And Now For a Commercial Break

I’m about to expose an embarrassing level of couch potato right here. When you start to REALLY notice common themes and tropes in TV ads, you realize just how much TV you actually consume. And it’s disgusting. For me, at least. I’m embracing it though. Cuz that’s what we do these days, embrace our flaws. HAHA realityTVamirite?? 

First and explicitly foremost, can we please stop using ukulele’s with someone singing a repeated vowel or two as decidedly unoffensive background music? I haven’t jotted down actual numbers yet, but I encourage you to make a mental note anytime you see or hear any kind of commercial (TV or radio) that uses this tired trope. It’s become so overused it’s expected. I’m thinking 7/10 ads do this. (Also hand claps and “HEY!”s) Who are these product marketers saying to the production companies “you know, like a peaceful ukulele strumming with some “ooo”s overtop. You know. You definitely know what I’m saying Greg, you definitely made that one Prius ad, I’m seeing it everywhere and LOVING. IT. Do that. It is SO our market. They love that shit Greg, and I do too. HAHA Greg."

Representation has become a huge trend in advertising right now, and I’m totally on board with that. What’s funny to me is the people who choose to be offended by it. Cheerios aired a commercial with a biracial family, and the comments on the Youtube link of it were so harsh that General Mills had the comments disabled. Hahahaha wut???? Who are these people? WHY are these people?! hashtagTrumpVoters. I’ve recently seen a TJ Maxx ad that uses a down syndrome girl in it. Which is wonderful. Sometimes these moves can feel a little too in-your-face-and-heavy-handed to me, but I think my opinion has changed with time, as representation has. THIS IS A GOOD THING, PEOPLE. When I say heavy handed, the Ikea commercial with the lesbian couple having a takeout dinner for their anniversary comes to mind. It will never not feel heavy handed to me, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe the camera lingers two seconds too long?? I dunno. There are a few household cleaner type ads that use dad as the caretaker instead of mom, clearly an attempt at pleasing feminists, ya? (Side note – I have never seen a mom in a commercial who WASN’T wearing a button up shirt. This irritates me, as I think pajamas are a more accurate depiction of the SAHM. The anti-depressant ads have much more realistic attire for the homemaker mom. Haha I CAN SAY IT. YOU CAN’T SAY IT.) Another example is the no question plus-sized women used in commercials – same TJ Maxx ad I’m thinking of. See, I don’t think men really understand representation the way women do, or marketing towards women in general. As an American Woman, I struggle in a way that no man ever has about my looks in general or what is expected of me visually. When my husband casually mentions Amy Schumer being fat, it really pisses me off. She’s not fucking fat, she’s like, totally normal. UGH. Anyway. This is veering off subject, but ladies, I KNOW YOU FEEL ME. 

I sincerely applaud University of Phoenix for having a woman breastfeeding (BARE-BOOB-ED, even!!) her baby at a diner while she eats and studies in their latest advertising campaign. Normalize breastfeeding, is all I have to say about that. 

According to a source, advertising for specific medications was once illegal. The fact that it is now legal baffles me. My well-traveled brother-in-law once told me that Syrians don’t understand why we Americans are “so sick all the time”. They cited the abundant airing of medicinal ads as a clear sign of our illness. As someone who has drunken the Kool-Aid and seen the documentaries American Addict, The Business of Being Born, and Orgasm, Inc, this enrages me. (I’m also a huge proponent of out of hospital birthing, DM ME IF INTERESTED.) There is certainly a trend of natural over unnatural nowadays (magic oil ladies, I’m looking atchu) when it comes to medicine. Did you know that Humira has two separate advertisements that cater to two separate problems to treat? No, you didn’t, cuz you’re not a lazy fatass who watches WAAAAAAY too much TV like I do, but now you know. This drug is advertised for both rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis!! When Googled, there are at least three other things this drug treats. That is insane. And what about the “symptoms include” blurbs in the ads?? They go on forever, and get more and more absurd. “Do not look at puppies while wearing the color red or eat tangerines from the northern California area while on this drug.” “ASK YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT BLAHBLEBLAH TODAY.” I had a dear friend in high school who was in a band called Symptoms Include Death, and that always amused me. My point is – go watch American Addict. And if you want to really learn how fucked up the FDA is, watch Orgasm, Inc too. They WERE on Netflix, and now are not, and I’m gonna go ahead and say big pharma is to blame for their removals…..humph. 

