Eretz Nehederet (ארץ נהדרת; lit. 'A Wonderful Country') is an Israeli satire Sketch Comedy show.
Filling a similar niche as the American Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, it has been running for over 20 years, since 2003. Most content is in Hebrew, but a number of sketches, especially those about or directed towards a western audience, are in English.
Contains the following tropes:
- Arab Beoble Talk: The show's impression of Muhammad Abu Tir
occasionally used this trope. He was portrayed as trying to re-brand Hamas as a cool organisation mostly into partying to lure Israelis into the Palestinian Territories, and at one point he gave the show’s host a flyer for a ‘party’ he was supposedly throwing. The host read the flyer as ‘mesiba lebanim’Hebrew (‘a party for boys’), but Abu Tir explained it says ‘mesiba labanim’ (misspelling/pronouncing Hebrew mesiba lapanim, ‘kickass party’). - Black Comedy Rape:
- The UN Women sketch, where they coin the term "rapesistance" for the sexual assault against Jewish women perpetrated on 7/10/2023.
- In the interview with Yahya Sinwar, he mentions that alongside the Hamas "freedom fighters" on October 7th, there were also "freedom rapists" and "freedom butchers".
- Black Is Bigger in Bed: The show once parodied the blatant racism expressed by MK Miri Regev, who compared Sudanese refugees to cancer, in a skit predicting that she would eventually come to support them after forcefully converting them to Judaism and moving them to settle in the West Bank. When asked how she plans to convert so many of them, she answered, "With a machete."
- Boomerang Bigot: In the "Hogwarts code of conduct" sketch, Snape is half-blood himself, but enthusiastically supports anti-mudbloodism and calls for mudblood genocide.
- The Chains of Commanding: The show aired this skit before the winner of the 2009 elections was declared. It featured a group of former Israeli prime ministers singing a song to both candidates, aimed at the winner-to-be, detailing how awful life would be after they get the job. Subverted by Shimon Peres, who would still like to be the prime minister again in spite of everything.
- Cross-Cast Role: Tal Friedmann, a man, plays women regularly, to the point that Orna Banay, one of the two actresses on the show, left in frustration over him getting all the good roles for women. Ironically, Banay rose to fame partially by playing a man and briefly playing one on Eretz Nehederet herself.
- Disney Owns This Trope: In an episode dedicated to the massive summer 2011 protests in Israel, a tycoon impression (Eran Zarkhovich with an Angry Birds-esque pig for a head) was featured. Host Eyal Kitsis went over a list of his assets, which included, among many others, the phrase ‘Holy shit, get a load of those tits!’ and the word ‘morning’.
- Epic Fail: In one skit, Benjamin Netanyahu visits the US to meet with Barack Obama and smooth out the relationship between their two countries. Netanyahu manages to accidentally set the American flag on fire, stomp on it trying to put the fire out, and then burn a copy of Obama's Middle East peace plan.
- Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: In Israel, it is generally customary to correct some grammar mistakes (often found in lower sociolects), stuttering, and the like in closed captions. The show mocked a contestant on the Israeli Survival who was very loud and made plenty of mistakes despite being a native speaker of Hebrew: the subtitler near the end of the skit just wrote that he had enough.Subtitler: If you’re deaf, you’re in luck.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: One of their oldest sketches is called "ISIS in Eurovision" and has ISIS perform on stage and sing about how much they want to bomb the world.Eurovision is cool, when you come from Mosul!
- Gullible Lemmings: One sketch portrays the alumni of Columbia University as this.Militant: We will throw you off the roof, you homosexual dirt.Student: Did you hear that? They want to throw us a rooftop party!
- Harmless Lady Disguise: Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak dressed in drag and pretended to be another soldier’s girlfriend when he was a soldier during Operation Springtime of Youth. Eretz Nehederet portrayed him once as going Ax-Crazy and demanding his dress to go fight at the slightest hint of an imminent armed conflict.
- Hiding in a Hijab: In the "Fauda vs. Corona" skit, Rona Lee disguises herself as a hijabi for a mission at the mall, but gets sidetracked when she's hired by H&M (whose employees are frequently Muslim women).
- Insane Troll Logic: The BBC claim that even with evidence that a misfired Hamas rocket, not an Israeli one, hit a hospital in Gaza, it's still Israel's fault because the blockade prevented Hamas from getting better weapons.
- Intentional Engrish for Funny: Eretz Nehederet's depiction of John Kerry had him speak machine-translated Hebrew, complete with painfully shoving Hebrew words into English grammar and translating loanwords.
