Series / Les Bobos

Etienne and Sandrine

Les Bobos (Eng. The Bobos) is a comedy series created by Marc Labrèche and Marc Brunet that ran from 2012 to 2013 on Télé-Québec.

Etienne (Marc Labrèche) and Sandrine (Anne Dorval) Maxou are a slightly arrogant couple living on the vibrant Plateau Mont-Royal in Montreal, Quebec, among their family and friends. Without ever sacrificing their beloved comfort, elegance and social conscience, follow them as they keep up with the ins and outs of modern life and its trends (which do not involve staying in touch with reality).

This work provides examples of:

• Adoptive Peer Parent: Sandrine is trying very hard to convince everyone that she's of an age with her stepdaughter.
• Africa Is a Country: At the end of the second season, the Bobos make a huge deal of leaving the country to go do charity work in Africa. What country in Africa? Africa. (It's alright - it's not like they actually mean to leave their coocoon anyway).
• The Alcoholic: Most of Mathias's lines are about "opening another good bottle", mostly to show off his taste in wine, but...
• Always Someone Better: The bane of the Bobos' lives. They need to show off everything they do and all of their friendships are bitter rivalries.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Juliette is a terrible person too, but at least she can leave the house without making a fool of herself; not her parents.
• As Himself:
  • A number of Québécois stars make an appearance, notably Xavier Dolan, Mahée Paiement, Isabel Richer, Luc Picard, Denys Arcand, Josée Di Stasio...
  • Macha Grenon and Fabien Cloutier play as themselves, but 1940's versions of themselves in the in-universe film d'auteur Morte Campagne.
• Attention Whore: All the Bobos ever do is in hopes that they might go viral for it (or at least make their friends jealous).
• Bad Boss: To their poor cleaner Hermosa. They love her, they're just, well, themselves.
• Bait-and-Switch: When Etienne claims that Québec star Sébastien Benoît is one of the few men attractive enough to stop bullets with their beauty. Sébastien is promptly shot dead.
  Etienne: Well, it was a lie.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Juliette, Etienne's daughter from his first marriage, is a selfish, lazy millenial spoiled absolutely rotten by her dad.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: During one of the "best memories of the Plateau" segments.
  Sandrine: It was such a magical night.
  Etienne: We were singing, dancing, we were free!
  Sandrine: Then Mireille fell into a canal and Rémi gotten bitten by a raccoon with rabies.
  Etienne: They're both dead.
• Bourgeois Bohemian: The series is about the life of two of those in Montreal, Quebec.
• Camp Straight: Etienne minds his looks, what he eats, he loves art in all its forms and is just very extra in general, but he was married to at least two women and is very much in love with Sandrine. He does mention he once "experimented" with a male friend, though.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Sandrine and Etienne are absolutely this in the exact same way; it's a miracle they found each other.
• Complexity Addiction: The Bobos don't just tip a percentage of their bill, no. They need to evaluate every single part of their experience, finding details to poke at and nitpick everywhere, accounting for tax, and end up with a 10% tip for their two coffees.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Sandrine and Amandine's everlasting war of thank you cards is still ongoing in season 2.
  • In season 2, Etienne wants to invite Sébastien Benoît to promote their magazine; Sandrine points out that he was killed during his guest appearance in season 1.
• Corpsing: The actors occasionally can't help but chuckle at improvisation.
• Cunning Linguist: Averted: Etienne tries to speak English to communicate without Juliette understanding. Juliette has been bilingual since she was eight.
• Evil Aunt: Sandrine can't remember her niece's name and then leaves her alone at a theater.
• Fag Hag: The Bobos are delighted to find out their new neighbors are gay, as "you people are like gas stoves: just by being here, you make the property prices go up". They describe themselves as "gay-friendly", having once attended a Creator/Madonna concert.
• Flower Motifs: The Bobos take these very seriously, so when a friend of theirs gives birth, they refuse to buy her a bouquet with baby's breath ("the Rice Krispies of botany"), white roses ("screams the bride was chubby"), lilies ("they smell like funeral homes"), lily of the valley ("this isn't grandma's corsage"), orchids ("what new mother would like to receive a bouquet of vulvas?"), daisies ("pastoralism is so passé"), poppies ("for obvious reasons"), carnations, irises, birds of paradise, sunflowers, gerberae, cataliae, glads, dog roses, wisteria or hellebore. They eventually go with a branch in a vase.
