2023-11-26 03:39:20
Schweinsteiger? Schweighöfer? The main thing is Gottschalk – and “Wetten, dass…?”. In the last, it is said, really the very last edition of the ZDF betting show with Thomas Gottschalk, the names get a little mixed up. And when actress Stefanie Stappenbeck sits down on the sofa with Bastian Schweinsteiger and Matthias Schweighöfer, the reactivated showmaster is confident enough to make a tongue twister out of his guest list.
Michael Hanfeld
responsible editor for features online and “media”.
He knows that many are just waiting for him to get tangled up so they can make a meme out of it and that nothing will be sent today. So he makes the most of it one last time and shows with all his brash dignity what great Saturday night entertainment on German television looked like and can look like with a big finale. Gottschalk is prepared for this, from head to toe, which in this case means down to his elegant wine-red shoes: cardinal supplies that can only be found in the Vatican. Someone should come and follow in his footsteps.
“One last incomparable evening”
At the beginning, show creator Frank Elstner promises us a “last, incomparable evening” and he is right. ZDF has everything it needs for this. There is Horst Freckmann, who recognizes roosters by their cries. Fourteen-year-old Felix Mayr from Austria tries to squeeze chewy sweets into cola bottles in a handstand while sitting on his skateboard with the tip of his protective helmet. The Münsterländer dog Amie recognizes numbers from one to one hundred. The forklift drivers Michelle Chevalier and Antonia Fleig try to wire a cell phone. In the outside bet, eight strong Swiss pull a forty-ton cable car ten meters up the mountain, and Julia Reichert can actually recognize individual “Wetten,dass..?” shows whose images have been turned into barcodes.
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Last time “Wetten,dass..?”: Last edition of “Wetten,dass..?” with Thomas Gottschalk on ZDF
The Rolling Stones send greetings from a distance, the three remaining warriors from Take That, Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald, perform live, give an encore and spin cotton candy, Helene Fischer sweeps across the stage, and Cher joins in Seventy-seven years old, an outfit that is not remotely reminiscent of her half-naked scandal appearance on “Wetten, dass ..?” from 1987. Stefanie Stappenbeck and Jan Josef Liefers sing “I Got You Babe” in a duet because they won and lost their bet at the same time, which you have to do without breaking your voice when Cher is sitting next to you on the sofa.
And Thomas Gottschalk is completely himself. He actually asks Ana Ivanovic whether her husband also helps out around the house (we find out that Bastian Schweinsteiger likes to give orders and has a lot of humor). Gottschalk generally approaches the ladies with a generous sense of grandeur, makes fun of himself (“the only rooster they let in here tonight is me”) and, without any fear of contact, shares anecdotes such as those from the show in Mallorca, in which he had a herniated disc and the pain suppository prescribed by the doctor, which had melted, was turned back into something rocket-like in the refrigerator, with which he then knew how to help himself.
The ovations at the beginning of the show don’t stop, the audience in the hall in Offenburg doesn’t stop applauding. Gottschalk casually takes up the holiday mood that Frank Elstner conjures up at the beginning with his own entertainment mission pathos (with which he will also end the evening) and dims it with the remark: “I can’t help it that you have the best times of your life with me life, I always tell myself that I still have the best times ahead of me,” down to the appropriate level.
And yet this evening shows in a few moments that this is what “Wetten, dass ..?” on ZDF and Thomas Gottschalk can no longer continue almost ten years after the actual end of the show, which was then revived and revived.
On the one hand, there is the absence of Michelle Hunziker as co-host. She is replaced by the friendly social media specialist Lena Mantler as a sidekick, who appears briefly in a beige Mao look and asks the men from Take That backstage to post on social media. Then there is the mini-dispute that the rapper and influencer Shrin David, who is allowed to perform with Helene Fischer, conjures up when she talks about how feminists today could be smart and successful and, of course, elegant in appearance. Your persuasive speech is somehow empty in the room.
“In Switzerland things go downhill by themselves”
Thirdly, Gottschalk made the comment about the outside bet from Switzerland: “In Switzerland things are going downhill on their own, in our case it’s the politicians who worry about it.” Such gags are no longer well received on ZDF today, at least in this place: That Someone in the middle of the most beautiful family entertainment makes such a punch line, which he may even mean seriously, is a shocking moment on Second German Television.
And then we have Thomas Gottschalk’s completely unsentimental closing statement. He’s leaving now, he said, before he no longer knows the guests of his show who are sitting on the show sofa, and apart from that, he always said on television what he says at home, and before he does If the program director creates the next shitstorm, he’d rather call it a day.
“Thank you for listening to me for so long.” He says and, befittingly, rides out of the studio (or into the sunset) on the shovel of a giant excavator with which Mike Krüger, the other “supernose”, drove up. Gottschalk didn’t exceed the broadcast time (or so it seems to us) by a minute.
Published/Updated: Recommendations: 21 Jörg Thomann Published/Updated: Recommendations: 37 Published/Updated: Recommendations: 3
And at her concert shows, because she lost her bet, Helene Fischer now has to say in the moderation: “It’s a shame that Gottschalk doesn’t do that anymore.” So we put up with a lost bet.
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