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Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez (2023)
They tried, they failed, but still there's hope for improvement
The idea was to revive the classic show Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez for a new young audience on Twitch with a twitch streamer as a host and a crew of people all related with TikTok to appeal to the new generations who didn't grow up with the original show. And for these generations, truth is, the show wasn't a too bad experience.
It didn't happen the same for the old generations who expected to find the old Un, dos, tres as it was 20 years ago. That was an expectation impossible to accomplish as 20 years ago society and television were vastly different and it's impossible to make any kind of show the same it was back then. It was mandatory to make changes to the format, even if it was at the cost of losing the old audience, or else the show would appeal to no one at all.
The big problem was the direction took with the changes, there were lots of problems of execution and lots of poor choices. For starters, a show like Un, dos, tres cannot be done live and it showed. Multiple problems of rythm, lots of errors and mistakes even in the basic rules of the game, a bunch of contestants that may have connected with the audience but found it hard to connect with the game itself.
All these mistakes turned the show into a long, at many times boring program that at times failed to capture the basic essence of the original, where every shot was studied milimetrically with a lot of care for the detail. In exchange for this, the show also looked more natural and less constrained than the original, but something should've been done about the excessive length of the show. Not to mention some of the comedic numbers were of a really bad taste, when not utterly rude and cringy.
Not everything was bad, though, the host, David Canovas, better known as theGrefg on Twitch, was an excelent comunicator, especially in the third part of the show, the Auction, which was the part that managed to capture more faithfully the essence of the original show. He carried with a lot of dignity the tradition of confusing the contestants while they were deciding which prizes to drop and which to keep and had nothing to envy from his predecessors in that sense. Carla Pulpón as co-host and accountant secretary as well as leader of the first mixed-genre team of secretaries was a pleasant addition, and a surprise to see her dance skills in the traditional choreography with the secretaries.
It's not clear if the show will ever continue or if it will return after this one-off entry, but if it does, there's hope for it to succeed if they make a series of important changes. First off, at the very least the first part of the show, the question round, should be pre-recorded, because it takes time to check the answers and it's impossible to do it right live as it showed. Second, the elimination round should be shorter, reduced to a single test and no more. Five tests were excessive and made the show unnecessary long. The auction needs very few touches as it went relatively well, but more care should be put in the comedians invited to the show, and avoid cringy, rude acts that do not match with a show that should be at the very least family friendly. Personally I'd love to see themed episodes as it was classic, I understand that building new sets each show is expensive, but still, the theme should be brought back, even if they always do it in the same set. With some minimum props and a background of LED screens, musical numbers could also work very well and bring back the magic of Broadway like the original used to do. One final thing, please try to make the ads less invasive, they were plaguing everything in this show and they were really annoying. I know they pay the show, but even them should know that less is more.
All in all, it wasn't a perfect show by any means, it had good moments, but there were a lot of mistakes, but these mistakes are fixable and if they manage to fix them, they can make a better show than what we finally got. A trademark like Un, dos tres deserves to go on living and it's just a matter of finding an updated recipee that appeals to new and old audiences akin. It's difficult, but it's not impossible.
Sanders Asides (2021)
Don't miss any of the two shows or you'll miss on both of them
In the last five years, Sanders Sides has become something like a cult show in the YouTube web series ambit, and it did so with the valiant approach of discussing mental health issues, sometimes as little talked about as intrusive thoughts or anxiety with a language that could be easily understood by all kinds of audiences, mixing it all with lots of comedy and relatable characters that have become beloved by its audience.
It's an inconvenience, though that as the popularity of the show went up, so did the goals of the production team and the pressure to offer a series that went on sattisfying their growing audience with the limited staff and resources they had. This resulted in long gaps between episodes and a portion of the audience becoming impatient over the long waits, sometimes of more than a year between episodes.
With the intention of filling this gap, this companion series was born. It was their intention to provide lighter content starring the Sanders Sides characters to make up for the waits between episodes, but right from the first entry, you can see it was going to be more ambitious than that. In fact, I'd dare to say that in just three episodes as of writing this, they've managed to surpass the original Sanders Sides in many ways.
