Irritating the tobacco lobby. But only a little.

If this ad had been produced for Australian Television, the kid buying the cigarettes would have walked away with blood spurting out of his mouth and his jaw swelling to the size of a watermelon.  He would have screamed his head off as he pulled his tooth with the pliers, by the way.  Because Reality.

Ah, but this is American television, where anti-smoking ads can't feature anything resembling reality.  Instead we get CGI monsters crawling into cigarette packs.  Just like the anti-texting while driving ads are more comical than scary- because getting run over by a car is actually more of an inconvenience than anything else.  And don't even get me started on the ads which calmly, quietly and sweetly encourage us to maybe kind of think about not drinking to excess before getting behind the wheel.  Sure, the message is important- but the tobacco, phone and alcohol lobbies are enormous, musn't ever tick them off too much.

From this ad, we get the idea that if you smoke enough cigarettes, it might cost you one of your teeth.  I can see a lot of smokers thinking "hey, I remember being told that smoking covered my lungs with thick tar and lead to all kinds of nasty diseases and birth defects and early death.  Losing a tooth?  I can totally deal with that."  Sometimes I don't know why we even bother, if this is the level of edgy we are willing to go for.

And don't forget, George W Bush kept us safe, except for those times he didn't

These people spend roughly ten seconds telling us that their driving record is absolutely perfect, until it isn't.  And then "despite their perfect driving record," which is no longer perfect, their insurance company won't "cut them some slack."  Gee, you'd think that insurance companies would understand an argument like "but my insurance record was perfect before the accident," just like "I never once stabbed anybody and then hid the body in the celler until that day I did."*  You'd be wrong about both.

BTW, anyone else shocked that it's the guy in this commercial who had the accident?  Anyone at all?

*I'm not speaking from experience, so shut up.  What were you thinking?

Retirement looks like fun, except for the people.

How the hell do you either win or lose a bet like "I'm the biggest fan" unless "biggest" means "heaviest" or "tallest?"  How does one go about measuring devotion to a cell phone service?  How does one go about measuring devotion at all?

Never mind, these two bored old idiots, suddenly discovering a reason to keep breathing for at least one more day, are so inspired by this reason that they ramp up their speed from "stroll" to "moderately fast walk" as they enthusastically seek out fellow old idiots to annoy with their "are you a bigger fan than this guy" weirdness.

Naturally, the people they meet- being just as bored and lonely and desperate for distraction as they are- jump at the opportunity to spend a few minutes gushing about their ConsumerCellular packages. "Plans start at ten dollars a month!"  "I can text my grandchildren!"  "No contracts!"  "You can even get Facebook and Email and that other stuff the young people are using on the World Wide Interwebs!"  "We signed up on the phone!"  "I signed up online, which is that internet thing I think!"  "I bought my phone at Walmart!"  "I got mine at Sears!"  "Wait, I haven't shown you pictures of those grandchildren yet, please please don't go away talk to me for a few more minutes at least I haven't had a conversation this long since that nice man on the phone got me to give him my credit card number!"

And oh my god, these pathetic people with waaaaaayyyyy too much time on their hands end up traveling all the way across the country to "settle" their "bet."  Along the way, they meet all kinds of bored people who all have in common the fact that they love ConsumerCellular and are killing time until they finally fall into the abyss.  They get all the way to the coast, decide that He Was Wrong (some things never change, even with old age) and then laugh for no reason at all (again, some things never change...)

What are they going to do now?  Well, I guess they are going to drive, kayak, or whatever back across the country, mission accomplished.  Have fun at bingo, weird old people.

A great ad for Socialized Medicine

Imagine- a health insurance company commercial which makes you want to hurt someone.

This particular ad is so vacuous, so stupid, so smothering in it's extra-gooey, extra-thick layers of dumb, I can almost take it as an ad for Single Payer.  The punchline should be "just imagine- if we had Europe's health care system, we'd never have to watch anything near this level of awfulness ever again.  Promise."

