Nissan Rogue Presents: the most Boomer commercial of all time

The dumbest line in the history of television commercials, clearly written by an overpaid assclown who didn't even attempt to come up with any ideas but just threw together some dialogue in his otherwise-empty head as he walked into the pitch meeting:  "When I was your age, we didn't have the 2021 Nissan Rogue with Intelligent All-Wheel Drive...."*  to which any self-respecting kid should reply "when you were my age, you didn't have a 2021 anything, you ridiculous moron" before throwing himself out of the car, consumed with mortification that he shares way too much genetic material with this disgustingly fruitful idiot.  

Here is the actual description of this ad, courtesy of iSpot.tv.  I would argue that there's no way that this guy has any youth to wax poetic about, because anyone who would utter that dumbest line in the history of television commercials was born middle-aged:

While the family's Nissan Rogue casually out-paces a fearsome dust storm in the middle of the desert, a dad reminisces about his bygone youth, when people had to make do driving average cars on normal roads. For a limited time, qualified customers can get special offers on the 2021 Rogue.

Yeah, whatever buddy.  You are the reason why the phrase "Ok Boomer" was invented.  

*know what else you didn't have when you were a kid?  Legal marriages between blacks and whites.  You know, like the one you clearly enjoy and produced a child through.  There's an example of how the world is better now that might be a bit more worth celebrating instead of waxing poetic about your  stupid-ass car. 

Nissan Rogue, a lot of noise, and Brie Larson: Watch out for flying trolls!

 

Here's another Nissan Rogue commercial which apes pretty much every Subaru ad in suggesting that you can't really get anywhere in any other vehicle except the one being advertised.  In other words, its really just a commercial for the Automobile- it can take you to the beach, the mountains, the desert....because it's a car.  And that's it.

Except that I guess with the Nissan Rouge you can do something you can't do with just any old car; you can use it to take your annoyingly diverse family to 1974 and watch a movie at a Drive-In.  And Brie Larson can show up to make a comment alluding to Captain Marvel but more pointedly to trigger the insecure wannabee Alpha Male Incels who can't stand her because their favorite YouTubers told them she threatens their imagined position in society by Existing. 

Creditrepair.com just Happens. Credit Problems? Not so much.

 

It's occurred to me that each and every one of these Easy Credit Repair abortions has one thing in common:  they all portray people who have lousy credit as innocent victims of predatory credit card companies which at some point gang-tackled them, tied them down, shoved a pen into their hands and made them sign up to receive a credit card.  And then forced them to use it, over and over again, on crap they didn't need.  And then forced them to skip payments until their credit rating was in the toilet.

Seriously, listen to this whiny jackass.  He was "surrounded" by advertisements offering credit cards every time he entered the student union at college.  So of course he "had" to sign up to get the credit cards. And he "went crazy" and used the credit cards.  And he was so absolutely clueless that he had "no idea" his credit rating was in the single digits until he tried to buy a car.  All of this was, of course, the fault of the credit card companies for....offering him credit when they should have known that he wasn't mature enough to handle it, which they should have known because after all he was a college kid, never mind that the vast majority of college kids who get credit cards do NOT abuse them or fail to make payments or end up with crap credit ratings, whatever my fellow Boomers might think.

Anyway, getting slapped in the face by a great big dose of Reality convinced today's Creditrepair.com Spokeschoad to call Creditrepair.com and see what he could do to repair his credit, which remember was seriously crap through no fault of his own but because of the Big Bad Credit Providers.  Chuckling Jagoff tells us how powerful and amazing it is to finally get help for crap credit, a powerful and amazing experience I plan to continue missing out on by not establishing crap credit.  And what does this blame-shifting doofus love most about Creditrepair.com?  It's got this really cool App, you see, which allows him to see exactly what's happening with his credit report on a regular basis by using the Smartphone which he most certainly needs even though he probably never got around to actually paying for it because remember, this guy has never been big on actually paying his bills.  Spending money he doesn't have, sure.  Paying the bills? Not so much.

And in the end, Totally Deserving Credit Scofflaw got his credit fixed (for the moment) and now has his eye on a new house because Consequences are Just Not a Thing in these commercials.  Grinning Douchenozzle skated on his obligations and thanks to an artificially inflated credit score he's ready to line up a new set of victims and get that debt ramped up again.  In ten years, he'll be back on one of these commercials bitching that Rocket Mortgage offered him a really great rate and assured him that an adjustable rate mortgage with introductory $1200 monthly payments would be totally in sync with his $25,000 salary as some kind of salesman (I'm not watching this again, thank you very much.)  So it's not his fault he got in over his head- again.  He was just a typical American trying to follow his dreams....of buying stuff and not paying for it.  Like, ever. 

Aunt Wanda knows who to call in times of stress....

 

"Hi honey, I just wanted you to know that I tested positive for COVID-19, and I have to quarantine."

"OMIGOD Aunt Wanda, that's terrible!  What did they tell you to do? Did they give you End of Life advice?"

