The fifth episode of the people show hosted by Maria De Filippi on Saturday evening on Canale 5 reserves two surprise guests: Giorgia who finds herself ‘best man’ for someone else’s marriage proposal and the Il Volo trio. In between, loves born but never experienced 60 years ago, perhaps irreconcilable family disagreements and above all: no ‘interrupted engagements’ (for horns). What a disappointment! Even with the concierge remaining hungry for other people’s misdeeds, let’s see together the pass and fail of the evening.
Giorgia, wedding witness (who grooms the betrothed): vote 8
“The most listened to Italian singer in the world”so says the introductory clip of Giorgia’s entry into the studio. And we are sure that no one else in the Solarolo area would have anything to say. Nor even his eventual ardent fans. Todrani, however, is on the show to act as nanny to the young Matteo, a twenty-three year old who intends to ask his girlfriend Martina, who is seven months pregnant, to marry him. Because ‘she is the most beautiful woman in the world, I thought so from the first moment I saw her”, he explains already in tears with every syllable. Forged by the fire of the thousand pre-stage anxieties of the hundreds of aspirants and competitors in the last two editions of ‘X Factor’, Giorgia with her irresistible spontaneity grooms him several times: “Enough tears, look, if we start like this we won’t go anywhere tonight, eh?”. It’s the second time that the artist ‘robbed’ of the podium at the last Sanremo finds herself on ‘C’è Posta per Te’ as a ‘wedding witness’. “Maybe it’s because people find me reassuring? I don’t know, they certainly have no idea of how hard I am at home and how I am there!”, she laughs. If she could, she would be able to say that she is out of tune, it is as if she were protected by a compliment-breaking armor. The day in which Giorgia realizes that she is, in fact, Giorgia, she will inevitably be proclaimed empress of the universe. But that day is not today yet, so we are enchanted by her apparent and manifest unawareness of Mazinger which, to all intents and purposes, is such humility that it should be exhibited in the most illustrious museum in the world so that everyone can admire it and, if anything, take inspiration from it.
Marialuisa and Giuseppe are stingy children, their father looks for them but they talk to him like land registry employees: rating 3
Antonino has an unfortunate story. And this is nothing new, given the context. For over 20 years now, every sender of ‘You’ve Got Mail’ seems to have never had half a joy in life. If at all they smile, they are rejected at castings or it is not explained. However, this time, we were impressed. Married very young, Antonino has two children, but the marriage then remains ‘white’ due to character incompatibilities with his wife. Despite this, they continue to live together to raise their offspring. Offspring who, obviously, comes up hearing them argue from morning to evening. After ten years of such a daily routine, Antonino meets another woman through chat, falls in love with her and goes to live with her. Then, things get bad for him: he finds himself unemployed overnight, he goes into depression. His son Giuseppe proposes that he return to Milan, where he lives with his mother and sister but not only that: with them there is also his mother’s new partner. Who is none other than Antonino’s former employer, and on paper his best friend. The man tries to accept this impossible situation (we would be curious to know how his partner took it, ed) but he is unable to stay in the same building, facing the landing, as his family, to watch his children grow up with another man as their ‘father’. So, within a few months, he returns to Sicily, without saying anything to anyone. Up until then he had pretended, painfully, to be happy, that everything was ok. Instead, he wasn’t at all, he was in pain. At least as much as he suffers today from the absence of his children Marialuisa and Giuseppe who broke off all relationships with him a year ago because, they explain, they felt ‘abandoned’ by their father, without explanation. In short, was there also a need to explain why that ‘family’ balance, in reality, was not the same for all the parties involved? Empathy, this stranger! The worst thing is that the story becomes unnecessarily complicated: the two boys only address their father to discuss houses registered or to be registered, they speak to him as a couple of land registry employees would address a gentleman of a certain age. The straw that broke the camel’s back, for them, was Antonino’s desire to marry his partner Mattia (yes ‘Mattia’ is also a female name!, ed) “to keep her calm tomorrow, should anything ever happen to me”. Ugly beasts, stingy children (of feelings and manifest anticipatory greed). We would have perceived more human feeling and compassion by opening an empty fridge from ’83. ‘But do you realize that to see you I had to call ‘You’ve Got Mail?'” asks the father, astonished. But they don’t care because “he’s just playing the victim and having him in our lives, let’s add that period of depression, is too tiring. We prefer serenity”. Yes. And real estate, when that happens.
