Muse

In the lee of a picturesque ridge lies a small, unpretentious winery, one that pampers its fruit like its own babies. Hi, I'm Moira Rose, and if you love fruit wine as much as I do, then you'll appreciate the craftsmanship and quality of a local vintner who brings the muskmelon goodness to his oak chardonnay and the dazzling peach crud bat pull to his Riesling Rioja. Come taste the difference good fruit can make in your wine. You'll remember the experience and you'll remember the name. Herb Erflinger, Bert Herngreif, Erf Herflinger, Bing Livehanger, Liveling, Bert Herkern, Bingo Lingf***er. TBTL

Oh, look who decided to come in tardy Don't think it's okay to just roll in here at 100 kilometers per hour Like you're Joel Otto with the Calgary Flames This Canadian rapped, jump man, jump man Them boys up to something I think I need some Robitussin

Do you believe that?

I do if you do

But it's absurd Are you going to get out there? You're going to get out there? For what? Like just, yeah.

Actions speak louder than demonstrations. Let's get to some of the action right now.

All right. Hello. Good morning. And welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host, coming to you from the offices of Walsh, Walsh, and Dormat here in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. And boy, do we have a treat in store for you. Now, the last couple of shows have been TBTL Night Sweats or TBTL Night Cheese, depending on your particular persuasion. And we've been saying, I'm going to be honest with you, and I only feel comfortable sharing this with you now, sort of after the fact. I was saying very special shows. And that was slightly a stretch. We were doing the shows at night because I was doing some kind of daytime side hustle that I can't disclose, but I think a lot of you can kind of figure it out. I was working at the Build-A-Bear in the Bellevue Square Mall. But I was saying those are special shows, and they were. They were fun. They were loose. They were sexy. But this is actually, and I'm not just saying this to try to hype things up. This is actually a very special, exciting edition of the show that I have been looking forward to being a part of since three days ago when Andrew suggested it. But what I remember is about a year ago we did this, and it really was my very favorite thing that I got to do all year. In all the different media, various things that I get roped into, talking about TV commercials is probably the thing that I have the most fun doing. And we have two people here who I have the most fun talking about it with. Why? Because this is their actual thing. They host a podcast called After These Messages. I'm talking, of course, about my friend and co-bro, Andrew Walsh. Hello. Hello, Luke-les. And the co-host of After These Messages, Genevieve. Hello.

Hi, Luke.

I am so appreciative of both of you for putting this together. All I remember about doing this about a year ago at this time, and I might be off on the dates, but the last time we did a TBTL After These Messages. December 16th. I looked it up before. Wow, that was closer than I expected. Turns out, this thing that I can't disclose seems to happen on a... The Build-A-Bear situation seems to unfold on a yearly basis. Anyway, what I remember about that was, of all the things that I get involved in where I'm talking about topics and trying to be mildly entertaining, there's nothing that has felt more natural to me and has come more from the heart and the experience than talking commercials with the two of you. Like, it's all I really care about. And I wish to God I was allowed to be the third wheel on this show. Normally, I'm not, but I guess once in a while I get to check in.

Well, I think we probably talked about this last year, but, I mean, you and Genevieve, while you get along very well, I would say, there is a little friction here because you do like to talk about commercials on TBTL. Genevieve sort of feels like we can talk about literally anything on TBTL, literally anything, yet we do dedicate a certain amount of time to commercials and she feels like could you just but not do that one thing like can we have one thing is what in fairness you also receive legal

tender to do that job and whatever you need to do to keep the needles moving is of far greater

importance than well what we're doing i don't see it strictly in financial terms i think what it is really is an indication of just how truly and deeply I love and think about TV commercials. Everyone does. You know what I mean? If you were doing a different podcast that was about ballet slippers, zero overlap, no matter how much they're paying us for TVTL. It just so happens that I think about commercials, other than the two of you and the other folks who email in and V-mail in and take part in after these messages, I would say I'm in a group of a sort of small number of people who think about TV commercials so much.

I agree. You are in the top 1% of that group. But I'm always amazed by or charmed, I guess, by how much people love to talk about commercials. Like, you can't go anywhere and just sit quietly in a bar or a restaurant someday. And you will pretty soon hear somebody, especially if there's a TV on, even silently. someone will start talking about commercials and it always makes me smile and I always think like I actually think that our show would have wider appeal if we had time and effort and whatever to market it.

The huge blow horn of the American Public Media Promotions Department because you want the TBTL treatment for ATM? Well, maybe not

quite that much marketing. We're kind of getting it. It's a fire hose of publicity though. I mean it is almost you can't It's embarrassing.

That's too much for us. Yeah, exactly. But, like, I do think that people will tell you they hate commercials, but everybody has an opinion about commercials.

I wonder if this has come up on After These Messages at some point, and if it has, I apologize for just kind of treading this ground again. But it's also that commercials are sort of non-denominational, or they are non-network-national. In other words, you might set out to watch a show on CBS, NBC, CNN, whatever, but those commercials, they go everywhere.

A lot of them do. And then there are the ones that are so incredibly parochial that, like, because I, although I am not a decrepit person, I watch a lot of TV that seems to be aimed. Aimed at either the decrepit or the extremely paranoid.

If you wear the decrepit long enough. Yeah, it wears you. You know, the craftmatic bed starts to fit.

so it's just right and i always make smooth it makes me laugh when i'm watching something that i'm just enjoying as a tv show and then it's like food for patriots or whatever is like the commercial i'm like uh-oh i wandered into a a neighborhood where i don't feel welcome even as

a young kid i had a sense of that uh which was if i was the kinds of commercials i was seeing indicated to me that this wasn't a good time of day to be watching yes it was all personal injury and you know other things that just convert your uh your annuity into a cash settlement it's my money anytime jg wentworth enters the conversation it's a time when i would i would hope to be not

watching do you see a lot of jg wentworth jokes on tiktok i feel like jg wentworth for the past year or so has been kind of having this viral like i feel like a lot of the young ones are making a lot of jg wentworth jokes these days i you know it's very possible that it is happening

on tiktok but it's outside of my as they say algorithm or for you page um but you're also i would say the j my experience with jg wentworth was when i lived in los angeles i know it's it's i think based in jersey so it's a national thing probably based in delaware because it can incorporate for nothing there it actually might be you're you're probably right i assume that they play those commercials in a lot of places i didn't see them until i lived in la but it's also interesting if you had a lot of kind of like Angeleno's seeing it it could make its way into like how has there not been a how is there not a 30 Rock or a Kimmy Schmidt or a whatever you know even a Rick and Morty where there's that's probably a bad example but you know the things that happen in Los Angeles a lot tend to seep into the brains of the people who are making a lot of the pop culture I agree so JG Wentworth should be having a moment if it's not already yeah I think