Right from the first entry, the first difference with the original series became evident: the Sides and Thomas were no longer constrained to their fixed points in the living room where we only saw them from the wrist up, and we saw them instead in different situations in Thomas' daily life, like watching a movie, going to the mall, tidying and cleaning the house or going on a romantic date at the park. This change alone led to lots of innovation in the cinematography department, different situations, different production challenges and a higher level of quality in the scripts if it was possible to top the quality the scripts in the original series had.
We don't get the classic debates about mental health issues that are reserved for the main series, but that doesn't mean mental health isn't discussed, just that we see it discussed more organically as we live the characters' lives instead and feel through them everything they're going through instead of being talked about it by exposition like in the original series.
Some people have dismissed Sanders Asides as a gimmick that shouldn't even be considered canon. I strongly disagree, first because the team has already said that Sanders Asides episodes should be taken just as regular Sanders Sides episodes in terms of series plot, encouraging to watch them chronologically as they're published as if they were part of Sanders Sides. Secondly because by doing so, they're missing a show that gives a breath of fresh air to the Sanders Sides universe, a very nice complement to the original series that deserves the same recognition the original series has. To be honest, it deserves even more recognition as it dares to cross boundaries the original series still hasn't tried to cross at this point, although we still don't know what the future has in store for both shows.
Sanders Sides: Alone on Valentine's Day (2017)
Joan is here: the second age of the series has begun
Joan S. arrived as co-writer, and their presence is already noticeable from minute one. For starters, running time was twice as long compared to previous episodes and that results in more detailed dialogues, way more gags and jokes, a more detailed exposition of the topic and characters showing a way faster development. In this episode, Thomas tries to think on tricks on how to get a date and the Sides make their suggestions, each in their own style, limited to the aspect of Thomas they represent.
Kudos to Valerie Torres-Rosario's guest appearance as the hypothetical romantic crush for Thomas ("Isn't it funny watching Thomas play straight?") She does not only stand in as that hypothetical romantic interest: she adapts herself into each of the Sides' idea of a crush and gives a blast of a performance each and everytime. If she's with Logic, she's follows his logical thinking of verification and falsation and answers dichotomically to his inquiries with a simple almost robotic Yes or No. If Virgil meddles in, with Logic or with Morality's scenarios, she acts as anxiously put off as he would have expected her to act. If she interacts with Patton, she becomes a playful child like him. If she interacts with Roman, she becomes the damsel in distress he would like to rescue in his world of neverending romantic fantasy, including an unexpected and funny burst into Spanish language both by her and by Thomas (by the way, kudos to Thomas who got an excelent Spanish pronunciation as Roman, even though he doesn't know a word of Spanish). She gives all those performances without a single flaw, and her comedic talent is spot on in all of them.
It's actually very hard to find any flaws to this episode. Performances are spot on, the dialogues are funny and cut to the chase in regards of exposing the topic, and we find a couple twists here and there in the episode that are totally unexpected. With all of this said, it's only fair to say, welcome Joan, your talent is not unnoticed and you are the best complement to Thomas' talent he, and viewers of the series, could ever ask for. And it's only the beginning.
Sanders Sides: The Mind vs. The Heart (2017)
A little longer running time would have benefited it, but it has huge highlights too
This episode is the second of the "focused episodes" where a relation between two particular Sides is explored, and this time, it's Logic and Morality's turn. The biggest handicap of the episode is the same of most episodes of the first age of the series that ends with this episode: it's too short. Other previous episodes managed to use their little available time to explore the main topic and make the most of it (some didn't, as I discussed in previous reviews). This episode did in fact explore everything they wanted to say, but it felt a little rushed. If it had been just a couple of minutes longer, they could have taken that time to slow the pace down a little bit and it would have been a way better result overall.
Still, though, that doesn't mean it's a bad episode at all. In fact, highlights overshadow lowdowns. We see Logic's personality getting away from the Teacher Guy from the shorts, where he was just, at the time, an alternate version of the Dad Guy with necktie, to the super-serious, over-analytic guy that hates feelings and emotions, which is the character we would know in the rest of the series. Joan S. was present in filming, giving minor assistance to Thomas in this episode, and when they saw Logic's new personality, they knew the series had potential and asked Thomas to join in the series as a writer, something that would happen in the next episode.
