season.
With each episode, the bullying against reality TV contestant and Mangold's ex-girlfriend, Eva Benetatou, got worse. Initially very sympathetic, the Youtuber Lisha and Mangold themselves got caught up in a spiral of negative headlines. Even RTL entertainment boss Kai Sturm took a critical look at the summer house scandal and said at the time that the nature of the conflicts in the house had damaged the broadcaster's external perception: "The escalation of aggressiveness and the unpleasant negative feeling that was in this season has us personally affected."
He not only addressed the mood in the house, but also the behavior of the Berliner Lisha, who repeatedly insulted her flatmates as "disabled", "critters" or with the F-word. In fact, according to the RTL entertainment boss, the conditions in the summer house at the time were "much worse", even "in some cases beyond the pain threshold. (...) But anyone who decides to present themselves publicly in this way must also take responsibility for themselves be aware. If that's not the case, we prefer to make it clear."
I've been writing TV reviews for what feels like a hundred years, and I can safely say that this season was by far the most uncomfortable I've covered. Now that's a thing with criticism. The shitstorm is inevitable these days. But one must be allowed to be surprised when a broadcaster says that the aggressively charged atmosphere in the summer house was "rating poison", because "ratings cannot be achieved with purely antisocial behavior." And then, of all people, those summer cottagers are on the list of candidates who will soon be on the plane to Down Under. It is perfectly legitimate to find such a decision strange at first!
So I asked my social media community, in which there are many reality TV fans, what they think about Andrej Mangold and Lisha moving to the jungle camp. The response: sobering. Many viewers wrote that they could not forget what happened in 2020. This summer house was a turning point for many trash TV fans.
Maybe the candidates in the jungle camp will show themselves from a different side, maybe in the 2020 summer house, as Mangold once said, "everything was really cut wrong" and maybe both people are actually great guys! But none of that changes the fact that TV viewers are skeptical after the unpleasant summer house experience of 2020 when they hear about the new jungle camp cast. Criticism is neither "hate" against the candidates nor "baiting", but now I'll shut up "dirty hypocrite" on this topic dear "my face".
Instead, let's dedicate ourselves to a woman who gave a bombastic interview to the media magazine DWDL this week: Ulla Kock am Brink. The presenter, who once became known throughout Germany with the "100,000 Mark Show", is back on television. And with this very show! Not only RTL has noticed that it could be worthwhile to breathe new life into once successful old formats or as DWDL writes: "The retro wave is rolling."
The wonderful thing about the statements made by Ulla Kock am Brink: She doesn't mince words, seems to be downright aggressive. One gets the impression that for many years she was just waiting to finally, to put it bluntly, open her mouth about what she thought about the TV business at the time. For example, she talks about "many good women in the past 10, 15 years who haven't been seen on television." At the same time, according to the presenter, "women in big shows were repeatedly put in the side lane." Look nice, size 34, deep neckline. True to the motto: "You can say sentences, but please let your male co-moderator use the jokes and charm."
It's particularly nice to read how Kock am Brink is freeing itself from all the pressure of what you have to look like on television. Her top condition: you have to take her as she is. "Because I'm not going to go through with surgery just to be able to host another TV show." And further: "There is discrimination on many levels - and age discrimination is one of them. (...) It should be possible in a democratic culture to give all manifestations a stage - be it sexuality, age, body shape or origin . My appeal: Just look each other in the eye and see yourself as a human being." Until next week!
