Another Breathtakingly dumb Geico Ad? Nothing surprising about this at all.

The only thing more depressing than the thought of human beings putting actual time and money into producing this drek is the response of the glue-sniffing Youtube commenters below it.  I really, really hope that at least most of them are just paid shills, because if this many people really enjoyed this ad (one suggests that it may convince him to switch to Geico, because hey if Geico is clever enough to make a "Running of the Bulldogs" ad, they MUST be awesome at providing coverage in the event of an accident, right?) I really don't know if I can go on doing this blog.   It's just getting too sad for me.

Or maybe I'm just weird

Am I the only person who saw this commercial and thought

A.  The dad has broken up with his daughter and is trying to win her back,

B.  The dad is way too invested in his daughter's relationship issues and is being uber-creepy in his response to a 20-year old woman's decision to break it off with a 14-year old boy (seriously, that boy is not old enough to have been dating that girl.  Maybe that's why she ended it- a judge told her to?)

C.  The dad is acting like a jealous weirdo with the whole sprinkler thing.  I think Uncle Buck kidnapping his neice's unfaithful boyfriend, trussing him like a turkey and dumping him into the trunk of his beater made more sense than this.  Is dad really so convinced that his daughter can't handle this on her own?

D.  Do daughters who are recovering from a breakup really want hugs from dad?  I would think a long conversation over coffee at Starbucks with her best GIRL FRIENDS would be more realistic here.

And I don't care about this, Honda

Based on what we are allowed to see, I've put together the backstory of this commercial:

This family, despairing of ever finding any joy in the relationship they have been damned by DNA to share thanks to unthinking relatives most of whom have passed on, decide to pack up a picnic lunch and drive off to the desert to have a nice final meal followed by a murder-suicide.

Once they've finished off the bucket of KFC and two six-packs of Pepsi they brought with them, they realize that they lack the courage to break out the cyanide-laced PowerAde and, more depressed than ever, settled for taking a few pictures of the bleak landscape before piling back into the family SUV and returning through the desert to their even bleaker suburban dungeon.

On the way, one of the younger members of this Family of the Damned decides to provoke someone into putting him out of his misery by singing out loud, breaking the family's No Talking In The Car rule which is tolerated because there's no internet connection anyway (Idiot Dad, who has Always Let Us Down, didn't get the car which came with it's own WiFi, the cheap douchenozzle.)

The other people in the car, collectively figuring "wow, I had no idea life could actually get worse" join in, perhaps hoping that this is the thing that might push them to do what they really want to do and start guzzling that PowerAde after all.

Honda continues to confound me

The people in the photos around these Very Famous And Therefore Very Important People are total unknowns who, I assume, were just living everyday lives until this ad came around to remind them that they aren't Tina Fey or any of these other very famous people.

But hey, don't despair- maybe you aren't rich and famous and the subject of car commercials with the the theme of Success Comes From Dreaming and Striving, but if you can scrape up $45,000 over the next four years you can buy one of these unnecessarily large automobiles.  So that's something, right?

Toyota Jan has the easiest job on the planet

Toyota Jan sees a drooling idiot gazing into the window of a typical Toyota SameMobile and interrupts her strolling-while-drinking-coffee long enough to suggest that he may need some help (he needs help, all right, but not the kind Jan The Toyota Toady can provide.)

She helpfully suggests that he "can take it for a test drive."  He sort-of responds, but is still way too satisfied with his view of the car (which I guess is locked? Why is he just looking at the interior through the closed window, anyway?) from the driver's side window.

Jan doesn't push the issue, because Jan isn't really a car salesman- unless she really thinks that her job is to make sure that people who are staring at the interior of cars with their noses pressed against the windows don't care about actually getting in the car or maybe even driving it.  Jan does what no car salesman would ever do- noticing a customer clearly interested in a car, she just asks a question and then walks away.  I've been asked if I'd like to look at a car as I walk past dealerships.  This guy can be attempting to make out with one and be all but ignored by the sales staff?  Please.

But Jan lives in a Toyota TV Fantasy World where truly interested customers knock eachother over to "claim" cars as they wave their checkbooks and beg to be allowed to sign on the dotted line.  She doesn't have to hustle for business- it gets thrown out her.  So when this guy is done mentally having sex with the car, he'll plead to be allowed to take his new love interest home and won't ask about the price.  Jan will interrupt her coffee time long enough to tell him where to sign and hand him the keys.  It's great to be Jan.  This guy?  Well, it's just a commercial, right?

TD Ameritrade's "Green Room" doesn't exist in any universe I know

The couple in this commercial look to be about forty.  And they are telling the TD Ameritrade guy that they've "carefully saved" $103,000 and are nervous about investing it because, after all, it took them a long time to save that $103,000 so it's super important that they don't blow it on bad investments....

Couple of things.  First, if this couple really is about forty, they are at least 25 years from retirement and are still around a decade away from their peak earning years.  At the rate they are going, they could expect to quadruple that amount at least without even trying.  Which brings me to my next point...

This couple is not even trying.  If they've "carefully saved" $103,000 and are just now thinking maybe of sorta investing if they can be sure the investments are safe, they have been stashing money away in a bank which is paying them no interest, meaning that every year they've been saving their hard-earned, carefully-hoarded money has been losing value.  Their strategy so far has been one step above the Bury The Cash In Coffee Cans In The Backyard method.  Idiots.

I suppose the TD Ameritrade guy is too good at his job to openly laugh and shake his head at these stupid people who apparently think that it's 1896 and a savings account at the neighborhood bank is the solid foundation of a retirement plan.  So he'll suggest that rather than be concerned about $103,000 they've got saved up a freaking quarter-century before retirement, they ought to be thinking about making that money- and future "savings"- grow at a rate somewhat faster than the 1% they've been getting at the Safe As A Vault Because That's What You're Using It For bank.

Finally, I don't give a flying damn about these people.  They are barely getting started and they've got $103,000 in savings?  I hope an earthquake devours them and the pile of cash they are so damn proud of.  I hate you people so damn much- but not as much as I hate the fact that there's a massive industry devoted to hiring grinning number-pushers dedicated to manipulating your cash to make other people rich in return for virtually no actual work.  They make you jackwads look like saints.

Taco Bell Couples Counseling

The woman in this ad is so distraught at the idea of being single, she's actually mourning the end of a "relationship" she had with a disgusting, insensitive-to-the-extreme slob and willing to take "relationship counseling" from one of his equally loathsome friends.

Think about it- the message here is that the woman does not know how to fill the void in her life created by the imminent departure of the man-child sitting next to her.  And the man-child?  He's already found a way to replace her.  It's with a handful of greasy beef and carbs.  She's already been forgotten, because Hey Calories.

And think about this- loathsome male who barely acknowledges her existence because he's shoving poison into his cake hole has an actual male friend there to back him up.  Where's her support?  Oh, she doesn't have any- she's all alone in the world, now that the guy she thought was going to be The One has decided she's totally expendable as long as Taco Bell keeps coming up with delicious ways to deliver toxins to the bloodstream.

I'd say that this woman is better off, but it's hard to imagine that she's not going to quickly find another sociopath to cling to in the hopes of fulfilling the American dream of marriage, children, house in the suburbs, and....well, that's about it, actually.