Los simuladores

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Los simuladores ( Spanish for The Simulants ) is a very successful Argentine television series that was shot in two seasons in 2002 and 2003 and broadcast on the television channel Telefe .

Directed by the newcomer Damián Szifron , who became known for this work and was later able to make his own feature films.

The series has meanwhile been exported to 17 other countries. Furthermore, three remakes were produced in Chile (2005), Spain (2006) and Mexico (2008).

action

The series is about the four simuladores ( simulators ) Mario Santos , Pablo Lamponne , Emilio Ravenna and Gabriel Medina , who run a simulation agency in Buenos Aires . In each episode they solve a new problem by simulating a certain situation through acting. These problems are many and varied, ranging from family affairs, such as a man trying to get his wife back, to criminal activities such as racketeering and hostage-taking.

The solutions to the problems tend to follow the same pattern: the simulators research everything about the people involved in order to find a characteristic or an event that they can use to solve the problem. Then, with the help of numerous actors, they play a situation for their "victim" that drives them to the desired action. In return, they ask the customer to double the material costs of the simulations and to be willing to participate in a later simulation.

Characters

The simulators

The protagonists are the four "simulators" Mario Santos , Emilio Ravenna , Pablo Lamponne and Gabriel Medina .

Mario Santos

Mario Santos ( Federico D'Elía ) is responsible for the planning and logistics of the group and thus its leader. He is characterized as an elegant, somewhat curious intellectual who keeps a cool head even in difficult situations. He seems distant and interested in culture, and he often speaks in an ironic way. It is he who organizes the finances of the simulation agency and explains their missions to his customers.

Emilio Ravenna

Emilio Ravenna ( Diego Peretti ) is the actor in the group. Even if almost all simulators have a role in the simulations, Ravenna plays the main roles. These range from the FBI detective to a descendant of Count Dracula to a mariachi singer. He is characterized as an extroverted bon vivant with a penchant for exotic hobbies, such as B. Yoga and abstract painting. He always seems to be surrounded by beautiful women. His alter ego in the simulations is mostly Máximo Cozetti , but he also has other names depending on the role.

Pablo Lamponne

Pablo Lamponne ( Alejandro Fiore ) is the man for technology and transport. He is characterized as a tough, tough guy whose hobbies are various extreme sports such as hang gliding and mountaineering. In one episode it turns out that his detachment results from an inferiority complex , as he was often teased by his classmates because of his name (the corruption "la pone" mentioned in the series is a vulgar expression for "he is homosexual" in Argentine Spanish) .

Gabriel Medina

Gabriel Medina ( Martín Seefeld ) is responsible for research and detective work. He mostly takes a back seat to the other simulators and is characterized as a calm, somewhat sentimental guy with bisexual tendencies (in some episodes he plays a homosexual, in others he makes advances to his colleagues). He is the only one who occasionally stands out due to differences of opinion with the other simulators.

Supporting characters

The other characters change from episode to episode; however, it happens that one of the supporting characters reappears in a later episode. This is because the malingerers in return for their services require the customer to take over later in another simulation free a role.

Brigada B.

In the final episode of the first season, a deputy simulation agency with other four simulators, Brigada B , is introduced. This seems to work well at first, but its lack of flexibility means that the original simulators will soon have to intervene again.

Franco Milazzo

The unscrupulous businessman Franco Milazzo , the antagonist of the simulators , is the only one who appears briefly in almost every episode of the second season in addition to the actual simulators . Because of a fraud in the first season, he was the victim of the simulators who banished him to the jungle of the Gran Chaco in a simulated reality game show , where he was supposedly filmed during survival training. When after a year he still has not received any news about the outcome of the show, he leaves his whereabouts in the forest and goes back to "civilization". Since nobody recognizes him as a "series star", he realizes that he was deceived and forges plans to take revenge on the simulators . However, he falls for a new trick of the simulators and ends up in Afghanistan , supposedly to track down Osama bin Laden as a super agent .

Other features

The series parodies the classic detective series and quotes stylistic features from various film genres, so that each episode has its own character. Science fiction elements can be found in some episodes - for example, alleged contacts with aliens - many make use of the agent film and some also use the horror film genre. The element of humor is always present, especially when the simulators are fooling their victims with the simplest of arrangements.

While some episodes have a family character, others are relatively lavishly staged - especially the later episodes. In the first episodes, everything always goes smoothly for the simulators, but in later episodes there are breakdowns and even an attempted murder.

