Monday, October 5, 2009

"Let's play the Quiet Game," or "Do you ever think anything you don't say?"

The Worst Commercials I see are the ones that work off the theory that not only is anything worth thinking also worth saying, but that a whole lot of things NOT worth thinking are nonetheless worth saying.

Confused yet? Well, let's look at Exhibit A, which hit me over the head like a bag of bricks while I was innocently trying to watch the Vikings-Packers Game, otherwise known as A Night of Appreciating Bret Favre, Brought to you by ESPN:

Two guys are splayed ("sitting" just doesn't describe their posture properly) on a couch, presumably watching a football game. One guy takes a bite of his Snickers bar and mutters "Wow. My hunger is completely gone."

(Quick Note: Seriously? Your hunger is gone with ONE BITE? What are you going to do with the rest of that candy bar? Why doesn't Snickers just make the bar smaller, since it's so damned satisfying that ONE BITE eliminates the hunger?)

Not content for having interrupted his friend's tv viewing with such a lame-ass, pointless comment, Snickers Guy continues his investigation into the growing mystery: "I wonder where all that hunger goes?"

At this point, any rational human being wonders where his life went wrong, to lead him into a friendship with such a clueless, brain-dead lout. Instead, it turns out that Snickers Guy's friend is just as vapid and boring as Snickers Guy, as he proceeds to indulge Snickers Guy's journey into the mundane and pointless: "I don't know...Germany?"

I'm not even going to comment on the scene where we see a fat guy in suspenders and surrounded by empty plates screaming something about being hungry in mock-German. And you should be thankful, M&M Mars. I'll stick to analyzing how thick the oatmeal that passes for your brains must be if you find yourself having a conversation like the one these two choads have. These guys make the "Hunger Pangs No Pains" couple at MacDonalds look like the fricking Curies.

Is it the endless tv viewing? The Twittering and Tweeting? The constant playing of video games on cell phones? Or can we trace this lack of brain activity to posture- not enough oxygen getting up there, perhaps?

Of course, we know what the real answer is: the total lack of imagination we see demonstrated by the writers of commercials these days. The idiot who wrote this one had absolutely no idea how he was going to sell the audience on the current version of "Snickers Really Satisfies." So he decided to start with having a twentysomething slacker making a comment and asking a question that would make a five-year old blush. Once you buy in to the idea that two alleged grown-ups could be so bored that they would actually engage in conversation over "where the hunger goes," the rest writes itself.

I wonder where the Stupid went. Oh, there it is! In a commercial for Snickers!

5 comments:

  1. "Where does all that hunger go?"

    "I don't know. Let's KGB it."

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  2. The ad-men in Canada are no better; I remember one commercial for the chocolate bar 'Coffee Crisp' that had a Grinning Idiot Dad mindless parrot the slogan "It makes a nice, light snack" while his annoying children started fitting him for a strait-jacket.

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  3. 1st Republic- very plausible considering, as you've pointed out previously, that the "answers" given by KGB may include OPINION.

    I can see the operator receiving this question, turning to the Equally Soulless person next to her, and saying "What you think- Germany sound good?"

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  4. Dreaded- glad to hear that we in the States don't have a monopoly on Stupid when it comes to making commercials. Just in our consideration of Health Care Reform.

    What's that behind the tree? It must be Obama and Pelosi, leading a Death Panel! Hide the grandparents!

    ReplyDelete
  5. The funny thing about all that is that until this August, I'd never even heard the phrase "death panel". Judging from my own personal experience, the only "conspiracy" dealing with the elderly involves giving them a sweetheart deal on their meds that doesn't kick in until they hit sixty.

    ReplyDelete