Raven van Dorst is in a state of swoon. Like a demigod, Arie Boomsma descended from Olympus and entered the farmyard that has been the setting for a few seasons. Dorst Farm. It could have been played, but the normally well-spoken presenter seemed a bit impressed by the appearance of the tall, well-trained sports influencer (49). The other guest of Tuesday’s episode was biologist and professional grouch Midas Dekkers (77), the opposite of the terminally optimistic Boomsma.
Midas Dekkers has written at least fifty popular science books, the most relevant to this episode Physical exercise in which he explains that nothing is as unhealthy for humans as exercise. For Boomsma, exercise, or “training” as he calls it, is like breathing, he lives from it. Arie Boomsma has three young children, Midas Dekkers advocates not welcoming newborns into the world with gifts and biscuits; as far as he is concerned, young parents shamefully close their curtains after the birth of yet another new human being who comes to deplete the earth. This could be a nice episode, it was reminiscent of the BBC programme Living with the enemy from 2002, the RVU made the Dutch version. Two ‘enemies’ stayed together: a hunter and a vegetarian, a farmer and a genetic engineer, a career parent and a stay-at-home parent. Polarization and rifts also existed then, but it was not called that.
The biologist initially distributed ammunition liberally. About Arie who was lost in the yard for a while. “He must be running or eating something disgusting.” Where Arie says that he tries to live as sustainably as possible with “small steps”, Midas says that “big problems require big steps”. And the kicker: “A fool who starts training ends up as a trained fool.” But everything shattered because of Arie’s indestructible convictions. And there was nothing left of Dekker’s obstinate growling when Raven asked him about his pets. Arie had already told us upon arrival that he has horses, ducks, pigs, sheep, chickens, cats and a dog at home. Midas always has four cats, he says, although he is now without one “due to circumstances”. All four of them were about twenty years old at the same time. And then he fills up. There is nothing more terrible, he says, than having to bury an animal that has been with you for so long. Nothing human is foreign to the grumbler.
The ice, if there was any, has melted so definitively that everything that follows feels a bit tepid. Raven is eager to train with Arie in the yard. Throwing straw bales, lifting a tree trunk, sprinting with a wheelbarrow. Midas feasts on Aries spinach pancakes and French toast on sugar bread. And at the end of the sleepover, all the weeds in the vegetable garden have been pulled and there is a wooden outdoor shower next to the hot tub in the garden. Raven took off her clothes and jumped into the cold shower. Swagger. But then Arie also took off his clothes and jumped in; Raven turned into a teenage girl.
Omroep Zwart brought the Dutch version of an American television format on Tuesday evening, That’s my jam. The American version is presented by Jimmy Fallon, the Dutch version by Quinty Misiedjan – she was best known for her participation The smartest person and she was one of the last dropouts this season The perfect picture. And she did this very well too. It was energetic, it was cheerful, it was musical, it was funny and it became chaos.
The four candidates, divided into two teams, were not the jaded celebrities that appear in every major TV show, but really new faces. Gio and Gaia, Shary-an and Vincent, look them up if you don’t know them. And they could really do something. Dancing, singing, improvising. I say: program this on Saturday evening.
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