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Putting on his TV commercial critic hat
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I’m putting on my TV critic hat today. And right up front, I want to note that some of the commercials are as good or better than the regular programming. Some are not so good.
So this past weekend there was a Lexus automobile commercial that I was very curious about. Here’s a guy who unwraps a gift and it’s a cell phone. It’s playing music and there’s a photo message that shows a brand new Lexus. He smiles at his girlfriend/wife and runs outside to find a brand new red Lexus with a big Christmas bow on it. Wow is he happy! He’s standing there looking at his $40,000 gift with his $2.5 million house in the background.
Now let’s make this thing multi-dimensional. Old Bubba and his wife Emma Lou are watching the game of the week when this commercial comes on. He’s just routed the last of the Cheetos out of his navel and popped the top on another Coors. Suddenly Bubba and Emma Lou are staring at this commercial wondering just how it ever got through the walls of their double wide and into their new big screen television (their Christmas gift to each other). Bottom line: Just how many people could relate to that commercial? Probably it was a last-minute gift idea. The high priced female brain surgeon bought her hubby/boyfriend a Lexus to drive around Las Vegas in search of another site to expand his casino business. It was either that or an electric razor. Red is her favorite color so she went with the Lexus. Probably put it on her debit card.
But I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t see the Budweiser Clydesdales playing football ... you know, the one where the horse kicks the field goal. It’s cute and probably as plausible as the Lexus thing.
One of my favorite commercials now airing is the little dog that is worried about the security of his bone. He buries it in the yard but then digs it up as he has nightmares about someone finding it.
Eventually he takes it to the bank and they put it in the vault.  I’ve actually seen that happen, except for the part about the bank.
Like I said, some of the commercials are better than the programming. Reality shows are now dominating television because it’s cheaper than producing dramas. One of the top rated cable shows is called “Pawn Stars” where a family and their idiot friend Chumley run a pawn shop. My problem with that show is that I know it’s staged. Chumley can’t be that stupid. So much for reality.
One of the big ironies of television reality shows is the fact that people who cannot tell you where the Gettysburg Address was delivered are making fortunes on the tube hunting alligators, getting possums out of the smokehouse and catching snapping turtles, while occasionally smiling at the camera and showing that one tooth. Obviously, new improved Crest will not be a sponsor for these productions.
The other night I watched “The Call of the Wild Man.” A Kentucky fellow, who apparently went to school in one of those very short buses, was called upon to get a raccoon out of a rusted-out Fairlane that some guys wanted to pull out of the woods to restore. They could have just let the raccoon ride. It was an invented crisis.
  But I have to admit, even as corn pone as it was, it was an improvement over the Kardashians.  What’s really curious is that we, the public, watch this stuff. Either we enjoy it, or maybe we want to be reassured that we are the sane ones.
Or given the fortunes being made, we wonder where were those jobs listed on Career Day.
Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com

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