The episodes of the first season of the series had an approximately 10-minute opening credits in which a case of the simulators and the problem-solving were briefly presented. However, the later episodes already started with the main storyline.

The inspiration for the series are the two US series Stingray (1986) and Rache nach Plan (1998-99), both of which, however, were not nearly as successful as Los simuladores . There are also serious differences in content: In contrast to the American series, in which the actors were idealists who pursued a moral goal, the “simuladores” only have purely economic interests.

Episodes

1st season

  1. Tarjeta de Navidad ( Christmas card ): The simulators help a man to win back his wife who is separated from him. To do this, they research their reasons for the breakup and then portray the man as if he has overcome his mistakes.
  2. Diagnóstico Rectoscópico ( rectoscopic diagnosis ): An unscrupulous creditor terrorizes his debtor and threatens to murder his son. Since he has a rare blood type, he is led to believe that he has a serious illness and that only a transfusion from his debtor of all people can help him.
  3. Seguro de Desempleo ( unemployment insurance ): Jorge Fehler, a PR employee at a dairy factory of around sixty, is laid off and replaced by a younger employee. The team helps him get the work back by establishing personal contact between him and the company's Mexican CEO.
  4. El Testigo Español ( The Spanish Witness ): A happily married woman is terrorized by a former lover from Spain on his trip to Buenos Aires. By tricking him into believing that he had witnessed a criminal case and was therefore being pursued by both the criminals and the corrupt police, the protagonists drive him out of Argentina.
  5. El Jóven Simulador ( The Young Simulador ): A pupil has to repeat the class if he fails to pass seven short consecutive exams with a good grade, but his mother has a severe immune disease and must therefore not be exposed to any stress. The simulators inquire about the teacher's various examination methods and help him pass them by cheating.
  6. El Pequeño Problema del Gran Hombre ( The Big Man's Little Problem ): President Mendilharzu suffers from impotence. His wife contacts the team, which helps him regain his self-esteem by stimulating various stimuli.
  7. Fuera de Cálculo ( not planned ): While Mario Santos has to solve a minor case in a bank, it is attacked by masked gangsters. After an exchange of fire takes place and the staff and customers are taken hostage, he decides to help the robbers escape in order to avert greater damage. To this end, the three other members of the police group who were not present in the bank pretended that they were in fact terrorists wanted by Interpol .
  8. El Pacto Copérnico ( The Copernican Pact ): Because he can't stand his wife anymore, but doesn't want to leave her either, a lawyer instructs the team to make her leave him on her own initiative. They find out that she is a fan of the anti-Nazi film Casablanca , and stylize an actually unattractive secret admirer of her into a kind of Humphrey Bogart figure, who heroically prevents a spectacular deal between two neo-Nazis, which is why she falls in love with him.
  9. El último héroe ( The Last Hero ): A cheater named Franco Milazzo takes his victims off by pretending to be an art manager, but then leaving his customers empty-handed and demanding large sums of money from them. Since he is a fan of action and survival films, he is allegedly invited to a casting for a reality show and "wins" the prize, allegedly filmed in the jungle of the Gran Chaco , to live for a year without outside support.
  10. Los impresentables ( The Unpresentables ): A young woman from a simple family is ashamed to introduce her parents at a garden party to her friend who comes from a middle-class family. So that they are always in a good light, the simulators organize the party themselves (disguised as a party service) and take care of incidents from which they ultimately emerge as heroes.
  11. El colaborador foráneo ( The Foreign Helper ): A corrupt police officer is terrorizing his area of ​​work with protection rackets . Since this is a fan of the SETI project, the simulators pretend that a top secret NASA investigation into extraterrestrial activities is taking place in his district and that he is allowed to participate as a witness if he vows to adhere to the organization's strict ethical standards.
  12. Marcela & Paul : A woman in her mid-fifties suffers from severe depression after separating from her husband. The simulators organize a rendezvous with a double of Paul McCartney, whom she adores, and breathe new zest for life into her.
  13. Un trabajo involuntario ( An involuntary case ): A gang of criminals wants to get the simulators to get one of their members out of prison and then allow them to travel safely to the USA. After Santos is reluctant, they kidnap him, forcing the group to cooperate. With a trick they manage to satisfy the gang but then to bring them to justice.