I get a lot of them because and it might be slightly generational too but our buddy Nick Jarin is constantly sending me because it's one of those things where I don't know one of us made a joke about J.G. Wentworth once I think and now we have that association with each other in our brain but he's constantly sending me various like TikToks and Instagram memes or whatever. Oh so you've actually seen Wentworth talk. People are like they'll yeah they'll take a famous scene or some intense moment from the news or something but then over dub it with the J.G. Wentworth thing or it'll be like you get to the end and you realize the whole joke was J.G. Wentworth. I'm not doing a good job but you guys know how I understand how memes work for the people if I could for the people who don't

know what the heck we're talking about it's just one of those it's one of those companies that uh you know essentially takes your structured settlement or your lottery winning something that you could get let's say a lot of money for and they're willing to give you a tiny amount of that money right now and then then they keep the lion's share of that money. Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

The thing that I always found so funny is, again, it's like whatever the actual company name is, it's very far from J.G. Wentworth. Like J.G. Wentworth sounds like, oh, my monocle fell into my Manhattan. It's like Cash Brothers. Yeah, right. It's like Cash Brothers the most in, you know, wherever. It's like it couldn't be further from the sort of regal bearing of J.G. Wentworth.

There is an internal narrative of these commercials to a degree, too, because I'm going to play one for you now. And this is one that's called The Bridge. I don't know why it's called that. But this has some kind of a, you know, a youngish adult man in his 20s, maybe even 30s. And he's clearly living in the proverbial mom's basement, right? This is clearly a basement apartment thing. He's still got his like kind of childish Lamborghini poster on the wall. Childish, I actually put one up in my new apartment that was mailed to me by a TVTL listener. He's like clearly like all the signals for being, you know, his old pizza boxes and things that you could argue are dirty napkins laying around or I actually think are coded to be something else. Yeah. Guitar and an amp. Filthy napkins. He is exactly. And so he's in the basement. Now, the one little thing that I'm saying here about an internal narrative is you can see on the screen of the TV down in his little studio. The Brunhilde, the Valkyrie. Exactly. It's another J.G. Wentworth commercial. So he's sitting down there watching this J.G. Wentworth commercial when his mom comes in. Clearly, there is something about this that seems so much like the production of a pornographic video, which I've never seen but I've heard about because it's like this woman who is probably this same. These two actors are probably around the same age, but she's kind of got a wig and glasses on. So here, take a listen to this.

Call J.G. Wentworth.

jg wentworth how can i help you get cash i want to pay off my debt and move into my own place but i need cash now to do it do you get regular payments from an insurance company yes in exchange for some or all of your future payments we give you a lump sum of cash now can call now

oh yeah oh in exchange for some or all so all of the payments i mean they will give you something but they could take all of the rest of the payments i suppose that seems like uh the real

iron price yeah it certainly does in exchange for some or all of your future payments we give you a lump sum of cash now call now and you'll also get 25 for receiving a quote call 877 cash

now and here's the part that 877 cash now they don't do the jingle again at the end that's funny because the most popular thing and the thing that's often started it with the jg wentworth

Now, here's my question. Could I call a different branch of J.G. Wentworth and say, I have $25 coming for getting a quote. Can I get $12 on my $25? Could I get an advance on my J.G. Wentworth payout?

That's interesting, yeah. I think that's going to be a very complicated con.

Well, we'll leave it to the courts to sort it out. Now, on the subject of the world of After These Messages and TBTL, in the early days of After These Messages, I know there was a pretty heavy TBTL 10 component. Yes. And you were saying that you've been kind of wondering lately where that is these days. Is it mostly TBTL people? Is it no TBTL people?

I didn't think so. I was saying, oh, I don't know, maybe TBTL listeners make up a third of our audience now. But I'm probably way wrong on that, huh?

If we have even half of our listeners are independents, as I think of them, I'd be shocked, honestly. Just because we don't market the show.

We get a bunch of hop-ons every time Ben's on the show.

Yeah, our listenership is, I would venture to guess, and this is just like throwing a dart at the wall, basically.

Oh, so like every actual political poll that we've seen for the last six years?

Yeah, so as accurate as any political poll you've seen in the last eight years. But I would venture to guess that about two-thirds of our listeners are probably also tens. and maybe the remaining third are probably people who heard about it either through word of mouth or through our friend Ben Harrison who hosts The Greatest Generation.

Yeah, so we get a lot of Star Trek fans, which is great because there's so many Star Trek-related commercials that people keep sending us to, which is amazing.

I just think that there has to be a world of just in the way that TBTL in its early days was only appealing. I mean, TBTL when it was acquired by APM was only appealing to people that worked within American public media. There are so many people that work in the ad business. I mean, there has to be a way to tap into them because I feel like they would be excited. If I was a grip or the writer of that J.G. Wentworth commercial.

I would love to hear people talking about it and then email in as to if it was or was not basically an adult film.

We've had some interesting people write in who do have firsthand experience. We had someone write in who does the clothes for commercials, like she does the wardrobe. And that was fascinating.

Elena, also a TV TV listener, I believe.

Yeah, so, you know, to my point. But I would almost say...

Well, only two-thirds of Elena. There's a third of her that is an independent.

I almost wonder if... because we're total idiots like uh we don't know anything really and so whenever we venture into some kind of like specificity like a specific like lexicon or or area like like when we tried to talk about just like naval like the navy oh yeah we didn't really have any of the vocabulary and i would bet that we have because we're not advertisers like i'm technically in a marketing field but like i don't really have any of the sort of no knowledge about that field so like It must be frustrating, I would think, if you were an actual knowledgeable person.

I actually, it turns out they're not called sea soldiers.

Sorry.

Sorry.