Until then, continue to say "ahhhhhhh......my premiums went up 30% AGAIN?" Or "ahhhhh.....my employer is being forced to dump our health insurance provider and search for a cheaper one AGAIN?"  Or "ahhhhhh.....I really need to step up my search for overseas teaching positions.  Before the competition gets ridiculous after Donald Trump's inauguration next year."

Dad never missed a soccer game or field hockey practice until the court order, either

1.  Dad is really, really insistent on bringing his teenaged daughter to the front of the school, despite the fact that said daughter makes it really, really clear that she doesn't want him to, because "that's where your friends are."

2.  "Is it a boy?" I could see a Dad asking this- at the dinner table, that night.  Or in a private conversation when he's not supposed to be paying attention to the road.  At this moment?  Shut up, Dad, and just drop your daughter off where she wants to be dropped off.

3.  Ok, I'm sorry, but Dad seems way too distracted by Tracy, who I guess is daughter's BFF.  So distracted that if he had been driving any other car- one without "we'll brake for you even when you are thinking about your teen daughter's friends when you should be paying attention" brakes- he would have been involved in a serious accident.  Maybe I'm getting this all wrong, but man....I'm kind of worried about Dad, and I think it's pretty obvious now why daughter didn't want him to drive her all the way to school.  The ick factor is just way too high here.

Sure puts that bag of 9 peanuts in perspective....

One day, Jennifer Aniston had a terrible nightmare.   She dreamed that she was on a plane which did not provide showers or a bar.  She was wandering around in a bathrobe looking for these things (which, after all, are available in even the most modest of private residences) up and down the plane, only to be told that they were not available because she was not on an Emirates jet.

Fortunately, she woke up before the nightmare could get any more horrible.  She got her shower in, and then sat at the bar and told someone all about her truly horrific experience.   I mean, can you imagine- a jet plane without a shower?

Let's sum up the real message of this commercial:  One day, Jennifer Aniston fell asleep on a jet and dreamt that she was not a multimillionaire still coasting on the inexplicable success of a stupid sitcom that went off the air twenty years ago and a series of totally forgetable romantic comedies.  Instead, in her dream, she was pretty much just like the rest of us, on a totally shower-less and bar-less plane, with nothing to remind her that she was So Much Better Than Pretty Much Everyone except for that First Class Seat, which clearly doesn't mean anything like it used to.  In her dream she was so much like 99.9999 percent of the population, it was enough to startle her back to her golden reality.

Me?  I'll remember Jennifer Aniston's nightmare often.  Probably every time I'm handed my complimentary 6-ounce cup of Diet Coke (mini cans of Pringles available for $3.50, exact change is appreciated.)  And every time I see Aniston's face on a magazine cover at a checkout line- which is to say, every time I'm on a checkout line.  Thanks a lot, Ms Aniston.

Pointless Waste of Time. It's what makes a Subaru Commercial a Subaru Commercial.

I guess that this commerical has two messages we are supposed to get-

1.  The idiots in the Subaru have lived such sadly sheltered lives that their view of nature involved skunks, scary animals and inbred hillbillies straight out of Deliverance.*  (Hey, idiots, here's another reason for not taking that unmarked dirt road- you don't know where it goes.)

2.  The only option these boring losers have if they don't take the Path Less Traveled is trying on Kakis at the Penny's down the road.  And is anyone else totally weirded out at the way they are staring at eachother and those pants?  What the hell?

Here's another message I think we were supposed to get, but which never shows up- Subarus are good cars to use for off-road adventures.  Maybe we never really get this message because we are too busy being told that no matter what the Subaru owners decide to do with their Subaru, they aren't going to be very happy with that choice.  Because in the end, the car doesn't change the fact that they are really, really boring losers who absolutely deserve eachother.

*Oh, and one more message- it doesn't matter what the product being pitched is.  Ad makers simply hate the idea of being outside the city or suburbs.  In commercial-land, nothing good ever comes from venturing beyond the picket fence, unless of course one has total internet connectivity and a cooler full of beer as companions.  Weird.