What I’m REALLY saying here is, I bet you don’t watch as much as TV as I do. And if you are a stay at home mom with a pension for laziness, maybe you do. Try me. Then let’s get together and become friends, cuz I am in need for a real life, as if you couldn’t already tell. HAHAHA RIGHT??? Oyyy.

Now Back To Our Show.....

The Office – more pointedly, When It Jumped The Shark

In case you’ve been living under a rock in the bottom of a Yamal crater for the past eleven years, The Office was a successful NBC show about the workings of a paper company’s local office in Scranton, PA with a cast of misfits stealing our hearts using genuine realness, charm, and an astonishing sense of nuanced reactions and comedic timing. Steve Carell takes the lead in this mockumentary-styled comedy based off the British show of the same name (with a perfectly mastered David Brent from the mind of Ricky Gervais. Seriously, if you haven’t seen it, check out the original right meow. It’s on Netflix.) The show had an immaculately crafted group of caricatures that gave each masterly line the delivery it deserved. There was the screwball boss who everyone had to indulge, (think parents acting amused by their kid doing a shitty summersault,) the ‘straight’ couple playing will-they-won’t-they, the absurdist coworker who is a mix of a 19^th century beet farmer and a modern 12 year old boy, his severe hypocritical Christian girlfriend, and a few more half-Normz to remind us this takes place in Anytown USA. 

The show is great; it’s one of my top 3 favorites of all time (seasons 1-5 tho….Seinfeld and Arrested Development are the other two..) But it started to veer off track…..showing signs during season 5-6 (of an overwelcomed 9) when Jim and Pam get engaged, Pam leaves the office to try college in NY, (I get it, the character needed her creative justice. But the show felt the burn because of it.) And Jim and Michael go through a painful attempt at co-managing the office in an expected and rightfully owed endeavor to Jim and his effort to climb the corporate ladder. The premiere of season 6 has Michael furiously trying to gain popularity by spreading absurd rumors about his coworkers, forcing Jim and Pam to admit she’s pregnant to alleviate the pain of Stanley’s true rumor, that he’s cheating on his wife. (Oy.) One of the most cringe-worthy episodes is when the office crew plays out a murder mystery scenario, it’s so campy it hurts. There’s another terrible episode where Michael is forced to payout on an asinine promise he made ten years before – to send an entire class of students to college. Are these writers masochists?? This was so unbelievably painful it’s possibly the worst episode in the series. I’d rather not view them all to really find out if that’s true…

The show ultimately chops off its genius head when Jim and Pam get married – more exactly, when the show has its first musical number - the office drones goofily mimicking the viral YouTube video of the wedding party dance number where they’re flailing down the isle that you probably know what I’m talking about but cannot figure how else to describe it but I KNOW you know what I'm talking about. Google it if you don't. "Wedding party dance viral video" maybe?? Or not. Ya know. It's painful. (It is my moral obligation to mention this episode’s writing received an Emmy nom….UGH.) 

Other signs of vitals failing – the show’s star left at the end of season 6 when his contract ended, an injection of an awkward and obvious attempt at a new ‘straight’-ish couple will-they-won’t-they storyline (with Erin and Andy,) while the paper company goes bankrupt and was literally bought out by a new company like a dying body desperately receiving a new organ. If the buyout was an organ, the roster of new bosses coming through acts as blood bags…… Or something like that. I dunno, I’m not fucking MD I’m just a judgey TV viewer. This includes Kathy Bates, Will Ferrell, James Spader, and Catherine Tate. Honestly it’s just comical to me writing those names in a row like that. What was the show thinking? Why not shoot the horse once its lame leg was established, like Dwight would accurately recommend? OH I KNOW. Cuz I have this theory. 