I don't want to brag, but I actually do know a lot about the Navy because I served. Ah, busted. I'm Super Bowl champion Rob Gronkowski. That is Luke's biggest obsession. It really is. They're weird. I am so obsessed with the Stolen Valor. the attempted stolen valor across a variety of of navy credit union commercials now i'm gonna

and the heavy lenny energy he's bringing to it which is very weird right yes right he belongs

in that jg wentworth kids basement in terms of uh yeah you know he's probably got an annual he's

probably got some kind of annuity he could cash in on yeah i feel like you think yeah i don't know

can you imagine can you imagine or as our friend camaro kev would say can you imagine based on some I don't even know what it is it's some probably martial arts film from the 80s that I don't even get the reference but he said it so many times that it now strikes me as a thing can you imagine somebody in the NFL like Rob Gronkowski calling JG Wentworth and being like I have a $80 million contract with the Tampa Bay Bucks but I want it's my money and I want it now

the guy in the end of that phone call is like the leonardo dicaprio character wolf of wall street when he's like reeling the guy in right or i'll

go older with it the um uh giovanni rubisi character in boiler room yes yeah same energy right just like ring the bell yeah we've got grunk all right so yeah i am absolutely uh i'm i'm just as excited as i could be to get into the full after these messages experience but before we do that we need to honor the tbtl donors who are making this episode of tbtl because do not forget this is a um a co-production this is a crossover episode uh the people making this episode possible the donors of the day so let's thank jonathan levine in portland oregon thank you jonathan

thank you genevieve are you not gonna thank jonathan oh thank you jonathan wow that was

awkward that was awkward wow sorry sorry jonathan until we start until you until you start drawing a salary from tbtl you're under no obligation to thank the tbtl donors i believe it was a recent episode of tbtl where andrew asked if you were going to start donating and you said i believe

i give too much this would be an example of that thank you to jonathan one of our favorite donors

is not too much to ask very much so thank you jonathan appreciate you sharon porcaro is in Now it says Witwater, Wisconsin Interesting Do we think There is a place called Witwater Because if there is, I love it My guess is it's probably Whitewater

It is Whitewater, that seems to be a typo I didn't even type in Wisconsin I just typed in Witwater And it took me to Whitewater, Wisconsin Where you have the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, by the way

That's actually Wisconsin-Witwater The fightin' witties Well, thank you, Sharon, so much for supporting the program. Also, Anne Bissell is in Charleston, Massachusetts. Veeves, as a one-time Massachutian, did I say that right?

Well, I'm wondering if it's Charlestown.

Because I went more like South Carolina, like Charleston, but it's Charlestown.

I would guess so, but there is a Charlestown, Massachusetts, and I recently just watched, have you ever seen the movie The Town with Ben Affleck?

Oh, really? It's a movie set in Massachusetts with Ben Affleck?

But wait, I know you're shocked to hear it.

Was it about the grittier side of a town in Massachusetts? No. Good guess. It was.

It was about the culture of bank robbers in Charlestown, Mass. I'm pretty sure that's what it was about.

It's Charlestown. I believe Ben Affleck's character, when he would go into the bank, would yell, it's my money. And I want it now. More of a brogue, but yeah. Thank you so much, Anne, for supporting the program. Also, thanks to Maurice Higgins. Maurice is in a place I'll know about as soon as I wake my computer back up. Can I guess?

It's Lincoln, Nebraska. If I had to guess, I'll bet you all of my J.G. Wentworth settlement money that it's Lincoln, Nebraska. Some or all of it. When you're right, you're right, my friend.

It is in Lincoln, Nebraska. Thanks, Maurice. Appreciate you. And then also we've got to thank Marie Hahn and Joel Barnes in New York City. Is that how you pronounce that? Is it New York? New York City. Indeed. We've also talked about that. It's on the subject of commercials, too, those Pace Picante ads and how iconic they are. And also how we love saying New York City in the voice of the people who are mad, but leaving off the very end of the commercial, which is way more dark than it needed to be. and then they would ever make it these days growing up that was my dad's favorite rejoinder to the term to the words new york city uh would be the the thing they say which involves you know ending someone's life do you now there there are commercials only just gruesomely yes tickled to death get a feather i believe is what that one particularly ornery hombre says fluffy finger get a french tickler um do we think there are there must still be commercials that are airing on those parts of the cable spectrum that you're talking about vives or maybe you're just saying you watch shows that sometimes present commercials that feel like they might be for an older

generation yeah because i just watch a lot of tv first of all and i watch i we still have regular cable like non-premium cables where there's television there's commercials and i'll gladly watch you know i watch a lot of cozies do you know that term and term the cozy is like a a murder she wrote a monk a mystery basically where even if there's somebody who gets murdered in it the murder is not you're not it's not a scary right murder it's not like a like a csi or ncs where it's something truly horrific no one's there's not there's no horror to it exactly it's a it's considered a cozy oh and i i love a cozy and often also guess who else loves a cozy

anyone over 70 so that's why you'll see those commercials yeah I guess I was wondering if there is still probably sadly happening on like Fox News in those places where they could still run that Pace Picante ad as an anti-New York screed I don't watch Fox oh really I don't watch

Fox News I mean I watch I'm sure I watch some Fox properties Bob's Burgers Bob's Burgers yeah of course I watch Fox properties but I don't watch Fox News even even as a sort of a temperature check it just stresses me out too much so i don't know what they're telling those people and then i don't know what there must be then you know the even more crazy yeah channels own and the newsmax and yeah so like i don't know what they are telling people in the wait isn't Oprah Winfrey

network no not oh it's like oh a america one america now yeah yeah oh now yeah isn't it now

probably i don't know what i know is that when i'm at uh like sitting at a bar somewhere and it's on one of those channels most of the commercials are for tactical things that are shouldn't be tactical oh just what america news network but it's like it'll be you know i mean it started with like oh this is the best the tactical flashlight or the like you know kind of wraparound sunglasses that are these are military grade it's always a guy in the desert being militaristic but i feel like the things that they're advertising are getting less relevant to

the tacticalness i just heard a parody ad it wasn't that great on a podcast i listened to for a tactical sports bra the other day oh i don't know i yeah i i feel like what what i might

say about that i'll end up on the wrong side of whatever it is i'm trying to say which is i don't know if you need to gender it that way and i don't know if that's the funniest place to take it oh it was a podcast hosted by a couple of women oh okay well then they were definitely wrong anyway yes All right. Thanks to Julie. Speaking of women, thanks to Julie Lambert of Julian, California. Thanks, Julie. Thanks to all of our donors of the day for making this special crossover after these messages episode of TBTL possible. Couldn't do without you. after these messages we'll be right back i can't believe i ate that whole thing are you in good hands and now a word from our sponsors

hey everybody welcome to after these messages where we bring you hot takes on commercial breaks that's right we're here to talk about tv commercials tonight the good ones and the bad ones, and the ones where people say weird shit like this. You, you, you, you look young for however old you are. My name is Andrew Walsh. I'm here with Genevieve Haz, as always. Hello, Vives.