Thomas has always praised Joan for how much characters have evolved in the series thanks to them, but Joan in turn has said that it was actually Thomas who started the spark of that evolution with Logic in this episode, and you can actually see it. Logic in previous episodes acted as goofily as Morality at times and was more prone to smiling like him. This is the first time we see Logic suffering over having accidentally made a pun, being embarrased over being caught wearing a onesie, and in a way asking everyone in the room to take him seriously, even if not yet directly. That was to be explored later on in the series when it would become big, but all that evolution was started here, by Thomas himself, in the last episode he wrote alone. And that is commendable.
Sanders Sides: I'm in a Disney Show (2017)
A rarity in the series, in the good and in the bad sense at the same time
This episode is really weird compared to the rest of the series. If we judge it for what it is, it is just a one-off vlog where real-life Thomas Sanders uses the later known as Sanders Sides characters to help him promote his upcoming appearance in the Disney Channel show Bizaardvark, which was premiering later that week, and in that sense it's a lovely vlog, full of comedic moments by the Sides, and very interesting when Thomas narrates his experience of filming the episode and the friends he made backstage. Plus, it's really funny to see Roman geeking out like the Disney fanboy he is, and that's one of the most iconic moments in the history of the series.
But apart from that, if we judge it as part of a series, this episode has some major inconsistencies, including some contradiction with later established canon that have proved to be problematic for the narrative. That can be excused as at the time there was no projected narrative to begin with. What really seems off is having real life Thomas Sanders in the episode, instead of the later established fictional character Thomas. The two are very similar, the fictional being based on the real-life one, but it would be established that the two have different personalities and character experiences. The biggest plot hole is that if Thomas in this episode managed to appear on a Disney Channel show, invited by Disney themselves to guest star, how is it that he's struggling so much in later episodes to make it big in the show-business? He surely wouldn't have trouble at least in landing castings if Disney themselves had already put their eyes on him. Narratively, it doesn't make sense.
But of course, as I said, this is still part of the first age of the series, and at this time, the show was still trying to find its path. And it wouldn't take too long for it to find it as from the next episode onwards, the evolution would put the pedal to the metal. A lot of huge changes were just around the corner.
Sanders Sides: The Dark Side of Disney (2017)
Establishing character dynamics
In the previous episodes, characters didn't really interact with each other and, other than some brief remark here and there, they usually spoke directly to Thomas or about Thomas, not about each other. This is the first of the so-called "focused episodes", those where a dynamic between a particular couple of characters is explored and established. In this episode, the relation between Princey and Anxiety is explored and developed, and we see how, even if they antagonise each other all the time, in fact they have many things in common and aren't really too far from each other, and show a hint that they could actually be friends if they put a little effort into it.
I think with the creation of this story arc, the series truly starts becoming a real series, and even if the following episode would be mostly a regression to the one-off vlog format, this is already a series and you are already invested in the characters enough to want to see where the story takes them.
It is also commendable the commentary that characters make about Disney movies and how we don't always see all the implied messages in many of them. Anxiety and Princey, with their comedic bickering back and forth, make this task enjoyable. All in all, a fine episode.
Sanders Sides: A New Year of Lying to Myself... In Song (2017)
And now, they sing
This episode is another landmark in the series. It features the first ever musical number in the series, with which the series first became a musical story, as it wouldn't be the last musical number by any means. Being Thomas an actor with plenty of experience in musical theater, this was bound to happen sooner or later.
The song explores a topic we all have experienced, one year or another, the new years resolutions we all create at the beginning of the year which we usually forget in less than a month. The song explores Thomas' New Year's resolutions and Anxiety's mocking that Thomas is never going to fulfill them. However, Thomas also shows that you can always make realistic resolutions that are easier to tackle successfully and encourages viewers to pursue that kind of resolutions in order to avoid frustrations and feel more fulfilled at the end of the year.
Even though the episode has become sort of a classic in the series thanks to this song, truth is that the song, even if catchy, is the weakest one of all featured songs in the series. Future musical numbers featured later on in the series would see a massive improvement, both in music and lyrics as well as in production, performance and scene montage. Still, though, the episode as a whole is totally enjoyable if you don't try to establish comparisons with things that, by then, didn't even exist, and you remember that we're still in the first age of the series, where Thomas did almost all the scripting, acting and directing on his own, with a much more restricted budget that what he would eventually have later on, and still with the intention of making individual vlogs, not a fully-fledged series, although the evolution towards that concept is already present.
