Torsten Sträter, Max Giermann, Anke Engelke – all three of them managed to fulfill the tough rules of “LOL” (Last One Laughing) and not (almost) laugh for six hours at a time. On Thursday (April 20) it will be clear whether Klaus Kinski impersonator Giermann will defend his title or rather the subtle and laconic Hazel Brugger or Kurt Krömer, the personified Berlin “friendliness”, from Michael “Bully” Herbig the tight-lipped received the trophy.
The rules of the format, which has been successful in many countries, are very simple: several comedians and TV personalities who are known at least for their appropriate level of wit (currently: Moritz Bleibtreu) or who have an outrageous TV laugh (Joko Winterscheidt) will be in squeezed into a nicely furnished flat share and should have fun with each other or be made to smile by guests.
The catch: You can’t laugh. As four seasons have now shown, this is a tough task. At least that’s what the comedians want us to believe. But hand on heart, who manages not to burst out laughing while watching? But that is less due to the stale jokes and modestly funny jokes with which the candidates want to make each other smile.
How funny is “LOL” really?
No, the big joke about “LOL” is that what the legions of professional pranksters do there on the spur of the moment is usually not funny at all. One is amused by the desperate struggle of the comedians, sometimes to the point of self-abandonment, not to be allowed to laugh. They screech, bite their lip, make grimaces. And then “Bully” strolls into the room to fish out some poor sausage with video evidence that couldn’t stop laughing. Then the excuse is something like “I was just as happy as a child” (Joko Winterscheidt about the hit number by Anke Engelke and Bastian Pastewka) or “Oops, I stumbled across my own number” (like Martina “Funny Bones “Hill).
So the aim is to laugh about how the candidates bend, how they suffer and are also a little helpless in the face of their own affects. Again and again we see “Bully” and later also the participants who were flown out, how they laugh out loud. They may. And with them, the audience can too. But what’s actually funny about watching people not being allowed to do what is basically the reward for their work – that is, to make others shine?
One could come to the conclusion that the Germans also see themselves as mirrored here and therefore like to tune in. “LOL” is by far one of the most successful formats on Amazon Prime Video. “Germans like to laugh at masochism. They think of it as a kind of sport,” Franz Kafka once said, and he really knew all about humor and exemplary suffering. So that fits, because a little “LOL” is particularly impressive because it turns something that can’t really be controlled or graded into a competition and makes tormenting as long as possible a criterion for success. Moderator “Bully” is the malicious but at the same time meticulous referee, he even hints at the silly football VAR gesture with his hands to convince his followers that someone has actually lost their sense of humor again.
Regulated humor
Another quote from a great German-speaking writer who was fortunate enough to be able to observe Germany from a distance: “Germans have a deep aversion to uncontrolled, spontaneous outbursts of joy or laughter.” Stefan Zweig. And that’s what “LOL” is all about – that the silly, unsettlingly funny is contained and chained with rules for the eye-opener of a show. So all the supposedly spontaneous jokes lose their effect, leaving an almost bitterly serious struggle to do exactly what is expected of them: to keep their feet still. It’s no wonder that in politically sensitive times there are never any nonchalant outbursts or latent racism/sexism and so on. Under the “LOL” straitjacket only harmless jokes and farting noises remain. Schoolboy comedy like on the school trip or tipsy jokes like at the girls’ wellness weekend.
Another cliché: Germans love it when you tell them what to do (so don’t laugh!). Foreign observers like to mock the continental neighbors’ lack of understanding of humor. Especially in Great Britain, which would probably not fail in an unofficial comic world championship by laughing from eleven meters, people like to make fun of the stiff Germans (another quote, this time from the English professional eccentric Quentin Crisp: “The problem with the Germans is that they think that humor is something not to be taken seriously”). So it’s only understandable that the “LOL” boss is a jovial guy named Martin Sieber, who shows everyone else how to do it with hearty, uncontrolled laughter.
“LOL” symbolizes and simulates the glee that one is allowed to do something that others are not allowed to do. With all due respect, that’s very German.