If you haven’t seen this video yet, the rest of this post probably won’t interest you.
So a year and a half after a rather disastrous end-of-year Bye-Bye special that got a bit of media coverage and resulted in complaints to the CRTC, Radio-Canada has decided that, what they hey, they’ll bring back the team that produced it to try again. Véronique Cloutier and Louis Morissette will be at the helm of Bye-Bye 2010. They announced the move with a parody of their well-publicized apology from January 2009.
The media, after receiving assurances that this wasn’t some strange joke and getting their web geeks to setup the YouTube embed codes, reacted much as you might expect: “kamikazes de l’humour“, “perplexing“, or, simply, “pourquoi?”
While I was one of those people who didn’t think highly of Bye-Bye 2008, Cloutier and Morissette deserve a chance to make amends. They screwed up, and while it took them forever to realize that, I think they’ll do a better job for 2010.
Radio-Canada is making sure the same mistakes don’t repeat. This year’s special will have no live component, which means lawyers and political-correctness censors will be all over the entire show before it goes to air.
Expect an overreaction to the problems of 2008, and perhaps a bit too much sensitivity to visible and cultural minorities. And don’t expect any mention of Nathalie Simard, unless she’s on it as a guest.
And really, who else could do this? The insane media coverage, and the cancellation of Bye-Bye 2009, ensured that any future show would have no choice but to reference – and be compared to – the one from 2008.
If this video is any indication, Cloutier and Morissette will put targets on their own backs for the sake of comedy. That alone makes me want to give them a second chance.
If it wasn’t 2am I could expand on how lame this is. I mean really a humour goodbye to the year show borne out of rock et belles oreilles and people get all butt hurt. Yes they went too far but come on what the hell, this is bye bye. Bah. It will suck this year I suspect.
RBO has nothing to do with this debacle (aside from the fact that they decided that they weren’t interested in doing Bye-Bye 2010, probably due to lack of time rather than fear of controversy). In fact, chances are that Bye-Bye 2008 would not have been nearly as controversial had it been done by RBO for the simple reason that people expect them to use biting and politically-incorrect humour. Replace Jean-François Mercier with Bruno Landry for the same skit, and gone is the controversy (or almost), since people know not to take RBO to face value when they portrait narrow-minded twits.
Cloutier and Morrissette are the resilient type and maybe people will finally wake up and realize that sweet Véro also has a biting satirical side to her. Problem is, it’s not the same audience who will tune in to a Bye-bye hosted by Véronique Cloutier than one by RBO.
I was hoping the bad press would mean the end of Bye-Bye, I really don’t see the appeal. A bunch of celebrities talking nonsense. Woo hoo. The ball drop is more exciting.