Credit to be done to Chris Shaw for helping Thomas making the song, his only active participation in Sanders Sides, even though he was at the time one of Thomas' friends who had participated the most on the Vines and on Thomas' other vlogs.
Sanders Sides: Taking on Anxiety with Lilly Singh (2016)
A crucial change in the series and in Thomas Sanders' career
Who knows what would have happened if Thomas Sanders hadn't travel to LA to make this collab video with Lilly Singh, then still known as Superwoman, to discuss anxiety and ways to cope with it? For sure the series would have been very much different, as thanks to this collab, a new character was introduced that changed Sanders Sides forever.
This episode marks the first appearance of Anxiety, designed then as a one-off character with no further expectatives of development. However, he was a character with so much potential that of course he couldn't be limited to a single appearance and, with this, Sanders Sides gained an antagonistic character, something it lacked before. With that, it was ready to take off as a proper series of its own and not a bunch of vlogs that is what it had been up to this point.
Anxiety shows the versatility in Thomas' acting. He is known for his silly lighthearted Vine characters, but he already had plenty of experience portraying villains on stage, a role he was cast on regularly due to his low-pitch bass voice, perfect for villain songs, but this is the first time he showed himself onscreen portraying an antagonistic character, breaking out of his sunshiny Vine persona and proving, if needed be, that he can portray any kind of character convincingly, from the goofiest puffball to the darkest monster. Not that Anxiety was excesively dark as the series would soon prove, but he was in a side of the spectrum we hadn't seen before from Thomas onscreen. And this was only the beginning.
Sanders Sides: Way Too Adult (2016)
Its flaw is that it's so short you're left wanting more
Second episode of Sanders Sides. You can see Thomas' intention of doing something different to the previous episode, perhaps already having in mind making a series out of these vlogs.
The first age of the series is characterized by short episodes, but this one, in my opinion is too short. In fact, it's the shortest in the whole series and the only one under five minutes. And because of this, there's not enough time to develop the topic discussed in the episode, how to become an adult, not to mention that only one of the Sides, Morality, shows up. No wonder how the topic had to be discussed again in a later episode, "Growing Up", which tackles everything that couldn't be discussed here in more depth (that one is three times longer than this one, though, so it competes at an advantage).
However, despite this, the episode still offers some memorable moments, like the two conversations with the stove, which are nice comedic skits, and the first appearance of the "adultery" gag which would be a constant throughout all of season 1. All in all, it's an episode with flaws, but still enjoyable to watch, and it will make you laugh, which I think it was Thomas' main intention in these first episodes, and in this task, he always succeeds.
Sanders Sides: My True Identity (2016)
The beginning of something not even Thomas expected
Between 2013 and 2016, Thomas' bulk of work was established on Vine and YouTube was like a secondary channel for his career, where he would post only games with other YouTubers, compilation of his work on Vine, Q&A's and lots of vlogs where he discussed important topics.
This episode was released as one of those vlogs, and it shows. It doesn't have the usual format for a fiction series in any way. And yet, it works precisely because of that, because in any series, the first thing one has to do is dedicating a full episode to the introduction of characters, and this is what this episode is. We get to know Logic, Creativity and Morality, as well as character Thomas, and have a first glance at how they are, and that would be helpful on the first age of exploration of the series, which wasn't even a planified series at this point, and again, it shows.
Sanders Sides surely had a long way ahead of it to evolve and would see dramatical improvements and developments, but still this first episode is quite enjoyable on its own.
Sanders Shorts (2013)
Light comedy for those who need it
When I first discovered this series was around late 2014, early 2015, when an unofficial YouTube compilation of Thomas Sanders Vines popped up on my "Recommended" section. At that time, I didn't even know what Vine was, as Vine was never much popular in my country. Therefore, I never heard about who this "Thomas Sanders" guy was and why he was so popular to deserve a half an hour long compilation just for him.
