It is 2022 and we are very experienced in television issues. We’ve seen it all, and as if linear TV wasn’t psychotropic enough, on the internet we can watch shows from all over the world, amazing TikToks, impossible YouTube videos… So when it comes time to try and wow the audience, the chains are absolutely lost. And as a result of this absolute lack of direction, ‘Mapi’ was born, which has passed through too many hands for no one to realize what was happening there.
Welcome to the Uncanny Valley
Mapi, as a character, is many things: a know-it-all girl, an actress in the role of her life, a Snapchat filter taken to a television program, the demonstration that social networks are not representative of real life… And an invention that, once seen on the program, beyond its videos of “Hello, Twitter!” works: the animation looks forced (when he moves away to get angry, it is clear that there has been a warning to control, a previous preparation and a lot of humor is lost) and every time the character keeps his mouth open it is truly terrifying.
Jandro and the famous contestants (well, Ana Obregón, El Sevilla and La Mari), who are acting as if an actress in a suit with a giant head is a real girl, try to get into the game, but they can’t avoid the faces of “What’s going on, where have I been?”, of living an absolutely surreal experience. Jandro in particular, who is battle-hardened (remember that he is a quadruple winning wizard from ‘Penn & Teller: Fool Us’), can’t help behaving as if the show is more of a technical test than a contest itself. same. And, despite everything, the biggest problem with ‘Mapi’ is not Mapi itself.
Mapi itself might work. Weirdest things we’ve eaten: Lolo co-presented ‘Deal done’ for years in that proto-CGI and it seemed good to all of us, Máximo was a man in a giant suit and we let him present ‘Club Megatrix’, for several seasons we watched ‘Los aurones’ in disbelief … The problem is not with the character or his mistakes, but with the contest itself, which is endowed with a dead rhythm and a staging so white, slow and boring that the only thing the viewer can think about is changing the channel. With or without Twitter in the background.
Even hippos yawn
The operation of the contest is divided into two parts: in the first, the contestants must guess the solution to “child” questions, such as “Why are some clouds white and others black?” either “Why do hippos yawn?”. During the second, Jandro removes objects from a suitcase and the celebrities must find out what it is. It’s not a bad summer proposal, if it weren’t for they don’t know how to make it entertaining.
40 minutes of contest give for many tests and questions, but in ‘Mapi’ they don’t reach ten. Mapi does an (usually horrible) initial sketch, poses the question, the guests expand at ease, they give way to a video where the real answer is explained, Mapi distributes points and starts again. It is a long, tedious process and very easy to cut with a simple “Hey, don’t get so involved”. It looks like they had a much better time on set than we do. They are laughing all the time but they don’t know how to transfer that joy to the real world.
The evidence is insufficient, but not horrible in its format -yes in its realization-. Five minutes can easily pass from the moment the question is asked until the points are distributed: if ‘Mapi’ is aimed at children, it seems that it has forgotten that today’s children are more used to one-minute videos in which things don’t stop happening like contests like ‘Time is money’. If this was the presentation in society of Mapi, we have it clear.
RTVE, in free fall
‘Mapi’ is aimed at a children’s audience, but it has celebrities that don’t sound like anything to children. In fact, if it tries to be familiar, it misses the mark, because the kids are not going to let themselves be fascinated by a huge head and a filter like the one that anyone has on their mobile. It’s old-fashioned for the little ones and it’s too childish for adults, which have alternatives like ‘Boom!’ o ‘Know and win’: RTVE’s newest is condemned to wander through nothing until its broadcast ends.
‘Mapi’ is like ‘Morbius’: once the meme is over, it has no real interest. We’ve all had a great time making a thousand montages and jokes, but when the moment of truth arrives, nobody cares. The contest is born to die, and only it is the fault of its absolutely gray rhythmits program tests from the 70s (including that hateful refrain of “learning while having fun” with which any child will turn off and start watching Twitch) and its savvy main character who, beyond the greater or lesser technical deployment, gives enough Rage.
Maybe I’m wrong, but Mapi is destined to be one of those characters that we will remember at the end of the year as the protagonist of the best viral moments, but definitely not as one of the most innovative and fun contests of the year. He wants to be, but he doesn’t know how. In the end, the best thing about ‘Mapi’ was the surprise of the networks. Outside of that, the show sadly remains in no man’s land and produces a ravenous indifference: the worst feeling when you watch television.