Mike Bedard
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Jordan Breeding
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Peter I. Santiago
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A commercial's only job is to convince you that your life will be better with its product -- a new phone keeps you connected to family, a new car inspires you to go on adventures, a different brand of toilet paper will grant you the glorious and shining asshole of your dreams. But sometimes, in their zealous attempts to sell you a better version of yourself, advertisers will cross the line and accidentally insinuate you're a pathetic loser instead. We can't imagine why.
Chances are, if you're checking into a Best Western hotel, things aren't exactly going well. It's what you do when your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, or you're hiding out from the Nebraskan mafia. According to the upbeat song in this commercial, though, it is the best thing to ever happen to you.
In a completely backward understanding of their brand (which can best be summarized as "We'll do ... for now"), Best Western paid a string of people to feign such ludicrous excitement that they even take selfies with the Best Western sign.
Hey, Best Western, it doesn't count if the picture has "#sarcasm."
In another ad, when a woman touches her trance-inducing reward card, she gets warped into a sad dream:
Her hand dives eagerly into a bag of Best Western souvenirs ...
... she does a jolly spin by the Best Western van ...
... she is happier than anyone has ever been on a treadmill ...
... and then she heads to Paris, where they apparently have Best Westerns.
"We'll always have Paris ... stock footage on an extremely obvious green screen."
When she snaps out of it, she's back at the check-in desk, unaware that all she's going to get from her stay is scabies.
Related: 5 TV Commercials That Accidentally Made Life Look Depressing
According to Mr. Clean's 2017 Super Bowl commercial, absolutely nothing in the history of sex has ever been hotter to a woman than a man doing some light housework:
The ad shows us how basic cleaning supplies will transform a man from dopey pieces of shit ...
"I think I ate the sponge."
... into a CGI replica of John Locke from Lost:
"Don't tell me what I can't do!"
So wait, if he's her own reflection in the mirror ... did we get Shyamalan'd?
Does she have nothing else to do? What's the point of your husband helping out around the house if you're only going to follow along behind him, mimicking his motions and moaning loudly at every powerful squeeze of the spray bottle?
"Are the fumes getting to you, sweetheart?"
The commercial concludes with an implied pounding, presumably while she imagines her man as Mr. Clean -- which is, ironically, the dirtiest thing we can imagine.
It seems we've been discounting Windex and bleach as viable colognes.
Similarly, here's a commercial wherein a man willing to do housework transforms from the most disgusting, unappealing shit ever to crawl across the Earth ...
By which we mean "basically everybody on a Saturday afternoon."
... to an attractive, appealing mate who is happy to do literally everything at the same time, no matter what a clearly bad idea that appears to be:
Though he somehow still doesn't understand that the best place for a baby isn't directly under a hot stove.
This commercial is even more depressing than the first, because it assumes the only way to convince a man to help out is by creating a fictional device which somehow mutates him into a man worth having around the house.
And sure, he may not be quite as overtly sexy as Mr. Clean, but post-transformation, this guy is able to blow-dry his wife's hair with a vacuum cleaner, which seems like a decent intersection of housework and foreplay.
Maybe, and we're only guessing here, the idea of a woman getting her hair sucked into a disgusting vacuum tube wasn't conceived by a woman.
The commercial realizes that no actual men like this exist in the world, and it ends with the husband clearly shitting his pants. Because a man who does chores -- and is therefore attractive -- is as much a product of science fiction as affordable healthcare.
So the worthless slob who won't get off the couch and stop watching TV is selling ... TVs. Think it through, Samsung.
Maybe that's why the UK is considering straight up banning any ads that show men as being useless at stuff like chores or changing diapers or whatever. Presumably, they're tired of dealing with women masturbating to Mr. Clean commercials in the office.
Related: 4 Commercials Directed At An Audience That Doesn't Exist
Give E-Trade some credit. They know their product doesn't make the world better. It purely exists to make people richer. In fact, it's generally best used by people who have no other way to fill the emotional void in their life. In at least one commercial, their pitch is essentially "Hey, you suck and you're going to die alone, but if you buy our software, you might make some money, and dying alone with money is better than dying alone without money."
