I have finished ‘The smartest person’, and have to appoint Nathalie Meskens as the loser of the week

We braved Erik Van Looy in a marcelleke, punches from director Robin Pront and throat chants similar to the cries of raped poultry for our weekly overview of The smartest person in the world.

Who quizzed the best?

Fien Germijns! The StuBru presenter was greeted by director Robin on Wednesday with a ‘good moustache!’ Played out proudly after a nail-biter final, but during the first two days – and actually on Wednesday too – she put her foot down winning streak continued tirelessly from last week. She’s one of those rare candidates who makes it all look easy, from coming up with answers to the questions to putting up with the jury’s quips. In the standings, Alex Agnew has a slightly stronger record in terms of participations, but Germijns stayed in her chair twice as often as Agnew while he had to compete for the final.

Pront, who showed himself to be a tactical expert in the three finals he played in the meantime, will be back in the match on Monday and can therefore move up a bit higher in that ranking.

Who was the biggest loser?

Undersigned! Which I almost forgot was what a damn annoying program The smartest person can be at times. All that hihihi and hahaha: it still makes me crazy. And yes, it is easy to argue that, after 21 years The smartest personmust be doing something right, but you can also say that about Vladimir Putin, for example.

Well, out of true professional seriousness I have sat through everything, and then I have to appoint Nathalie Meskens as the dupe of the week. She did better than she expected of herself during her first participation on Monday, and fought bravely in two finals, but in the second of which she lost out a bit early against – again – Pront.

Who was the surprise?

Comédienne Jade Mintjens did a solid job with her two participations, where she quickly realized, especially in the puzzle and photo rounds, where the sometimes somewhat drunken reasoning of the Smartest personeditors went. A skill that is perhaps even more important for winning than ready knowledge. Towards next week, presenter Manu Van Acker, who was allowed to sit quietly in his seat on Thursday while the final was fought out, will be someone to keep in mind.

What made us laugh the most?

Most jokes in The smartest person are the kind for which someone in a pigeon loft would be shown the door. Especially on Wednesday, jury members Bart Cannaerts and Herman Brusselmans spiced things up a bit lamely, and one of the two even with a noticeable reluctance. Perhaps the pool of jury members should be smaller, so that master bullshitters like Jan-Jaap Van der Wal get more screen time. Anyway, our ancestors only had Rik Torfs as their name Smartest person-one-man jury, so it could always be worse.

Among the charnel of bad jokes that already occurred last week, there were also a few passable witzes. There was also a salutary running gag in Robin Pront’s anecdotes about the fights he got into during his years as a teenager and in his twenties wandering through life.

But our moment of laughter was the video question from actor Jeroen Perceval in the Monday episode, who started his fragment with a series of guttural sounds that a mountain gorilla could be jealous of and then asked what the candidates know about De Kreuners.

What was the best question?

No, not that photo round with the trick-shaped foodstuffs from Wednesday’s episode. We liked the photo round much better, in which the choruses of Belgian Eurovision participants such as Jennifer Jennings and Soldiers of love had to be sung. Our favorite for the past week finally fell on Monday, when the candidates had to sing songs with guttural sounds that resembled the sound of a bagpipe. Fien Germijns scored the strongest in this, Nathalie Meskens’s attempt looked more like – as Van der Wal put it – a “chicken being raped.”