Hi, Andrew.

All right. As you may. have heard if you're joining us from the tbtl waves here this is a crossover episode so we have a third person in the studio with us and it is one luke burbank hello luke thanks for doing

this hey thank you for having me i am as excited as i could possibly be is that true as it's all right he's pretty excited i really am yes that might be sleep deprivation though no it's that I love TV commercials. You really do. I love both of you. And it's going to be all I can do to not sort of take up all of the airspace and the bandwidth here with my many, many thoughts on commercials.

Can I derail us for just a second and ask you something, Luke? I know you do love TV commercials, and you always, you know, we will often off air have a conversation about some TV commercial. But where are you watching TV commercials? Because do you even have, like, traditional cable?

I have traditional cable in that somebody comes by in a wagon and they tell me the news of the prairie. Nice, yeah.

And then they act out the latest Geico commercial.

Yes, they do. Oh, so much to say about those Geico commercials. Have you guys done, you must have done many episodes on the sort of home, like the home space commercials about like- The puns. Yeah, the puns. The puns. Have you seen the Angry Birds one? Have you talked about it? Have you addressed it?

They've lost their way.

Andrew's got a real opinion on that.

They just have an opinion, Joe.

It started as wordplay. We have ants, and so therefore, oh, ants has two meanings, and it's not the bugs. It's the human being's relative that are ants. But now they're just like, we have an angry birds problem.

We have birds in the attic, and then it's not the birds that you think it is.

Right. Wait, would you agree with me on this? I would agree so much.

And I don't understand how the conceit is so strong that they continue to pour money into, you know what I mean, hiring people to be in the commercials that are based on this one kind of wordplay joke that has long since stopped working.

I like the premise. I think the Angry Birds one is by far the weakest of the bunch. But it doesn't, I don't feel like it totally violates the sort of original premise of it. I mean, it's still a joke about double meanings of a word, just like the new one with Animal from the Muppets. We have an, there's an animal.

Shout out to my friend Helen Hong from Wait, Wait, who is in the commercial. Oh, really? Is that right? Yeah. Oh, I love that.

We have off-air commented on liking her performance. She's great. We actually, I had no idea who she was, and Genevieve and I have always said, I really like that couple's vibes, and she actually stands out in that commercial. I'm not just saying that. I agree. Absolutely.

I agree. They thought it was going to be animals commercial, but I consider it Helen's commercial. She's much more believable. We have a Helen in the attic. That's what they end up changing it to. So to answer your question, though, really quickly, Veeves, my commercial watching happens during NFL football games. OK. And then also during murder related shows that I have not recorded. So they are on demand from the network and I am forced to watch the commercial. You can't skip them. right yeah if you had recorded it you would fast forward though but you can't sometimes your dvr

gets filled or you don't think of it it's easier to just do the on-demand oh yeah certainly yeah

and i recently moved and so it wiped my whole my whole catalog of things i had recorded so i'm kind of back to ground zero on that and uh so i'm watching a lot of shows that i remember oh i used to like this and i tell the remote to please bring it up but then i try to hit fast forward

and it gives me that little you can't did you switch providers i didn't i am so surprised i thought that these things were actually saved in the cloud now i would figure that your recorded shows would follow you around because i can access my xfinity and this is so not important but i can you know i can access my xfinity on a computer or a tablet or the tv and i can access all of those things you would think if you were moving that would be a simple service they could provide that

your recordings go with you yeah there were a lot of things about my move that was about one mile within the city of portland that things that were surprising to me about the move related to the cable including the fact that uh i was on the phone with many people who said uh we have no idea why your cable won't work and then they sent a technician out and he said oh it's this very obvious cable that's unscrewed from this other thing that's just in a little cabinet in the closet and if anybody on the phone would have had that in their kind of decision tree oh man we

could have saved everybody a lot of time all right so here's what we're going to do today on the show, instead of having kind of a specific theme like we usually dig into, we Luke, because you like talking about commercials so much, and I had a feeling you're watching newer commercials because you and I are both all three of us are watching football on Sundays constantly we're just going to talk about whatever new commercials have been kind of catching our eyes so that gives you the opportunity, Luke, to jump in with whatever you're seeing these days except for, I will say, the Gronk commercials

because we have covered that every which way to Sunday. No, you can. No, I'm not. I just mean I never stop talking about it.

TBTL, Twitter. Exactly. I've left you a lot of voicemail messages on ATM about it.

That's right. Yeah, we don't play them, but he has left them.

Also, we are going to check in with the Ad Council. This, Genevieve, I'm very excited about. I don't think you've read this email yet, right? We were talking about Faygo commercials, like old vintage Faygo commercials last week. and there's one amazing Faygo commercial where they're singing the Faygo song on a boat. Right. And you and I were like, great song. Why are you on this weird sort of cruise ship looking thing? We have, I don't have a bell. We have an answer. There's so many bells. There are so many bells. We have an answer to that question. Excellent. And here's a little hint. It has something to do with Detroit, of course, the home of Faygo and those Faygo loving Juggalos. It's not Juggalo related, by the way. But it is Detroit related. Okay, great. I have not read this email, so I'm excited. Turns out it's Kid Rock's Boat. So anyway, I'm super excited about that as well as some other things. Now, before we get into the main part of the show, though, you have something that you wanted to sort of quiz me and Luke on?

It's not even a quiz. I mean, I'm genuinely curious. There is a commercial for a product called Shipt, and it's, as is in the parlance of our times, it's S-H-I-P-T. So, you know, just sort of a riff on Shipt. And Kristen Bell, who I love, who I think we all love.

