KRTVN Relaunches with smash comedy
Pokes "good-natured fun" at DorvikKaliburg, Ananto
October 17, 4693Eddie Lopez plays the title role in "Der Dorvischer Säufer"The return of the Socialist Party to the absolute Majority in Kalistan has ensured some fairly predictable policy alterations. One of the most reliable bets is the reorganization of the National Radio and Television Network as a "Not-for-profit" broadcasting collective which is purely subscriber owned and operated. The preliminary moves to relaunch the network were made immediately following elections this year where the Socialist Party once more swept into the Constitutional Majority. The reorganization is currently being codified in law.
Following the reorganization, KRTVN execs began pitching shows for the new Fall Season. Channel 7, which focuses on entertainment programming, greenlit a program with a very strange concept, and this show has turned into the sleeper hit of the year. "Der Dorvischer Säufer", which loosely translates to "The Dorvikish Drunk", is a mocumentary of sorts: The show and its premise are entirely fictional, but at the beginning of each episode, a disclaimer is aired which is recited by a woman speaking in a thick Dorvish accent: "Das Folgende ist nur für den lokalen Dorvik-Verzehr bestimmt. Dieses Filmmaterial darf unter keinen Umständen außerhalb von Dorvik gezeigt werden. Jeder Täter wird gezwungen, 42 Liter Lager zu trinken und dann 18,2 Kilometer in der heißen Sonne zu laufen. Und dann beginnt die Bestrafung. Du wurdest gewarnt!" This roughly translates to "The following program is only for local Dorvik Consumption and must never be shown outside of Dorvik. Any offenders will be forced to drink exactly 11.1 gallons of beer and then run 11.3 miles in the hot sun. And then the punishment will begin. You have been warned."
The show begins each week with a goofy sounding polka, called jokingly "Die Volker Polka" complete with the show's star, Eddie Lopez, who's character is only known as "Der Dorvischer Säufer" dancing ridiculously in Lederhosen. He regularly announces the upcoming show and introduces the show's guest stars and musical acts, speaking Vrassan but with a thick Dorvish accent, and then proceeds to fill up a large beer stein and runs out into the crowd, drinking the beer as he goes out. He shakes hands with elderly folks, and he passes out green triangle hats with red feathers on them to some of the more attractive members of the crowd. Occasionally, he will trip and spill his beer, but this does not slow him down: a stagehand is there immediately to refill the stein.
The show, which is more or less a variety show, presents the "authentic" Dorvish viewpoint on all matters. Nothing is spared from satire, except always the ubiquitous, but never seen "Kaiser", who is often "accidentally" mentioned in the scene at a comedic moment. The mere mention of "The Kaiser" effectively ends the scene, with a close up of Lopez' face, who has faux welled up with tears of admiration for his beloved "fuhrer", just before the show cuts away to commercial. The acts feature general Dorvik themed buffoonery, and excellent Nationally known musical groups always grace the stage, but invariably, the camera cuts away from the bands to Lopez, who is slightly offstage waving an 8 foot wide Dorvik flag on a pole, and chugging some sort of alcohol. Whenever a reggae band has been booked, Lopez has been known to stop the band midsong and insist that they play polka--apparently, reggae sounds like offbeat polka to him and it seems to inspire him to demand a "Traditional song from der Vaterland!" Only a few bands have actually obliged him so far this season, with one band, Burning Gong, deciding to walk off the show when The Dorvikish Drunk wouldn't let them continue until they played a few bars of the "Pretzel Polka" which he was at the moment, drunkenly attempting to sing for them.
Unlike other farcical variety shows of this type, "Der Dorvischer Säufer" features absolutely no nudity or vulgar language. There are a number of adult oriented jokes, plenty of scantily clad cast members, both male and female, double entendres and innuendos, but they are delivered so wittily that only those listening for them will get them. Lopez, for his part, said "I don't even drink on stage. The beer I drink at the beginning of the program is so watered down that you would kill your bladder trying to get drunk off of it. It's more like beer flavored seltzer water." The show is among the more wholesome programs on the television, though its satire is very biting. There are casual references to mindless militarism, flippant discussion of brutally crushing foreign lands, and graphic depictions of fiercely regimented society. "If you didn't know anything about Dorvik, you'd think the whole place was like a boot camp completely awash in booze and polka," said Lopez. But he defends the program. "I think, to be completely honest, that we are showing the best of a great imperial power like Dorvik. I mean: I believe some Dorvish fieldmarshals would legitimately admire the shine of my black boots... If their government would ever uncensor their televisions, I mean..."
