The news is not that it happened. Indeed, what was surprising was the apparent peace that had reigned for six months. Some initial misunderstandings had suggested an immediate implosion, but instead Mara Venier and her cast including Teo Mammucari, Tommaso Cerno and Enzo Miccio had demonstrated astonishing resilience.

But a forced marriage can only take its toll. And the one sanctioned at “Domenica In” was such.

The landlady had defined it as a “choral” edition. In reality – as reiterated several times – the program is nothing more than a solar system with a single bright star that shines while other small planets rotate around it.

The limits of cold fusion

“Domenica In” attempted a cold fusion, trying to incorporate other, decidedly marginal and peripheral faces into Venier. And if you could easily contain Cerno and Miccio, the situation was different for Mammucari, a true stage animal who, by nature, always seeks his bull’s eye, his place in the sun.

Isolated in the surreal and disarming game of the Scoreboard, quickly replaced by the Safe, the face of “Lo Spaesato” has been placed in an eternal limbo, aggravated by a guilty authorial disengagement. Not to mention that the space available was constantly shrinking, to the advantage of Venier who was thus able to reiterate the usual dynamics of one-to-one interviews.

And so we arrived at last Sunday’s mess, which – in a certain sense – is the sum of all the contradictions of a poorly conceived and worse implemented project.

Mammucari who enters the scene during the interview with Peppe Iodice, as well as the one who in the credits ‘annoys’ the dismissal of a cameraman close to retirement, is like a river that claims its spaces within a clumsily urbanized city, overflowing and generating damage.

The Iodice affair

Of the two events, the less serious is definitely the first. In fact, the case shouldn’t have even broken out in that circumstance. In fact, Mammucari appeared on air during the promotion of the Neapolitan actor’s first film: “We have more important guests, Pino Strabioli is here! Three minutes and send him away, I’ve seen the film, it’s embarrassing, it’s not funny. Come on Mara, come on, two questions and we’ll send him away, we have more important things.”

An obvious gag, a disturbing action inherited from “Libero” where the guests were amiably mistreated. Like Vera Gemma who, intending to launch her book many years ago, found the pages of the volume torn and handed over to those present in the studio.

The reaction was shocked, but at the same time amused. Fun which on the contrary did not involve Iodice, a professional comedian who appeared disoriented, embarrassed and subsequently annoyed. Incapable of playing the game, of responding to the pun. A distant relative of the character who devours the stage at “Stasera tutto è possibili” and at “Peppy Night”.

The gaffe at the end of the episode

As regards the slip at the back, Mammucari’s obvious mistake was that of not knowing how to read the moment. If the silent display of the sign had not offended anyone, everything changed when it was positioned to cover Pino Strabioli, a move that distracted Venier in the moments in which she was paying homage to the Rai technician.

Everything else (and everything that will be) is nothing more than the result of the classic straw that broke the back of an already stretched camel. In this regard, the accused cannot be Mammucari. Pointing the finger at him can, however, be useful in exculpating himself and discharging elsewhere the responsibility that should be assumed by those who thought that this “Domenica In” could celebrate his half century of life with dignity.