  Etienne: That, to me, in flower language, says "I got ripped off by my florist on Rue Mont-Royal by paying 100 bucks for a branch because it looks avant-garde".
  Sandrine: Which is exactly what we were going for.
• Food Porn: Both Sandrine and Etienne are self-described foodies, only ever ordering dishes by listing the full recipe. Etienne eventually opens a food truck to join in on the trend, his ridiculously overcomplex menu rendered pointless because he forgot to buy knives and can't cook.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: The Bobos love artistic Italy, the trendsetting US and elegant old France (though they don't hold back against either Americans or French people).
• Gratuitous English: The Bobos constantly pepper English words in their speech to sound hip and worldly. They're ardent defenders of the use of French in Quebec, though.
• Good Stepmother: Sandrine is very unnatural about wanting to be this for Juliette, though the mask often slips about how much she dislikes her and wants her gone.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Sandrine is obnoxious and completely out of touch with reality when she tries to tell Georges what to gift to Nancy, but come on Georges, who gifts their spouse money for their birthday?
  Sandrine: Is she your wife or a prostitute?!
  • Etienne is one hell of a drama queen as usual, but maybe public hospitals really do warrant it.
• Ignored Aesop: Every once in a while, the Bobos realize how awful they are. Unfortunately, they only take advice from people as crazy and superficial as they are.
• Insistent Terminology: Always: it's all about sounding smart. The Bobos eventually give a class on particularly pretentious words.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: Sandrine is constantly wearing ten-inch heels, including for biking, surfing on the St Lawrence, or climbing Mt Kilimanjaro.
• It's All About Me: Always and in all things, the Bobos are incredibly self-centered. When asked to think of a magazine title that would reflect their openness to the world, they picked "Je Me Moi", which is a poor translation of "Me Myself and I".
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: The Bobos, on every subject.
  Etienne: Since the dawn of times, Man has feared the potato. The potato, known to Native Americans as "banana", was considered by many native peoples as a goddess of dance and harvest. Today, of course, we know that potatoes are delicious, and that they can cure mental illness when rubbed against someone's elbows during a full moon.
• Loony Fan: Sandrine and Etienne claim to be cool as cucumbers around stars, but always make fools of themselves when they catch a glimpse of someone who might be famous. They're actually friends with Xavier Dolan, and won't shut up about it.
• Make-Out Kids: Angine and Boris, two of the Bobos' friends.
• Meet Cute: According to Etienne, he and Sandrine met at the premiere of Titanic (1997) after he saw her crying. Of course, Sandrine would never admit to having been an adult when the movie was released.
• Missing Mom: Juliette's mother is never mentionned.
• Mistaken for Racist: The Bobos are terrified of this, even though, well, they are pretty racist.
• Mockumentary: A large number of the skits are presented in this form, with Etienne and/or Sandrine presenting the ins and outs of a trendy lifestyle on the Plateau Mont-Royal.
• Motor Mouth: The pair hardly ever lets anyone who's not them speak.
• Musical Episode: The last episode of the series has a long skit in song form, inspired by Michel Legrand musicals, about such poetry as needing to blow one's nose or getting a prostate exam.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Georges is the cynical Only Sane Man to the wacky, appearance-obsessed world of the Bobos, but he does brag about being connected to them on his local show.
  • Etienne claims that the best way to get a good deal at a yard sale is to be as detached as possible and haggle even for the cheapest things, but he gets obsessed when he finds a cutlery set he identifies as Frank Lloyd Wright dinnerware and rolls on the floor begging for it.
• Oblivious to His Own Description: When Etienne and Sandrine give a waiter a list of things to recognized bobos by (which they know from reading David Brookes's Bobos in Paradise), they essentially give an extended description of themselves.
• Older Than They Look: Sandrine and occasionally Etienne insist that they are this. They're not.
• Only Sane Man: Nancy, Sandrine's college friend who leaves so far away from this world (10 minutes out of Montreal), and especially her husband Georges, who unlike his wife never falls for the Bobos' exuberance.