Absolutely.

Is their new spokesperson. And I'm just going to.

Don't slip, Dak. Dax. The problem is Dak Prescott and Dax Shepard are too close together in my brain. That's right.

So I'll just tee this up so that we know what's happening. But she's standing in the parking lot of what looks like a grocery store. And she's kind of talking about shipped shoppers and almost following around people that she identifies as shipped shoppers in this grocery store and having conversations with them. And I just want you to tell me what you think is what you think the action, the call to action is to the consumer based on this commercial, because I really couldn't tell. And I had even after I went to their website, it took me a little while to figure out, like, what is it that they're selling?

Carl, look, a Shipt shopper. I'm a really big fan of Shipt, so I'm here to observe some Shipt shoppers so I can learn their secrets firsthand.

What is she doing? She knew when the freshest ones were coming out.

She's looking at a woman carrying a green bag, a Shipt logoed bag, and she says she knows when the freshest ones are coming out, and this woman is...

I already feel like I know what this is, and I already think it's a bad idea.

Okay, so she's picking out poinsettias in the garden section. Maybe this is going to be incredibly obvious to everyone but me because I don't live in the modern world.

Do we? She knew when the freshest ones were coming out.

Psst.

You want to know a fun fact? Shipped shoppers will always go the extra mile. They'll even help you pick out the perfect card for your aunt's 63rd birthday. Wow, that's specific. Shipped. Over-delivering delivery.

I'm pretty sure I know. I'll let you go first. I was actually wrong.

Now it's very clear. So, Andrew, what is being sold here?

Oh, you said no. Was there a clue at the end that I missed? Because what I think this is, is I think this is probably a grocery store delivery service or any kind of a shopping delivery service so that you don't have to go to the store yourself. These are personal shoppers with the green bags and they're picking out the stuff. Are you going to ding me or are you going to X me? Right? I'm going to ding you. Yeah. Okay.

That's exactly right.

Okay. I started when I heard about it thinking, oh, this is, you know, like a, you know, Amazon Fresh whatever thing. then when they said ship shoppers always know what the freshest is i thought and this is when i said i thought i knew what it was that it was maybe a service that indicated on your phone when the freshest version of whatever thing is in the store was coming in through me also and i i to be

clear andrew you're exactly right and this is also probably a function of the fact that we've never used one of these services as much as we do have things delivered to us i have never um used amazon

on fresh or even instacart well you know i love going to the grocery store it's literally one of

my favorite yeah you are my shipped yeah exactly so yeah you're exactly right shipped shipped is a

service that you would not let me buy flowers at the grocery store well you always pay too much

um you gotta go to trader joe's and you also you can't just buy the first ones you see you have to really look um but you're right so these shipped shipped is this service that is like it's advertising itself or it's promoting itself as kind of a concierge level type of personal personal grocery shopping where you don't just for example on their website it's like if you were making fried green tomatoes you wouldn't want somebody to just buy you red tomatoes at the grocery store so like that's why she makes the point about the very specific birthday card at the end like you can order you can tell your shipped shopper uh what you want and they'll go do the like due diligence of getting the perfect poinsettia or the or the perfect card for your grandmother and you don't have to worry about getting something that's sort of close to what you ordered and i can understand the appeal that i bet it's pretty pricey to have that level of service yeah as a person who's

ordered groceries delivered i don't do it a ton but not because i don't uh you know like convenience or like wasting money, it's because I just don't cook at home as much as I should. But the times when I have thought, oh, I want to make this tonight, and then I try to go on one of these various services, very often the thing you try to get is they can't find it or it's a different thing. And no shade to the people. I have been sitting recently in a, not to bring everyone of the After These Messages audience too far into my life, But I had the experience recently of sitting in a fairly down market dive bar playing a slot machine thing in Oregon and having the person next to me have their phone wake up and go, oh, someone's trying to have me do a whatever it is, you know, Instacart order. Yeah. And she was like, yeah, no, this is a bad one. This is a bad one. This is a bad one. The people that are delivering this stuff are working their tails off. And I don't blame them if they can't find the exact, you know, heirloom thing I want. But it is.

But if they work for Shipt, you can blame them because that's what they're signing up for.

Because Kristen Bell told me it was okay. All right. Let's now.

Anyway, thank you, Andrew. And now it makes more sense in my head. But just watch. I can't explain. It was like my gestalt sense wasn't working or something like just I've seen that commercial nonstop. It's been on whatever something I'm watching, maybe Hulu or whatever. It's been on heavy rotation. And I just couldn't understand who was the shopper in this scenario.

I think that's a, but I think that that's a valid question, which is, is this, is, is this kind of very, I would think narrow subset of people who want to pay a premium to make sure that the 63rd birthday card, et cetera, is so perfect. So we're ordering the groceries. We want the Cadillac service of the grocery delivery. And this is, I guess what this, they've done some math on and they think it's a business.

Yeah.

All right. Let's talk about some of these new commercials that are catching our eye lately. I may have a new love, Genevieve, a new commercial love. What were the commercials? I was just so gaga over a few weeks ago. How could I have? I dedicated a whole segment to my new favorite commercial campaign, and I've already forgotten what it was.

I don't remember. I'm sorry.

But you remember that I did it, right?

I think so.

Well, that's the thing. This new campaign has made me so blind to whatever my old commercial love was. And you just showed it to me this morning. You've actually been telling me about it. And this is a J.B. Smoove centered commercial, but not those God damn Caesars sports book commercials, which make no sense.

And also, again, under under use under utilize. Yes. Just a wide variety of talented people. incredibly talented people. How did you make this so much less than the sum of its parts? I agree. You got Patton Oswalt,

you got J.B. Smoove, and it just, they don't really work or hang together.

You have other famous people sitting around that, that they have indoor seats. Halle Berry is in it. Is that Halle Berry? Yeah. Oh, I didn't even recognize it. The Manning Brothers. The Manning Brothers as well. Yes, exactly. That's right.

The whole Manning family. Anyway, and it's just

their Cooper makes an appearance.

So convoluted.

