Will the sixth season of ＂The Life of Yearning＂ still make people yearn for it？
The value and bottleneck of slow variety shows.
Text | Chen Meixi, Xiaohan
Editor | Shi Can
The blue ocean, the long coastline, the fishing boats docking in the sunset, the men and women walking on the beach in short sleeves.
Such scenes should have appeared on many people’s May Day holidays, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made a comeback, trapping everyone in their living rooms and enjoying the seaside scenery from their TVs. The day before the May Day holiday, the first episode of the sea season of "Longing for Life" was broadcast. The filming location was not the Maldives, where He Jiong and Huang Lei talked about it for several years, but a seaside fishing village on Hainan Island.
Picture source yearning for life official Weibo
In domestic variety shows, there are not too many programs that can be continuously produced at the rhythm of one season a year and maintain a hot topic.
"Where Are We Going, Dad?", which was also produced and broadcast by Hunan Satellite TV, ended in its fifth season, and the hit music competition variety shows "I Am a Singer" and "Singer" were produced and broadcast for a total of 8 seasons. On the evening of April 29, "Yearning for Life" ushered in its sixth season premiere, becoming another seasonal variety show that lasted until its sixth season after "China’s Got Talent", "Singer" series, "Run Brothers" series, "Extreme Challenge", "Ace vs. Ace", "Happy Comedian" and other programs.
The reason why the word perseverance is used is because almost every season before the official announcement, there are doubts from the audience: "Why don’t you shoot another season?" Compared with other variety shows that exceed five seasons, "Yearning for Life" is very special, it has almost no competition, from form to content, it revolves around a "slow" word.
An important member of Mushroom House, the official Weibo of Tuyuan Yearning for Life
This peculiarity makes the audience’s evaluation of it appear polarized. – – The people who like it like it very much, and they can feel the taste of life from the sunrise and sunset.
Some viewers even came up with a template for this boredom.
In the first step, the guests called to order food, and He Jiong Huang Lei bargained with the program team to get the ingredients; in the second step, the guests came to the mushroom house, greeted the MCs cordially, visited like a tour group, and said hello to the dogs, cows, sheep, chickens, and ducks in the mushroom house; in the third step, Huang Lei began to cook in the kitchen, and the guests did farm work under the leadership of Zhang Yixing, Peng Yuchang, Zhang Zifeng, and others; in the fourth step, the people who came back from work sat in the kitchen, and Huang Lei was still cooking; in the fifth step, Huang Lei finally finished his meal, starting with He Jiong’s "Wow", everyone began to eat and reminisce about the past; in the sixth step, after dinner, they went back indoors, continued to reminisce about the past, and then went to sleep. End of the whole episode.
Huang Lei, who always stays in the kitchen, looks forward to the official Weibo of life
Many reality show variety shows have scripts. Instead of asking the actors to act according to the script, they look for conflicting or warm story lines under the existing materials, so that the edited pictures are more storytelling, so as to achieve a certain degree of variety show effect. In "The Life of Yearning", it is almost impossible to find such a story line.
It doesn’t even require the performers to have a "variety show sense". Peng Yuchang often wears a baseball cap and an old man’s vest on the show, and is good at chopping firewood and lighting fires; Zhang Zifeng often appears in the camera without makeup, occasionally applying makeup by himself, and applying lipstick to the outside of his lips, attracting crowds. Most of the time, he is in charge of holding bowls, picking garlic and listening to people.
Picture source yearning for life official Weibo
In the fifth season, Zhang Yixing became one of the permanent guests, and at the beginning, he was not even used to this "non-variety show" atmosphere. There was no need to create a stalk, no reaction, no artificial jokes, and when there was nothing to do, he only needed to sit, which was completely different from the variety shows he had participated in before.
Even the legendary entertainers with a strong sense of variety will be unaccustomed when they come to "The Life of Yearning". Li Dan, a talk show actor who has created two popular variety shows, and Chen He, who has appeared in various variety shows all year round, have been criticized on this show. – The speeches and laughter that make them popular in other variety shows make them seem noisy here.
With no storyline, no drama, and no variety show guests, "The Life of Yearning" relies heavily on the chemistry that occurs in the daily interactions between acquaintances. This chemistry is not only the premise of Slow Variety’s establishment, but also the "trap" in its long-term development process. Once you step on the air, the flying guests and permanent guests you find cannot create sparks, and the effect of the show will be greatly reduced.