In the age of Binge Watching and easily accessible online feedback from the idiot masses, TV execs are wide-eyed at the information they can dissect and overanalyze. (Let’s remember a petition allegedly kept Community from getting the initial studio axe. YES I SIGNED IT THANKYOUANDG'DAY.) Season 6 aired in 2009, balls deep in the up and coming shrine of Netflix Streaming (2007) – what could be deciphered as the saturation of Binge Watching. I personally feel that studios no longer call their own shots, and have started to depend too highly on the new type of ratings and psyche of the viewer they can gather with this new medium. Therefore, less integrity is involved in the creativity and overall concepts of shows. These studios now feel the pressure of supply and demand as we guzzle them in several days, DYING for more. Actually, The Office might be the first example of a well-known beloved primetime TV show lasting too long. (Any other nominations??)

Let’s not forget the genius that is Michael Schur. (He’s that guy I’m dying to have dinner with, dead or alive.) He was one of the head writers of The Office, also played Mose Schrute, later co-created Parks and Rec with Greg Daniels (we’ll get to him later), and co-created Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Parks and Rec aired the same year as The Office season 6……. One can surmise his departure of the show was a big catalyst in its decline. After reading through the synopses of the last few seasons, the show ended on an overwrought, overacted, desperate, absurd state. Mindy Kaling was a writer of the show from day one, and I believe she was a big contributor to the show’s downfall. She co-wrote the Jim and Pam marry episode, and certainly has a personal flavor of embracing popular culture to a stylized degree. I cringed watching the “music video” she and Erin (Ellie Kemper) made together in a cheesy attempt at charm. While the use of pop culture was honed and restrained in Michael Scott’s hands during the first few golden seasons of the show, it was exploited and shoved down our throats once Mindy was more-or-less at the helm. Her technique didn’t quite fit the Office format, but it thrives in her current show – The Mindy Project. (I’m actually not a big fan but I gotta give it up, girl can write the hell out of a joke.) There’s a chance that the birth of Glee (also 2009) contributed to the showrunners’ acceptance of an 90% serious full-blown musical number. I can almost see Mindy’s convincing Greg Daniels it was a good idea.

I recall feeling a strong sense of farcical satire through season 6, as though the actors were playing themselves playing their characters. Something wasn’t clicking. It was as though a sense of self-awareness overcame the atmosphere of the once perfect dynamic between characters. New bosses of the office were marched through as often as I shower. (Actually….that’s not true…….. Do you know how hard it is to shower with two toddlers in the house?? Kids = loss of hygiene. TMI. I DIGRESS.) Storylines became tired and predictable. I tuned out around the end of season 6 I believe. I did tune into the last episode of the show for nostalgia’s sake, and boy did the writers know it. Michael Scott makes an appearance at Dwight and Angela’s wedding – which – we knew would happen. How could it not? These writers had people to please, and they were extremely aware of that.

Season 1 clocked in with 5.4 million viewers, the series peaked at season 5 with 9 million viewers, and ended on season 9 with a measly 5.1 million viewers. Ouch. History will ultimately reveal the show as a lesson to creators and viewers alike as an example of what happened at the crux of consumers over consuming, the show attempting to satisfy our gluttonous appetite for watching something six hours in a row…..Don’t pretend you’re above that, you know you’ve binge-watched. We all have. ‘MERICA amirite??

Furious 7

He gave me two choices, Exodus: Gods and Kings or Furious 7. After my voting for Exodus, he decided on Furious 7. There is absolutely no other way in the world I would watch this film except for the fact that we were both bed ridden with strep throat. And sometimes I let him choose the movie we watch. (Supawifey=me.) Seven flicks into the exhaustively overblown franchise, what left do the filmmakers have to do but shove some cars out of a plane, drive a million dollar car fifty stories up through several buildings in a row, send military grade missiles after some cars on the streets of LA causing “vehicular warfare”, and give Michele Rodriguez a case of amnesia in a feeble attempt to freshen up an otherwise repetitive and predictable storyline. 