As I was curious, I decided to give it a shot and watch the compilation. I discovered myself laughing and smiling throughout the whole video, and, for personal reasons, I really needed that at the time. Thomas' comedy is exactly my type of comedy, the one where everybody can laugh in equal conditions, with no one being the butt of the joke, the one that demands from the comedian a little bit of thought to make his audience laugh. "Sanders Shorts" is plenty of that, but it wasn't just that what caught my attention.
Something I noticed when I was watching that compilation was the variety it had. Skits were very different one from another. Pranks were not just throwing a prank and that's all, they had an imaginative premise to be done, whether it was "Disney pranks" or "Pokemon pranks". You could laugh at the plain prank, but if you knew what it was inspired about, the enjoyment was doubled. And to add an extra, Thomas, who, as I later knew, has an extensive background on musical theater, also sang snippets of songs or sang in his skits, and he has a really good voice. He may not be a tenor, but the important thing is how you use your voice, not how high you can sing, and his voice is beautiful, I can't think on any better adjective to describe it.
But one other thing about the compilation I also noticed is that Thomas is surrounded by a very good cast: his friends, without whom the series wouldn't probably have been as good as it is. Taylor Shrum is really funny in his impressions as Herbert. Brittney Kelly has a really good voice and she also has talent in comedy. Joan is a good sidekick to Thomas' shenanigans and they also have a unique talent for storytelling, as many of the ideas of the series have come from them as I later knew. And there are so many more, Valerie, Kenny, Terrence, Leo, Dominic, Susan Shrum, Camden, Kyle, Talyn... So many that I would need an encyclopedia to write about them, but let's sum up by saying that they're all great, and they all in turn make Thomas better.
When I ended that compilation, I already knew I had seen very good stuff, and I started, little by little, learning more about this Thomas Sanders, first by watching him on YouTube, later following him on Vine (I probably must be one of the few that, on 2015, followed him first on YouTube, later on Vine) and Instagram. I have no doubt that he has a bright career ahead and the proof is that not even the death of Vine in January 2017 could kill this series. It is still going strong on Instagram and it will go on for many more years, as long as Thomas and his people keep giving it the signs of quality that make it great.
Sanders Sides (2016)
Laughs and inner thinking multiplied by 5
Thomas Sanders has built slowly but surely a career in web comedy thanks to nearly 4 years of quality content on now defunct Vine. It was there where most of the characters that populate this web series were born and took their first comic steps, but it is here where they have gained a real depth of their own. The concept of "Sanders Sides" may remind you a little bit to "Inside-Out", and Sanders has indeed recognized this movie as an inspiration, but he has also added his own flavor and has made it original and valuable for itself.
The great achievement of this series is that it is genuinely funny as a comedy series, but it also makes the viewers think about themselves and makes them question their life and inner thoughts and really pushes them at times out of their comfort zone and makes them realize the complexity of their own human personality, and even though sometimes it is hard to face some of these inner shadows that we all have inside ourselves, in the end Thomas makes us see that there's always a way to change for the better, and he does so making us laugh and smile at the same time, something that is quite hard to achieve.
Thomas' acting, even though it's been nice from the start, is improving as the series advances. There are moments where, even though he plays all the characters, you tend to forget that they're all the same and only person thanks to a clever editing and how, even though they're supposed to be chunks of Thomas' soul, he has managed to give a full soul of its own to each one of them. A really recommendable web series, very different to everything I've ever seen on YouTube.
Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez (1972)
The best spanish TV show of all history
Every form of entertainment can be found in this program: if you like music, this is your program. If you like jokes and humour, this is your program. If you like excitement and surprises, this is your program. If you like culture, this is your program. Everything can be found here, and everything is done perfectly. That's why this show has lasted for 22 years and now is coming back after 10 years of rest. Surely it will be again as successful as it was in the good years.
Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez (1972)
The best spanish TV show of all history
Every form of entertainment can be found in this program: if you like music, this is your program. If you like jokes and humour, this is your program. If you like excitement and surprises, this is your program. If you like culture, this is your program. Everything can be found here, and everything is done perfectly. That's why this show has lasted for 22 years and now is coming back after 10 years of rest. Surely it will be again as successful as it was in the good years.