Yeah. And so bad, but these commercials, This is how you smooth

They're so elegant They're so economical It's a wonderful campaign And it's for a product called Just Egg Which is a vegan

I have been seeing posters For this in Portland And I have been intrigued Because it looks like Okay I like eggs I don't generally eat meat I would like to have something that tastes like an egg That isn't made from a chicken thing

Luke you couldn't have teed this up better because boy are these commercials for you these are a series of ads jb the voice you're going to hear is jb smooth narrating uh these each of these these spots and the the premise in each one is that um he's talking about a scenario in which someone who is not a vegan is using these vegan eggs and you're seeing them use them and they do look very appetizing they they look very much like a scrambled egg basically and they're they're they're shown being cooked and put into egg sandwiches and things like that the one that caught my attention that i was seeing in the wild is about this woman named kelly kelly's a young woman she's attractive but not like she's sort of relatably attractive right she's not a bombshell and we're in kelly's kitchen she's wearing her pajamas and um standing next to her in her kitchen shirtless is a very Thank you.

hunky dude and this hunky dude as jb smooth will explain to us is a vegan and kelly is making him like a frittata or something in her little skillet with this just egg stuff and he talks about why she's like you know what are her motivations here for using a vegan egg substitute okay kelly i see

you after years of swiping right on the wrong dudes looks like you found the man of your dreams but there's just one thing he's vegan but it's all good because those eggs are made from plants now kelly are you eating just egg to join him in his mission to fix a cruel animal-based food system heck no you're eating those eggs because they're delicious and i mean come on look at that

dude i see you all smitten just egg really good eggs now i will say what i love about that commercial that like that's my least favorite of these um only because i think the other ones are are just funnier but one of the things i love about that is the the way they found uh like a weakness in the marketplace right like they've advertised to people who don't eat meat or meat related products or animal related products but now here they are saying very specifically like you might just want to have them on hand if you're a person of a certain age who's out on the scene you know what i mean they're like these eggs might help you f yeah exactly and if you see this

their original slogan i think if you get get a look at this dude we'll post it to the facebook

page um i would there was no question what you were using for the show pick this one hundred

percent he's worth a non-animal product yes egg do you think if i stopped eating eggs i'd look like that i don't think that's his only his only reason he looks like that so this next one i love this one so much is so good um this is another character this is just just one guy he's waking up his name is wayne again uh jb smooth will introduce him he looks pretty wrecked he's pretty hungover he's like hydrating this morning he's like kind of looks like he had the woke up from the night sweats he's you know not clean shaven he's just having a rough morning after uh wilding

out last night my man wayne got real twisted last night but respect goes out to wayne instead of crying in the shower like he normally does he got up and made himself a bomb fluffy egg sandwich Now, does he care that these delicious eggs are made from plants and he's making a healthier future for humanity? He don't give a damn. This man is just after some tasty eggs. And if those eggs just happen to be good for the world, so be it. Just egg. Really good egg.

That sandwich looks great. It really does. As we are recording this, we were in the nighttime, not unlike the TBT night shows that we had done earlier this week. I know we're putting this out on Wednesday in the daytime, but I would kill both of you for that. No offense. And I love you both. But I would murder people for that sandwich. It looks so good.

They really make these eggs look good.

And, you know, they're serving the eggs in this context where it kind of doesn't really matter. You know what I mean? When you have a little English muffin with, like, I don't know what other toppings around there, a little sausage or maybe fake meat sausage patty or whatever. And then a little square of egg. Like, I bet you never even know whether or not that came from a chicken. Like, this is working on me.

Well, not to get too deep into the kind of, like, you know, fake animal product stuff, but I've always found that the fake meat and fake other things that are based on the most processed version of meat are the most reproducible. So Starbucks has this breakfast sandwich that has, like, a, you know.

The impossible breakfast sandwich.

And it tastes exactly like the other thing because the other thing is trash.

Oh, it slaps. It's so good. I just had one the other day for the first time. I love it.

Like, what they haven't perfected yet is a filet mignon. Sure. Yeah, right. Exactly. But on the other end of the spectrum is American cheese, which I love. So whatever the, you know, vegan version of that is. And then things like sausage. Sausage. They can nail that.

Even ground meat they're getting really good at.

Absolutely.

I eat a lot of Impossible Burgers.

Yeah. And then we have one more of these. You like this one, too, right?

This one's very funny. This is a busy mom with two kids under five and, you know, with the ensuing chaos. She's trying to get them to eat breakfast while she's on the phone and dealing with a million things.

It is too friggin' early, and Jane here is making scrambled eggs for Tommy. And it's gotta happen fast, or it's gonna be crayons for breakfast. Now, Jane doesn't give a damn that those eggs are made from plants, and she's creating a more just food system for Tommy's future and the planet. She's just happy she found something a one-year-old likes more than crayons and boogers.

No!

Jane, these little kids

is nasty. Just eggs. I love that line. Really good eggs. I love it. One quibble. One quibby? I'll give you one quibby for your quibble. Can I have a quibby amount of time for my quibble?

Yes. A quibby for your quibble. Let's call it a deal. They use the crayon eating joke. twice and i know what happened there because i've never i will never be a jb smooth and i'll never be in a commercial of this profile but you will use jb wentworth they used it's my crayon and i want it now they they had him riff a whole bunch of stuff and they did the crayon joke at the beginning which made me laugh like you better get this food to this kid or he's going to be eating crayons and then later they had him riff it again and the ad agency fell in love with this crayon joke and they used it twice and i just think it was one time too many i don't know i like for

one thing the kid is obviously i guess he has to do the riffing over the the footage that he's

watching right you'd be surprised in my experience again not because he the kid is eating crayons well well right but i'm just saying like it's gilding the crayon to me that they he the joke happens twice in the voiceover and you'd be surprised there are they they call them wild lines and they i bet you that they had jb smooth do like a thousand wild lines and they just loved the crayon joke and there was like one person probably a dude who was had decision making power just like in love with the crayon joke

they so you say that they will do improv on voiceovers this sounds so written to me

well what happens is you read the script as written and well first of all J.B. Smoove is not there when they're filming the commercial reading over it they write the script but then they do a thing where they say like J.B. just have some fun just kind of let's do some wild lines

just look at this look at this commercial that you're going to be voicing. Or don't even. Don't even?