The only other Furious film I’ve seen was the third one, Tokyo Drift - another movie I was dragged to by a gaggle of guy friends. And it wasn’t that great either. Admittedly I don’t believe I’m the key demographic for these movies, and action sequences tend to bore me. (Cuz I’m a snob? But for some inexplicable reason my mother has seen all seven and is somehow invested? I think?? That makes no sense to me. Maybe I’m missing something here….mmmmm no I’m sure I’m not. What gives, Ma??) I don't plan on viewing another one anytime soon, maybe I'll check back in around Furious 22: The Next Fenderation (yes? no? does this joke work?)

There was absolutely no redeemable quality to this movie, not even putting hottie Nathalie Emmanuel in a bikini or having Michele and Ronda Rousey decking each other through coffee tables in a billionaire’s baller pad in Dubai. The best moment was probably when Nathalie’s brainiac character quickly and accurately asserts who’s who in this cliché film world - Vin’s the alpha, Michele’s Mrs. Alpha, Paul’s the ex cop, and Tyrese is the clown. This was a satisfying bit of meta to me. The film is gratuitous in every way. One of the first scenes shows an array of female rear ends – embedding the song playing in my head as “butts, butts, butts-butts-butts. Big butts small butts round and flaaaat butts.” Each action sequence looked like a nightmare to produce and shoot, as absurd as each was conceptually and physically. “CARS DON’T FLY” Paul Walker (RIP!) points out to his kid. OH I BET THEY DO BY THE END OF THE FILM PAUL, I BET THEY DO. The majority of the $190 mil budget was certainly segued into the action sequences. Seriously, someone slashed the makeup budget, because these people came out of every car crashing, head bashing, missile blasting scene without a single scratch!!! Did Hollywood run out of fake blood?? That may be the most unbelievable part of the film. And did I point out they threw cars out of a plane? With people inside them? Parachuting safely right onto the road below? These people managed to survive every gut wrenching car accident unscathed except where the plot needed it – in the end, where (SPOILER!!) Michele’s memory returns as she wails over a seemingly dead Vin Diesel. But he still manages to survive, obvi. It’s not like they would make Furious 8 without him. The plot was uninteresting and predictable, not even going to explain it. The MOST interesting thing was Vin’s lack of facial expression. I think all his face muscles melted down into his real muscles. Or something. He was bad. DTRJ definitely out acted him. When DTRJ burst his arm out of his cast just by flexing, I BELIEVED it you guys! I also rolled my eyes and actually laughed out loud. 

Mk, end of rant, I’m about to praise this film for a historical cinematic feat. Paul Walker died after only half the film had been shot. Once the aftermath settled, the director decided to finish the film, as “Paul would have wanted.” After some story re-writes, using unused footage from the previous six films, some extremely skilled CGI masters, and Paul’s two brothers as body doubles, they managed to seamlessly complete the film without any sign of Paul’s passing. I knew Paul had died during production as I watched the movie, but I wasn’t sure when or how completed the shoot was at the time. I am blown away at the skill, subtlety, and finesse they showed from this process. Only at the last five minutes of the film would someone unaware of the situation say “hey did this guy die or something??” There’s a pretty heavy-handed goodbye to Paul Walker, but it is done in a very tasteful and respectful way. The only moment where I raised an eyebrow was at an unnecessary last shot of Paul driving a car (as I type this I realize they kind of had to have his last shot in a car to avoid fan outrage) alongside Vin Diesel. When I read which scenes they used doubles in, I was surprised I hadn’t noticed them sticking out like sore thumbs as I viewed the film. In case you didn’t know, during a break in filming, Paul’s life ended in the most poignant way – in a car crash. RIP Paul!