Lopez, who was born in Gaduridos, but immigrated to Kalistan as an infant, is from Sulari. He started acting in school comedies at the age of 14, and was considered one of the most charismatic actors of the last decade, before tragedy struck him and he was in a motorcycle accident. Since then, his star fell and he was forgotten, for the most part until he was cast in this year's breakout hit. "They said they were looking for someone who could do a Dorvik accent: Not so well that anyone would be fooled, but well enough that it would take advantage of the weird ticks of the Dorvish language. By the time I went in, I was close to 300 pounds, I was graying significantly, I didn't really have a shot. So when I was practicing for the audition, I was reading some lines from one of my old plays, and was chewing on a particularly good turkey sandwich, when all of a sudden, I read one of the funny lines which always cracked me up, and I accidentally inhaled my turkey sandwich... I was hacking and choking, and finally got it up, but I was like 'Well, when I go in tomorrow, I'll just deliver the lines like I was choking on a turkey sandwich...' Turns out that was exactly what they were looking for, and I was given the part without any callbacks."
The show got off to a rough start. Certain "sensitivity" groups objected to the show being produced. "They weren't so much against us making fun of Dorvik on tv," said Lopez. "It was more like, these nationalists didn't think we ought to show anything about Dorvik at all. But the producers said 'that's censorship' and called them all hypocrites, and eventually they backed down." The show was originally intended to be a scripted comedy, with Lopez playing a bumbling Dorvish naval commander who is nearing the end of his career and is given one last command before he is to be retired on a leaky destroyer with a misfit crew. "Basically," Lopez said, "the writers ran out of ideas for that show after the first episode. We used some of those in the sketch 'Der Kommandant', when Elaine [Olgasdottir] came out in that really, almost bikini of a naval outfit... I'm glad that wasn't the whole show... We got some laughs, but I couldn't have kept that up for 24 episodes!"
Eventually, Lopez pitched a variety show. "Its much easier to make an hour long weekly variety program than it is to try to build a coherent narrative for a whole season," said producer Francesco Guillermo. "We can write 5 minute segments and do them live on TV. It works... Eddie stumbles around for a few minutes, tells some jokes like he's from Dorvik, we book three musical guests a week, let the ladies walk around in basically nothing, but tasteful, of course, and voila... rinse and repeat. The crowds love it! Its good-natured fun, at the expense of a self-professed world power, who takes themselves entirely too seriously."
Lopez agreed. "Yeah, sometimes the jokes bomb. A lot of times, you really gotta know the weird kinks and perversions of Dorvik to fully get some of this stuff. Like: What do you do when your whole country is basically a tundra? How do you keep warm when there is a mountain of snow on top of your house and your religion encourages alcoholism but not contraceptives? I mean, how do you even feed your people when you receive on average 97 feet of snow a year, let alone maintain the most advanced military in the entire world? That's like a joke that writes itself! Classic comedic scenario. But, people in Kalistan can't relate to a situation like that. So sometimes the jokes don't resonate. When I'm not getting the crowd response I need to carry the show, I just give the signal, someone says something about the Kaiser and we go to commercial. Its like an injoke that 30 million Kalistanis a week are in on. I love it. People on the street will mention the Kaiser to me, and I get to just walk away, with a fake tear in my eye! Brilliant!"
When asked if there will be a second season, Lopez did not mince words. "Yeah, and a third and a fourth. And probably an 80th... as long as Dorvik is weird and militaristic and has good looking women and is basically boring otherwise, we have all the material we need!"
At press time, "Der Dorvischer Säufer" had 8 episodes in the can and is the most popular television show in Kalistan. Perhaps they can keep their momentum. PROST!