The best version of myself, by Blanche Gardin. Yes, but.

by France Missud

Blanche Gardin, I discovered her in 2015 in the first part of Fabrice Eboué. This chick is dark, clever, provocative and extremely funny. All that I love. In his first show, the humorist with the pen and the acerbic tone, plays down all the trash subjects of our society. To the most serious. Rape, psychiatric pathologies, emotional and sexual misery, she does not go with the back of the spoon, the girl. Blanche is ashamed of nothing, makes fun of the ugliest things in our world, denounces and frees speech. And it does us a lot of good.

Since then, I have been interested in all the projects in which his name appears. So, when Canal + announced to us, in November, that the comedian had written and produced a series in which she played the leading role, I was impatient. The release of "The best version of myself" is scheduled for December 6, 2021. It could be cataclysmic.

The teasers only add to my excitement. It is about spiritual quest and self-discovery. In short, everything that is in fashion at the moment. All this, under the background of serious doubts about the validity of this research. I don't recognize myself badly. I feel that I will be able to laugh at my own failings. I feel that I will take for my rank too. I must be a bit masochistic, but I can't wait.

So, as of December 6th, I launched a call (completely illegal) for the loan of Canal codes on the networks, and the next day, thanks to generous donors, whose names I will not mention, I finally started the episodes . The expectation is, therefore, as you can imagine, enormous.

And what's the problem when you have too many expectations? Well, you're bound to be disappointed. So. It didn't miss.

In the best version of me, Blanche Gardin plays her own role as a comedian tired of self-flagellation, turning to personal development.

Like many people - including me - in this post-first confinement period, she seeks to understand herself in order to flourish. We see her taking the path that so many of us have taken: that of the quest for spirituality. This is the theme of the first two or three episodes. So far, I've laughed. Like my own experiences, I found myself gently ridiculous, recognizing myself in narcissistic and egocentric attitudes. Although I would have done without so much heaviness around its transit, this part is, in my opinion, the best. I got married.

But it's after that it goes bad.

I was very curious to see the rest of what she meant by "spiritual quest", not being, myself, only in its infancy. Until then, the satire was very accurate, so, logically, the series had to show me what awaited me in the future. And that's when I stopped laughing. I don't even know if I smiled once, that is to say. Four or five episodes (the last, moreover) without laughing, in front of a series which one thought comic, it is slightly disappointing, you will agree.

Not only did Blanche not make me laugh, but, worse, she freaked me out. The scenario goes completely peanut and not in the good sense of the term. The main role becomes unsympathetic, more and more neurotic, even crazy. She reveals to us all her dark sides and hides nothing of her monster, wounds and other fears. It's all to his credit, you'll tell me, but I'm still looking for humor. In the second part, we completely changed register. All without warning. And I was not ready. So, yeah, I found it instructive, interesting and alarming (a behavior not to be reproduced, therefore) but it was not a somewhat absurd social drama that I wanted to watch at that time.

And then, in all honesty, even if the drifts exist, I do not think that many people take this path. And that's the problem. By ridiculing, more and more, this search for spirituality and by caricaturing its followers and other feminists (by making the amalgam in passing) it would almost manage to disgust us with it. Although that was not the goal. The goal (well, what I expected) was to make fun of our excessive behavior (as she was able to do in "Problemos" co-written with Noé Debré and directed by Éric judor) not to get into a deep and serious reflection on our worst deviations. In this sequel, Blanche cheerfully criticizes our society and its neuroses, which I could have greatly appreciated, given the accuracy of the analysis, except that she doesn't really put humor into it. It's just clinical, not funny.

Conclusion: I felt uncomfortable several times, it felt too real, and the finality did not give satisfaction. I therefore come away from this viewing with a negative impression. And the negative, now, I avoid it like the plague. Shame.