- "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Before the 2006 elections in Israel, Eretz Nehederet made a sketch in which the fictional ‘Dyslexia Party’ made an ad for themselves, with a presenter reading statements off a page pretty poorly (‘From now on, we will let anyone screw us over!... Sorry!... We will not let anyone screw us over!’). They started singing a song about the harsh life of dyslects (‘We want to finish tests before dark... To watch films even without a dub... We hate how the waiter gets andgry when we order Bolognese sapta... Vote for the dyclests!’).
- News Parody: The show runs almost entirely on this format, alternating between mocking remarks about recent events in the style of Seth Meyers on Saturday Night Live, interviews with actors playing public figures, and skits in the format of news reports.
- Money Song: "Gaza's sky is black but Qatar is always sunny" features the leaders of Hamas living it up in a luxury hotel in Qatar while Gaza is being bombed, tossing money around and spending it on Conspicuous Consumption.
- Murder by Mistake: In the "Fauda vs. Corona" skit, the commander is reading off a list of terrorists the team has killed, and mentions they accidentally killed DJ Khaled.
- Precision F-Strike: In the aforementioned "ISIS" sketch, one of the members outright calls LGBT people the 3 letter f-word.
- Parody: During the COVID-19 Pandemic, they did a skit parodying the show Fauda, with the elite counterterrorism operatives assigned to take down a guy spreading the virus.
- Soap Within a Show: In the sixth season, every episode ended with a Gag Dub of some Arabic soap opera. The series was titled En Gvul laAhava (‘Love Is Boundless’), written with a font resembling Arabic script. One of the characters' daughter called her father ‘pathet’ (a word coined by Eretz Nehederet in a series of sketches joking about Israeli teens), and her father complained it’s ‘all because of television’.
- Straight Man: Eyal Kitzis, the host, is the only serious figure, while everyone else hams it up.
- Straw Feminist: Frequent in their sketches post-7/10/23 - feminists are usually portrayed as unflattering, ugly Americans with annoying Valley Girl voices, multiple nose rings and piercings and brightly coloured hair.
- Strawman News Media: During the 2023 Israel-Hamas War, they produced this skit as well as this mock interview with the leader of Hamas, satirizing The BBC's reporting on the war. The BBC reporters and newscasters believe anything bad must be Israel's fault, and they twist themselves in knots trying to justify this view despite evidence to the contrary.
- Stylistic Suck: This skit mocking the BBC's reporting on the 2023 war in Gaza features "video footage" of Israel supposedly bombing a hospital, with a clipart paper airplane lazily photoshopped in, intercut with clips from Oppenheimer and a mushroom cloud.
- Take That!: The show has many sketches punching at Hamas, Israeli politicians (like Benjamin Netanyahu) and other topics at the center of Israeli pop culture.
- Theory Tunnel Vision: In this skit mocking the BBC's reporting on the Israel-Hamas War, the BBC reporter and newscaster believe anything bad must be Israel's fault, and they twist themselves in knots trying to justify this view despite evidence to the contrary. When a recording of a Hamas operative outright says "it was us who bombed the hospital", the BBC says "I guess we'll never know the truth", even when the Hamas members repeatedly claim credit.
- Twisting the Words: Inverted in this skit, where Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar admits to having a kidnapped Israeli baby in his house, and the BBC interviewer twists his words to make it seem like he's the victim, dealing with "torture by sleep deprivation" (the baby crying).
- Vomit Discretion Shot: A running gag on the sixth season, there was a series of skits titled "Mai's Blog," consisting almost entirely of the vain teenage girl Mai's vlog entries, featuring two of her close friends. A running gag in those skits would include Mai mocking one of said friends for being allegedly fat (she is played by a grown man, but he certainly isn't fat; Mai is played by a grown woman with a waist slimmer than his), followed by said friend saying, "Excuse me for a sec," and vomiting aloud into a paper bag.
In the last episode of the season and the final skit in the series, Mai had to see her much dreamed of prom dwindling in front of her eyes (she lost the title of prom queen to her worst enemy, said worst enemy got together with the boy she was into, and her own mother took a very unpopular boy's virginity). When vomit-girl asked her how she felt, Mai went overboard and said something to the effect of, "Just imagine all the hamburgers, all the pizzas, all the shawarmas and lafot you've ever gobbled down just came up against you!" The result? A huge amount of vomit just gooshing out and utterly destroying her prom dress.