"Um, no.  They just told me to monitor the symptoms, and to quarantine."

"That's terrible, you are high risk!  Did they tell you about Monoclonal Antibody treatments?"

"Um, no.  They just told me to monitor the symptoms and to quarantine.  Mono...what?"

"Monocolonal Antibody treatments!  You need to look into this right now!  You may have only seconds left to live."

"Um...ok...I'll think about it..."

"NO!  Call RIGHT NOW!  I'm jogging on the beach but you call RIGHT NOW and CALL ME BACK when they tell you to come in for the treatment!  And don't take 'no' for an answer!  You are RUNNING OUT OF TIME!"

"Um...ok...I'll call right now, and call you back when I find out..."

"You damn right you will.  And if they somehow tell you that you AREN'T a good candidate for Monocolonal Antibody treatments, at least jam some Lysol into your veins or gulp down a Tide pod!  By the way, your haven't changed your will lately, right?"

"My will?  What?"

"I'm so glad you called, Aunt Wanda.  You can always count on me to handle every tough situation with grace.  Now, put your will somewhere easy to find and get to work dealing with this COVID issue!!"

Samsung's Own the Floor campaign is a high-tech version of Stupid

 

There are so many layers of dumb in this ad, it's almost hard to get a grip on it.  But I'll give it a try with an internet-friendly numbered list:

1.  The guy doing the vacuuming is having so much fun that it doesn't bother him in the slightest when his kids knock over a plant and leave a pile of dirt on the rug right and just keep on running, never mind that, yes, that IS dirt on the rug and I don't care how good that vacuum is, it's going to leave a stain and you're going to need some carpet cleaner.  It's also as if the kids intentionally knocked over the plant BECAUSE dad was having so much fun vacuuming, they wanted to give him something to vacuum.  

2.  Mom gets her turn at the vacuum and proceeds to spin all over the house, as if determined to have more fun than her husband.  Maybe she's a little worried that he's encroaching on her territory.  Next thing you know, he'll be cooking and her panic level will really shoot up.

3.  If you can afford to live in this house, then yes I guess you can afford this ridiculous $500 vacuum cleaner made by a company famous for producing overpriced, fragile electronics built to be traded in every six months or so (exactly what we're looking for in a household appliance, right?  But if you can afford to live in this house, you can also afford to have a cleaning woman come in two or three times a week to do the vacuuming for you.  And when you do that, you probably aren't all that interested in making the cleaning fun, are you?

A Soon-to-be-very-dated Progressive Insurance Commercial....

 

...because when this is all over, nobody is going to want to be reminded of those days where we HAD to work from home and communicate over Zoom.  But that's not really what any of these "stupid people doing stupid things on Zoom" ads are all about, is it?  

No, none of these "slice of life" ads featuring Conference Calls Gone Bad (the Apple "Underdogs" ads which feature more goofing off than work, the Folger's ads which feature distracted idiots who can't even remember to put their pants on or are desperate to prevent coworkers from seeing their kids, etc.) are actually about the petty annoyance of Zoom Conferencing.  They are, instead, all about how much corporate America seethes at the idea of paying people without getting them into the office and physically under the thumb of Mr. Boss Man.  You get the idea that corporations have come to see Zoom in the same way Republicans see Unemployment Benefits- just a Free Ride to goof off while still collecting a paycheck.  Apple, Folgers, Progressive etc. all feel cheated by Remote Not-Work because they hate their employees and are convinced that those employees will just pretend to be productive if they can get away with it-- and it eats employers alive to think that they just might be getting away with it. 

So no one is going to convince me that Working from Home is going to become the New Normal any time in the near future, and I find it downright laughable when CNN, etc. tries to predict the Future of Work by asking employees what they think about working from home.  As if it's going to be up to them in any way, shape or form.  Ask the employers.  They still want their workers to rise early, brave traffic, and sit in a physical office that the employer is perfectly willing to pay for if it means they can be 100 percent certain those employees are wearing pants while working the phones all day.  Because its a power thing and its a distrust thing.  That's not going to change just because we have a pandemic now and then. 

Lowbrow humor from Toyota and Highlander

 

Oh, how adorable- the most original commercial ever.  For the first time we see, in the same commercial:

1.  Precocious kids who twist their faces into weird contortions as they bleat phrases they really have no business understanding but It's Funny Because It's Kids.  I can't believe it took seventy years for someone to think of having kids say embarrassing things in front of a parent!  Hys-TERICAL!

2.  Eurotrash dweeb dad who serves up a great big plump, slow moving softball for those kids to knock right out of the park and then looks flummoxed when those kids....knock the slow moving softball right out of the park and freak out Eurotrash dad for the entertainment of the audience.

I mean, I'm just AMAZED that they managed to fit these two concepts into the SAME brief commercial. Well done, Toyota!  I'm off to buy a Highlander because...um, wait a minute.  Why is this ad supposed to make me buy a Highlander?  It looks more like a commercial for birth control to me.  I'm certainly convinced that I don't want anything like these kids.