2nd season

  1. Los cuatro notables ( The four wise men ): A serious heart patient is refused treatment by the health insurance company because the illness arose before the first payment. The simulators trick the cashier into thinking that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize because of an idealistic thesis from his youth , which is why the latter changes the policy of his company.
  2. Z-9000 : A violent husband persecutes his wife and threatens her, some of them life-threatening. In order to chase him out of Argentina, the team tricked him into thinking that an extremely dangerous clone of his, which was created during secret experiments, was chasing him and trying to kill him, which is why he ultimately flees to Alaska .
  3. La gargantilla de las cuatro estaciones ( The waterfall of the four seasons ): In the big city, a successful engineer feels constantly tempted to cheat on his wife, even though he actually loves her very much. He wants to get the simulators to help, but Santos, who is his contact person, refuses. Nevertheless, they secretly accept the case and organize his transfer to a rural area.
  4. El Clan Motul ( The Motul Clan ): A retirement home is to be closed against the will of its residents. Since the manager of the home is an ultra-conservative and extremely superstitious Christian and Opus Dei member, they serve him a vampire story that leads him to continue to run the retirement home.
  5. El Vengador Infantil ( The Childish Avenger ): A young boy is teased by his classmates and threatens to sink into depression. By letting the simulators win a self-organized comic competition, they increase his self-esteem.
  6. El matrimonio mixto ( The mixed couple ): Two students have fallen in love with each other, but the girl's parents are arch-conservative Christians, the boy's Orthodox Jews, both of whom would not tolerate a partnership with a member of another religion. The team ensures that both families, who do not yet know each other, make friends on a research project and overcome their religious prejudices.
  7. El gran desafío ( The Big Challenge ): The B-Team ( Brigada B ), a group of former actors of the simulators who are supposed to take over the unimportant cases, poses in one case as terrorists of Al-Qaeda . By chance they become but considered real terrorists by the FBI and flown to the USA. In order to free their colleagues, the simulators travel to the USA and use some of the simplest arrangements and psychological methods to trick even the highly competent US authorities. The B-Team is then suspended.
  8. Un fin de semana de descanso ( A weekend to rest ): After the exhausting USA action, the simulators take a weekend vacation. However, they find out that a murder has taken place in their hotel, and solve the case in Sherlock Holmes fashion.
  9. El debilitador social ( The weaker of society ): A student instructs the simulators to get his sister, a student working as a model, free of her bulimia . The team organizes a sham trial of the UN against the owner of the model agency for "weakening society" through the image of man and the ideal of beauty that he is conveying. Although he is acquitted, the agency operator changes his methods and the boy's sister gains self-confidence and is able to overcome her illness.
  10. El anillo de Salomón ( The Ring of Solomon ): A famous conductor is molested by a young admirer who composes himself and wants to see his work premiered by him. The simulators ensure that the younger one switches to another musical genre by awarding him the talent to understand the whale songs .
  11. Final episode . The final episode consists of two storylines that take place simultaneously. After both cases have been dealt with, the simulators dissolve their agency.
  1. The fraudster Franco Milazzo known from the first season has exposed the simulators and now wants to take revenge on them. But they manage to convince him that the "fake" reality show is actually a training program to track down Osama bin Laden as a special agent in Afghanistan .
  2. A family suffers from a son's lack of interest in parents who live far away from his workplace. The son is an employee of a company that uses psychological tricks to train him to be fully committed and considers his parents to be ancient dreamers. The simulators help the family bring the son back to the family at Christmas by staging numerous incidents at the company's Christmas party, which he organized, and thus getting him to quit.

music

The theme tune of the series is the piece Cité Tango by Astor Piazzolla , edited by the Gotan Project . The soundtrack album consists mainly of modern tango and jazz pieces as well as art music from the first half of the 20th century. The ringtone of the protagonists ' mobile phones achieved a special cult status when they are called to a new case; it consists of the first bars of the series' signature melody.

Awards

In 2003, the series won Argentina's most famous radio award, the Martín Fierro de Oro , where it was able to prevail against the critically acclaimed prison series Tumberos .

Remakes

Three remakes of the series have so far been produced. The first was created in Chile in 2005 and was geared to the situation in that country and provided with more humorous elements than the original; however, the characters of the simulators kept their original names. The second revision has been broadcast in Spain since the beginning of 2006. In it, Federico D'Elía, already known from the Argentine series, plays as Mario Santos as the main actor , but the characters Pablo Lamponne and Emilio Ravenna have been given new names and, like Gabriel Medina, have been replaced by other actors. Another remake was broadcast in Mexico in 2008.

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