The commercial starts with a guy trying to convince us that he definitely likes his awesome new brother-in-law.
Which should be easy, since we already like this charmer from a single screenshot.
His new bro possesses all sorts of great qualities the main character doesn't have: He smells good, he's got a killer 5 o'clock shadow, and he's captured the affection of our hero's father in a way he never could. Dad wants to go fishing with the brother-in-law, even though he hates fishing. The only thing he hates more than fishing? His actual son.
Hell, he's even good with money. He's flawless.
"What a great partner for my sister. I'm glad she's happy." -- anyone who isn't a complete psychopath and/or in the E-Trade target market
The main character recognizes all of this, and knows he'll never be able to compete, but the narrator offers us a simple, elegant solution. If you get E-Trade, you can beat your brother-in-law in the only area that doesn't require you to put any effort into improving yourself. Your family will still prefer him to you, and your father will still love him like the son he never had, but you can make more money. The commercial begs us not to get mad at our infinitely superior brother-in-laws, but to instead subtly dominate them with vast quantities of money.
Don't kill your brother-in-law directly, make enough money to buy a hitman!
Maybe with all that extra cash, you can purchase a dope-ass speedboat. Your dad likes boats, right?
Related: 5 Commercials That Prove TV Advertisers Have Given Up
Contrary to what the rich want you to believe, money can totally buy happiness. Still, most people view working yourself to death solely to accumulate more stuff at the expense of meaningful relationships as a hollow goal. Cadillac begs to differ, for reasons that are a mystery to all.
This 2014 commercial ponders why Americans work so damn hard. They ask, "Is it for stuff?" To which the ad responds, "Yes, yes it is." The commercial follows the shell-shocked dude from Band Of Brothers as he explains how America's workaholism is the driving force behind American exceptionalism, and the thing that makes Americans so much better than those lily-livered Europeans. At one point, he sneeringly informs us that, "In other countries they work, they go home, they stop by the cafe, they take August off." He pauses for dramatic effect, looks directly into the camera, and repeats, "Off." Like, can you believe those lazy, ridiculous jerks? They take an entire month off every year to spend with their friends and families? No wonder they don't have a pool like this:
Huh. A pool that looks nice and expensive, but has no people or accessories to indicate anyone actually enjoys it. We're sure that's not a metaphor for anything.
He continues to rattle off several hard-working Americans that have built the world, then insists that America works so hard they were the first on the moon, but then left because we "got bored." He actually admits that even hard work that propels you to the goddamned moon will only satisfy for a little while. The commercial predictably ends with his posh ass nestled against the leather interior of his Cadillac. His final words are, "As for all the stuff: That's the upside of only taking two weeks off in August."
Yup, two weeks' extra work for a $40,000 car. Makes perfect sense.
It's pretty sad for a commercial to openly admit that working too hard is what makes us American, and that spending time with your kids should be limited to a crisp high-five before leaving them forever.
You think Europeans could afford such high-end children?
Related: 9 Simple Tasks That No One In A Commercial Can Do Right
One of the first commercials for the Google Pixel begins with some kids noticing a Google search bar lying in the street for no clear reason...
Over time, the search bar grows larger and larger. It's like something out of a heavy-handed science fiction movie, but strangely, no one seems to mind this intrusive omen. It's especially disconcerting because as the bar grows, it obscures important and engaging life moments, like attending a banging party ...
... watching your children play in the yard ...
... and marveling over what is presumably a newborn child lying in its crib. These moments are all swallowed up by Google's search bar of death.
We're not sure what Dr. Spock has to say about smothering your baby under a gigantic text input field, but it can't be positive.
Additionally, if there's ever a point where you encounter something incredible that you don't immediately understand, there's no need to interact with it in this brave new world. Just whip out your trusty smartphone and Google it.
"So are you looking at stars or in someone's open window? You know what? Doesn't matter. We've got plenty of photos of both."
And yet somehow Google believes this commercial will convince you to buy a new phone, rather than destroy the one you already have and run away to live in the woods forever.
Jordan Breeding also writes for a whole mess of other people, the Twitter, and a weird amount of gas station bathrooms. Follow Mike Bedard on Twitter to keep up with everything in his life. And we mean everything.
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