Like, after you've tracked it, then they're just like, just have fun with it. Just turn the script over and have some fun. And then you just start riffing and riffing and riffing. And then they go like, can you say the crayon thing again? Say this about crayons. And then they keep doing it. And then the agency, or really the editors at the production house, then they present it to the agency, piece it all together. I just thought it was one too many crayon jokes. I'm sorry.

I don't mind the crayon callback. The crayons, something your kid likes more than crayons and boogers worked for me.

I especially like him I'm calling them nasty kids. That was great.

Jane, your kids is nasty.

Now, this next one, I don't even know why this is on the list. I mean, it's on the list because I found one of these two commercials I'm going to play for you, kind of delightful. But I don't know if I ever saw this in the wild. This is stamped from earlier this spring and summer, and they're these Dr. Pepper zero sugar commercials. Now, I know that both of you are big Coke zero people. Yeah. Genevieve, you used to be. Hold the zero. Oh, but no, both of you also had the same thing. not diet not dr pepper zero but you guys also used to argue that diet dr pepper really was

closest to the real thing as far as before the zero before the era of zero happened yeah i would say that of the zero straight up diet sodas diet dr pepper was the best option and now they have

these you know zero sugar just i have not tried dr pepper zero i have tried mountain dew zero

which is very good as far as those go it doesn't taste like the real thing but it's pretty good

very hard to find though have you explored the zero sugar kind of branding space on this show no we that'd be an interesting place to go though so the the zero sugar thing has come on in the last few years as a so diet you know diet coke diet diet whatever that took on a certain connotation yep and so they wanted to say it's this thing that you love but it doesn't have as much it has no sugar in it but what i noticed is like uh zero sugar coke now is the same color

yeah as the other coke it's hard to distinguish it is and i have made that mistake at many a 7-eleven and and also diet coke is also trying to rebrand or re i don't know reinvigorate its image diet coke has a whole campaign right now based on nostalgia right andrew and i've talked about it a fair amount it's it's a mixed bag but it's like in essence ultimately i think it fails because it's just like a stupid premise like it's like drink diet coke because your mom drank it drink diet coke because old people drink it drink diet coke because there was another oh nerds drink it

and they were just like yeah and it's just really reductive what do you but it also just it had no bearing on reality at all like nobody's going around being like oh yeah coke that's the nerd

diet coke is for nerds yeah like nobody said no one said that i throw diet coke at nerds

but that's the whole problem this is where the technology sort of outpaces the branding which is diet coke was a thing that they could do that didn't have as many calories as regular coke so that was many years people developed a taste for the thing that was diet coke then you actually invented this way to make a thing that tastes exactly like almost exactly yeah and now you go Well, what do we do with Diet Coke? Well, it's for the nerds, apparently. I guess so.

Those damn nerds are going to their Comic-Cons and drinking Diet Coke.

That's kind of what the commercial is. It is, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty bad.

So this Dr. Pepper Zero commercial, I don't know if you would have seen this in the wild, Luke, because, again, I don't think I have.

I don't have any memory of looking at kind of a freeze frame on the computer right now, and it doesn't ring any bells.

And I'm going to play two. I think this particular campaign.

only had these two commercials and the second one is the one i find delightful but they're kind of narrative so i'm going to start with this first one here and um the premise is the people at dr pepper sent some researchers just locked them into a laboratory back in 2005 and said come up with something that has zero sugar but tastes exactly like dr pepper and so where we pick up the storyline here is these people are emerging years later uh saying we have succeeded and here is what we're bringing and they're carrying these cases of uh dr pepper zero sugar out of the vault

in 2005 dr pepper sent three flavorists into a vault to perfect the impossible dr pepper zero

sugar today they finally emerged we did it 23 flavors with zero sugar what took so long huh What took so long?

I should probably mention here that there's, of course, a bunch of press around. This is a big press moment. And so that's a reporter asking that question.

What took so long?

Huh?

What took so long? We sacrificed years.

I haven't seen my family in 16 years.

Now, suddenly, as one of the researchers says that, and this is where I think. That guy playing that researcher who says, I haven't seen my family.

He's in everything.

I was just actually about to try to see if I could find his name.

He is an everyman. But he is the middle-aged everyman. And there's every man 10 years older than him who I he's currently in a Popeye's commercial. It's like Popeye's on demand. And he's in line putting in his Popeye's order, you know, by way of the app or something.

He often plays exasperated dad. He's in that commercial that we talked about, Andrew. Who's our favorite guy? Glasses and mustache.

Oh, yeah. I can't remember his name, but he's from Better Off Ted. Yeah.

So there's a commercial with him where this guy's like carrying a bike past him on the stairs. Oh, yeah.

That's him. Right.

Right. He's really locked down that that job in the commercials.

So here's where I feel like this commercial sort of I mean, it's not a huge criticism for me, but it's sort of like you already had the one established joke, which is you guys are emerging in the press wants to know what you came up with. But then it sort of takes a kind of a left turn here in the last 10 seconds where this guy says, I haven't seen my family in 16 years. And then he sees his adult son and his other family members kind of break through the press scrum and kind of surround him. I'm not even really sure where this goes.

My boy's become a man. Here, son. It's perfect, Eddie. It's worth it. The zero you deserve is finally here.

So, you know, it's pretty good. His son is sort of like looks like, you know, he's an adult man now, but pretty shaggy and wearing a T-shirt. You know, his hair.