In the third season, the program team once invited multiple young actors and idols in the same program, resulting in a situation where He Jiong introduced the personnel one by one, and the atmosphere was always mixed with awkwardness and strangeness. Starting from the fourth season, from the casting selection, the program team also deliberately avoided similar scenes from happening again, and invited as many members who were familiar with the resident guests as flying guests as possible.
But the list can’t be expanded indefinitely. The number of showbiz members who can have chemistry with the permanent guests is limited, and the range of options will become less and less in the sixth season, or in the future in the seventh and eighth seasons. In the previous five seasons of the show, many guests have come to the mushroom house more than once, and in the future, the recurrence of flying guests may be more frequent. Balancing freshness and integration, balancing "change and unchanged" will be a challenge for the show to continue.
No one in the audience who stayed would expect Peng Yuchang to become playful, or Zhang Zifeng to become extroverted and lively. As a variety show that continued into the sixth season, "Yearning for Life" attracted audiences, but it was not a variety show.
As a comprehensive N generation, how did "Yearning for Life" continue to reach its sixth season?
The composition of the personnel and the role positioning of each person are the primary factors that make the show have a life atmosphere. Huang Lei, He Jiong, and Liu Xianhua in the first season, to Peng Yuchang in the second season, until Liu Xianhua withdrew in the third season and Zhang Zifeng joined, a "family of four" lineup with older brothers and younger sisters was basically determined.
Huang Lei has been around the kitchen, responsible for everyone’s three meals a day; He Jiong is more like a parent at home, entertaining guests, taking into account everyone’s feelings, and assigning tasks to everyone when doing farm work; Peng Yuchang is in charge of gravity work, while working as a coolie, he also creates funny materials; Zhang Zifeng’s quiet image adds a bit of beauty to the yearning life.
Such a combination and positioning, the emotion exuded makes the ordinary life of the show more human. Audiences can’t help but envy the friendship between Huang Lei and He Jiong, and the sibling relationship between Peng Yuchang and Zhang Zifeng. At the same time, in today’s fast-paced life, these feelings are even more precious. While watching life, audiences also hope to see these people reunite year after year, bringing some touching moments.
The addition of Zhang Yixing in the fifth season enriched the types of regular guests in the show. The image of being able to work, able to perform talents, and not talking much at ordinary times made up for the blank image in the previous guest group. The idol who used to stand on the stage shining brightly is now driving a tractor to plant trees. This image contrast makes Zhang Yixing and the show attract a wave of fans.
From the first season to the sixth season, the vitality of each individual in the same environment makes the audience seem to see the changes of a family in a few years. Peng Yuchang is getting fat, eating less and losing weight are the new highlights of the show; Zhang Zifeng is gradually becoming mature, and after getting to know everyone, he is more generous; even the animal lanterns and small h in the show appear year after year, which is an indispensable part of yearning for life.
Since reality shows became popular in the variety show market, the main ones that can become a comprehensive N generation are competitive shows. "Yearning for Life" favors "slow variety shows" in terms of content positioning, link setting, and survival mechanism.
Since the first season, "The Life" has created a quiet life, where star artists can put aside their fatigue and reveal their original selves in washing vegetables, cooking and doing farm work. Everyone sits around the table, talking about the current situation and reminiscing about the past. Even if they don’t speak, they will not seem embarrassed to accompany each other quietly.
The setting of the link is based on the traditional rural lifestyle, picking vegetables in the fields, fishing in the fish pond, chopping wood and cooking on the stove. Based on the only daily necessities in the farm, more materials are obtained by planting trees and other means, and the "self-sufficient and warm hospitality" lifestyle is exactly what the audience likes.
In order to maximize the pastoral living environment, the location of "Yearning for Life" was carefully selected, not only the beautiful environment, but also the difficult conditions, in order to create a "paradise" situation. Moreover, the director team planted crops around the courtyard half a year in advance, and they grew in the program in a natural state.
Now that "Yearning for Life" comes to the seaside, what kind of life charm it will bring is what people look forward to. But whether it will repeat the previous program template and whether it can break through the bottleneck of the N generation is also the key to the word-of-mouth of the new season.