As an advertising creative, Risto Mejide must have knowledge of Roy Cohn, “America’s toughest, cruelest, most loyal, meanest and most brilliant lawyer,” as Esquire magazine put it. The instigator of McCarthyism and the architect of Donald Trump’s most obnoxious traits in public persona, he included among his maxims the famous “All publicity, no matter how bad, is good.” In the four years that Chester has stayed at Cuatro furniture camp, the presenter has followed the mantra to the letter and has stayed in the limelight, both thanks to the fact that his program Todo es mentira adds more controversy than points to share, and through Exits of random or calculated tone, the last one, his unfortunate comments about Ana Obregón and Cristina Pedroche. A few words that agree with Cohn, just days after the incident, it was revealed that Risto and his chair were back on the road.
The new season of Viajando con Chester began with a justification for “the silence that invites us to reflect”, a paradox because if there’s anything in abundance on television lately, it’s the program heirs of the late Jesús Quintero. If Chester reinvented a genre banned on Grills eight years ago, last season we got to enjoy three similar areas almost simultaneously: The Mirror’s Mathematics, The Three Doors, and General Shot. All based on calm conversation and intimate tone, they attract more compliments than viewers and their interest varies greatly depending on the guest. A laziness that burst another interview format sui generis, El novato by Joaquín from Bético, which attracted almost thirty percent of the audience at its premiere with a character as a priori as unattractive as the chef Dabiz Muñoz, data that sounds old, from that period Julia Otero mentioned in Días de Tele, the other format published Tuesday night. During the endless commercial breaks on the Risto program, it was as easy to succumb to channel surfing as it was tempting to let the voice of Otero lull you to sleep for a while, so missed on public television.
a bubble
Unlike the Extreme from Cádiz, the Viajando con Chester driver couldn’t do anything about the boredom caused by the first interviewee. Risto lacks the spontaneity of Joaquín and also the luxurious production of the other big talk show My house is yours, which can turn any kitchen into El corral de la Pacheca. Cayetano Martínez de Irujo said nothing that we didn’t already know. Ever since he opened the faucet of emotions in 2019’s Blood Ties and tearfully recounted how the nannies beat him with reeds and how he himself punished his children by forcing them to run through thornbushes, remains of a life he lived in Considering little to betray terribly worried. Not even in the most blissful and uncritical of spirits can one listen without irritation to the lamentations of a man who, thinking a stroll through his yards is devoted to farming, shouts “humble seek work” to ask what about the President rid of the federal government is CEOE . The only thing that roused us from our paralysis was the sight of the boxer Manel Berdonce, El tigre de Tetuán, who affirmed that he had never seen a man cry before seeing Cayetano burst into tears. What bubble do these people live in?
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If not in a bubble, if living in diffuse space-time coordinates, who thought that the Count of Salvatierra and his troubles as a downtrodden aristocrat could be more interesting for the program’s debut than the words of Mai Meneses, the first outcast the second edition of the Operación triunfo, in which the participants were in the spotlight even before they entered the academy, because it was already known how much the format could be squeezed. After her hasty exit from the program, she triumphed as Nena Daconte, only to be stricken with imposter syndrome and a bad trip on the pill, the aftermath of which she told Risto with disarming candor.
It’s hard to imagine what the Mediasets OT Risto Jury could have said about the very frail Meneses, the same one who defined a later edition contestant as “a dildo, perfect in execution but immensely cold to the touch”. As if that never happened, with a contrite gesture and a complicit demeanor, he agreed to the confessions of an artist beaten by the same program he helped transform into the plank of a pirate ship.
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