Emanuela, model daughter (but in love with a father who was only interested in ‘women, motorbikes and cars’): rating 7
He felt like going inside the television to give her a huge hug. Emanuela found herself faced with a difficult situation: to accept or not her father’s invitation to reunite after so many years of separation and infinite cruelty that he inflicted on her, practically from birth, out of pure superficiality. In life, they lived together for only seven months, when she was a teenager. He sent her back to her mother’s house, chasing her away: ‘too messy’. In a more recent phone call, he confessed to her that he was never happy having brought her into the world. He was too young and had other things on his mind, namely his ‘real girls: women, motorbikes and cars’. Emanuela even manages to appreciate such aridity because she recognizes a sort of courageous honesty in her father: he never pretended to be someone else, he was always clear with her, even if he was a bastard. Furthermore, this man had another daughter and it seems she is present in his life. So used to being satisfied with very little, Emanuela doesn’t even get annoyed, she doesn’t feel any jealousy. The last time they spoke, after a reconciliation following our divorce, she invited him to spend Christmas together, with her newborn nephew. He didn’t even answer. All we needed was the father who starts ghosting, my lady! We try to be ironic but it’s hard: this woman says she hates the Christmas period, she now cries even just seeing the seasonal lights. As a child she had gotten used to eating slowly, very slowly. In the hope of giving his father, who has already disappeared to other shores, time to return and have dinner together. Which never happened. Today Emanuela has a new partner ‘who looks like him, he even has the same big hands!’ And she makes him wear the same perfume that his father uses. While we hear Freud pawing from the grave, it pains us to realize that the envelope was finally opened. Emanuela’s only real concern concerned her son: she feared that his grandfather could be a bad example for him. The way in which he always puts himself in second or last place for others is almost admirable. But also a problem. Let’s renew the initial hug. And let’s hope that the opening of that envelope was just a television fiction. That little man there, Antonino, doesn’t deserve such a devoted daughter – and that he will end up suffering, again, in an infinite loop.
Il Volo’s ego above all else, they are at ‘C’è Posta per Te’ but they feel like they are at the stadium: rating 4
Sorry for the other two former tenors, but here the problem is always the same and responds to a very specific name and surname: Gianluca Ginoble. As soon as he enters the studio, he compliments Maria De Filippi, but with a phrase that smacks of self-satisfaction practiced at an extreme sport level: “How nice! Your audience here in the studio makes the same noise as a stadium with 80 thousand people inside!”. This is to remind us immediately, in case we were distracted, that he, Ginoble, knows well what noise a stadium with 80 thousand people inside makes. Or something very similar to thunderous and relentless applause inside majestic venues. As soon as ours is out of the way, the story that brought them there can begin as a surprise. And it is as painful as it is beautiful, very rare: Annamaria calls her husband on the show to thank him and to tell him to smile again. Unfortunately, a year ago they lost their little Sara, taken away by a bad illness as a teenager. “You had two queens, that’s what you called us, and now you have one left. I just want to ask you not to worry about worrying, not to hide when you feel the need to cry, not to always think only about protecting me. I’m here too, for you.” ‘Grande Amore’ is a song by Il Volo that they often listened to and hummed together with Sara, which is why the trio was called to support her husband. The three say the usual platitudes written by third parties, something common to any VIP guest on this show, and give away two passes to a concert of their choice. Plus a week-long trip to the Maldives. All beautiful (?) but in the context they are out of place: we would have preferred to hear the two spouses talk about their love, without famous burdens. Because a feeling like this is truly incredible, the kind you hear about in legends. And because ‘for better or for worse’, generally, it never really happens to anyone. But to these two despite everything, yes.
Angelo is looking for ‘his’ Roberta (whom he hasn’t seen for 60 years). And this means no history of horns tonight: rating 6.5
One of the two: either ‘the story of an interrupted love’ or the throne of yesteryear. Impossible to see both in the episode. This time, it’s Angelo’s turn, ‘known as women’s chocolate’ (it wasn’t explained why, ed.). The old man wants to meet ‘his’ Roberta again but, perhaps, he has never even managed to kiss ‘out of shyness’. It was 1966, he was doing military service in Rubbio, in the province of Vicenza, and there he fell in love with the waitress of a local tavern. Roberta, exactly. Within three Sundays, the young ‘chocolate’ had already met his father even if, he says, he and his beloved had only ‘danced together to Massimo Ranieri’s songs’. In any case, he leaves again without warning her. Always ‘out of shyness’, he adds, while no one in the world is believing him. A couple of years later, he contacts her again with a letter and tells her he has never forgotten her. She responds by letting him know that, in the meantime, she had gotten married. And tip the rest. This breaks his heart to the point that 60 years later Angelo still thinks about it and would like to see her again. Here comes the usual procession of possible ‘Robertas’, the funniest being the one that calls him a crazy visionary from start to finish: “Maria, she dreamed this, eh? I’ll tell you! One with stockings with butterflies drawn on them, she says, but they didn’t even exist! Yes, yes, here we joke and it’s fun but know that none of it’s true, with age she’s lost her mind!”mocks him. Despite such discouraging predictions, the ‘right’ Roberta also enters the studio and Angelo, ‘called the women’s chocolate’, loses his words as soon as he is recognized by her. He remains there with his container of salted olives (which he also gave to Maria and the editorial staff, ed) with the face of a stunned codfish, he doesn’t even remember his first name. When the envelope opens, we are still very breathless at being in the presence of the newfound lady. So the news is that, in their 80s, men can even tend to become sensitive, almost romantic, soft-hearted. We just have to wait, in short. And immediately look for a pair of ‘socks with butterflies drawn on them’, just in case.