• Phony Psychic: The Bobos once hire one, Madame Carmina, to guide them in the redecorating of their lounge. Her spiritual reactions to specific pieces of furniture make more sense when Etienne mentions that she gets a percentage on all their purchases.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Etienne and Sandrine are self-styled experts on abstract art, dramatic novels and auteur films, but they have no idea what Batman is ^note even though they reference the franchise several times over the course of the series.
  Etienne: It's about a big mouse^note The French word for bat is chauve-souris, which means bald mouse saving a town.
  Sandrine: Oh, so it's a movie for children? For babies?
• Precious Puppy: Chiffon (meaning "rag" in French), Etienne and Sandrine's adorable puppy. Turns out that apart from the aesthetic, they hate all things dog-related; Sandrine is always looking for an excuse to get him put down. They eventually abandon it at Georges and Nancy's house.
• Pretentious Pronunciation: Etienne and Sandrine insist to pronounce Georges's name "Gee-orge".
  Etienne: When there's a e in a word, we pronounce it, sorry not sorry.
• Production Posse: Pascale Bussière (Ninon), Pierre Brassard (Georges) Patrice Coquereau, (Richard Gledhill), Élise Guilbault (Amandine), James Hyndman (As Himself) and Macha Grenon (As Herself) were in Le cœur a ses raisons with the lead couple as Becky, Ridge, Lewis, Britany, Peter and Megan respectively.
• Prone to Tears: Sandrine, as part of her general drama queen-ness. Never about anything of importance, however.
• Psycho Psychologist: Played for Laughs. Unfortunately for Etienne and Sandrine's development, their therapist Dr. Gorzinski is the only person outside of their direct friend circle who's the exact same flavor of crazy as them.
• Punny Name: Most of the places the Bobos frequent have one of those.
• Recovered Addict: Jonathan Michaud, the Bobos' personal trainer, used to "lack focus" in his life, occasionally using "soft drugs" such as cannabis, cocaine, crack, speed, amphetamines, heroin, crystal meth, ecstasy, GHB, ketamine, LSD and mushrooms. All in a safe and controlled manner, of course.
• Rule of Cool: The rule that guides the life of the Bobos, whether or not they understand any of it.
• Self-Deprecation: Often for the guest stars, with Xavier Dolan's voicemail message being him reading his own Wikipedia page, or Mahée Paiement making sure to be seen over and over on a single red carpet, each time in a more impressive dress.
• Serious Business: In the Bobo's superficial world, everything is a cause for drama, from a hardly noticeable haircut to a crumb on a chin.
• Show Within a Show: Etienne and Sandrine have a weekly talk show about art, cinema and literature, called La Bande des Deux^note The Group of Two. There's also the great classic of Old Hollywood Quebecois cinema, a black and white incomprehensible film about boredom in the coutry called Morte Campagne^note Dead Countryside, which Etienne and Sandrine often use to analyze the art of cinema.
• Soapbox Sadie: Sandrine is very involved in social causes... ish. She certainly loves to talk about how involved she is.
  Sandrine: I'm a non-practicing vegetarian. Meaning I eat meat but judge people who do the same thing.
• Straw Feminist: As part of Soapbox Sadie. Sandrine's great fights are about not having a vulva drawn in her latte (it was a heart) or refusing to see a spatula used as a keychain for the women's bathroom in a restaurant.
  Sandrine: I'm so admirative of women who fight for a cause. I too would love to have the time to launch a cooperative for African women, but I choose to wax my legs. You have to pick your battles.
• Take That!: At about every Québec star and personality (as well as a few French ones), from Céline Dion to Christiane Charette.
• Those Two Actors: Marc Labrèche and Anne Dorval are pretty much inseparable.
• True Art Is Incomprehensible: And it's the only sort the Bobos respect, and understand better than everyone else, of course.
• Undignified Death: According to Sandrine and her friend Claudie, there's only so many ways one can die on the Plateau Mont-Royal: strangled when their scarf catches in a Bixi wheel, electrocuted in their bath by their iPad while watching Downton Abbey, or falling to their death down their own shoes.
• Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: Etienne and Sandrine are the worst. They're obnoxious, pedantic, beyond egocentric, and project their insecurities onto others with as much kindness as if they were rocks.
• Wham Line: In the last episode of the first season.
  Etienne: Oh look, there's my daughter! Juliette!
• Wine Is Classy: Especially when, like the Bobos, you go through your neighbor's trash to make fun of their choice of vintage. Just in case their neighbors might do the same, they keep a great bottle in their house that they throw out every other day and then go take back at night.
• Younger Than They Look: Macha Grenon as she appears in Morte Campagne is supposed to be 17 years old. The actress is blatantly in her 40's.