Yeah. Things didn't turn out as great for his son in adulthood as we'd hope. Maybe if he had been around, you know.

maybe if he had been around now that actor's name is johnny sneed by the way oh nice and we're going

to see him again because now here's the second commercial i like this one i don't know what it is if it's just the timing if if it's the mumbling of the uh researchers at the end but now the um three researchers who came up with this dr pepper solution are sitting behind a table taking questions from the press okay things are a little bit more calm now but then um a man stands up and starts talking to the woman scientist or the woman researcher and he is holding like a bouquet of dead flowers and he's kind of like oh so this is where you disappeared to in 2005 this is why we we apparently didn't go on a second date or what have you after being locked in that vault for years

we've finally done it dr pepper zero sugar ralph so is this why you never texted back yes that's play i would have understood oh it's perfect i know i made it we made it we made it she made it group project she made it is this the guy

that is so many jokes in 30 seconds it really does but it doesn't collapse under the weight

of the jokes sometimes that happens right the timing let it breathe like the looks of everybody

i'm really impressed with the discussions that have gone on in the vault about about this guy who she was more than happy to be locked away from by the way that guy is also in a lot of things oh

really her would-be paramour yeah he looks familiar too um i was actually going to say about the first one that i was impressed at how much plot they were able to fit in economically in 30 i you know i do these like 30 second promos for live wire and my job is to just say three names yeah and i'm constantly going i can't get this in this person wrote a book and the book has a four letter a four word name the amount of plot that that first commercial sets about it is we put these people in a vault a long time ago to do this thing and it took too much time and it was probably not worth it and it destroyed families but it was kind of good yeah like that all happening and Working in 30 seconds is really good.

commercial can tell you a little story so economically and at the same time make a point about the product i really am in awe of it because so often we see it fail we see one of those elements fail oh yeah either the story's incoherent or the story's good and the acting's good but the plot but the pitch is confusing or non-existent or it could be for any product we were were we watching the other day oh yeah we did it we talked about a commercial where the premise is um you have a bunch of skydivers jumping out of a plane oh my god and they just say like and i honestly i think it was like for um it's like a muffler service or something yeah some sort of car related it was like a car related service i was like who's the best muffler service or do you think you know joe's muffler service is the best muffler service in town and then the skydivers jump out of the plane and form the word yes with their bodies in the in the air it was for

interstate battery i know we already talked about this on atm but it's like and it's also so clear that like somebody just knew a guy with a airplane and a bunch of skydivers because or somebody knew

a guy who had a stock footage a skydiving troop that had spelled yes yes yeah who can spell yes because they're not even all they'd already spelled it for a pepperoni factory but like

There's no coordination. You would think that, like, they would all be wearing the same flight suit. Or there would be something visually.

Why wouldn't it say interstate battery on their flight suit?

Yes, exactly. It is just so bad. Is interstate the best battery in the world?

We say yes. They don't know what they're saying yes to.

Well, the underside of the plane could give us a hint. It said something Dallas. Interstate batteries, outrageously dependable. You know what? That's it. But this is where I think after these messages takes a real turn into investigative journalism, because I think what you need to do is you need to zoom in on that plane and then also find all the other commercials that have used that. Who owns that footage? Right. And how did they have the sort of foresight to just have these skydivers do this dumb thing and then to just, I would assume, kind of license it out to a bunch of places that would like the affirmative answer to help promote their business? Right.

That's a good eye on you. There's some place called Skydive Spaceland, Texas, or I'm sorry, Skydive Spaceland, Dallas. And it did say Skydive Dallas on the underside of that. This could be it, although I'm seeing different looking planes on.

But I bet you that there my guess is there are a few commercials, maybe regional to Texas, where the answer is Skydive. Yes. Yes.

And maybe if there's anything else, maybe they can spell no if they have if they have fewer divers. And like, you know, if Greg doesn't go to another battery service provider.

no right say no question mark should you not not buy our batteries again no maybe maybe wait what you know i haven't talked to people falling as a colon it's the best colon something else i haven't talked that much about this but um you know i never even followed up with the listeners on tbtl but i guess i'm remembering this will be on tbtl So I will say that I was not chosen for jury duty, but I was part of the jury selection process. What's the Frenchie word? Voidire. The voidire. And so in that process, we had the prosecuting attorney who was, you know, asking broad questions. And it was all via Zoom. So it's kind of like if you feel X about a certain thing in the world or if you feel this certain way about if a defendant did this, how would you feel about it? Raise your hand, you know. And so some people would raise their hand, and if you raised your hand, then the person would ask some follow-up questions to you. And the prosecuting attorney was great, and the defense attorney was so bad at communicating. I could not – I mean, isn't, like, communicating kind of like the – I mean, I guess not. There's a lot that goes into representing somebody. But being able to communicate in a courtroom is incredibly important for a lawyer. And all of his questions were like, if a defendant didn't not tell someone that he wasn't going to not show up when he clearly didn't say he was never going to show up, wouldn't you have to acquit? You're like, what?

Wouldn't you have to not not say he was not guilty?

It's just a stop. Skinner, can't you say anything like a normal person?

Sadly, the answer is not yet. At what point did that lawyer's case fall open to expose a skull and a spider web? I believe in a half-eaten Lionel Hutz apple.

I was pretty bummed. I looked him up later because you asked me, Genevieve, I told you that story, and you asked me if he was a public defender, and he was, and it bummed me out. Yeah, that's the least surprising news I've heard all week. Yeah, I had the thought. I didn't want to derail us, but my guess was. public defender that's a bummer and let's just say with absolute peace and love to people that are public defenders might be listening to this you're doing god's work our friend pam was a

public defender i mean we had close well she was a public she was an investigator for the public

exactly no i mean yeah you're doing god's work i have nothing but um respect for public defenders

and i we should be paying them more yes we don't pay them enough and so you do end up with a few

lionel hutzes in the bunch right yeah exactly um okay something like teaching where it's you guys were both hoping i was going to go here it's something like teaching where it's maybe one of the most important things to a civic society functioning and it's one of the things that we value the least and then at times we get what we pay for that's true i look at it kind of like the israeli-palestinian crisis and i was hoping that you would kind of set me up for my i have a tight 12 minutes on gaza um vives guillermo's in a commercial i didn't see this until you threw it

on the show sheet i so is this what we do in the shadows yes are you watching what we do in the

show i'm not but i know about the legend can i just say this very quickly i know about the legend of guillermo the way i know about the legend of cousin greg from succession yeah i don't watch either show but i know that these two actors favorites transcend the show to where i now

know about them absolutely and greg also is deserving i'm kind of shocked we haven't seen greg pick up some ads i wouldn't i would watch for that actually because he's having such a moment um guillermo so i if you're not watching what you do and what we do in the shadows please start it is so good there are now three full seasons uh available you know through fx or hulu or whatever um it's it's honestly the best sitcom that's like that's new out right now it's so funny it's about these um four vampires that live in staten island and their human familiar slash bodyguard who's played by this actor harvey guillen and he's and heart and and as the only human in the in the show he provides a kind of like um it's kind of done in a mockumentary style kind of like the office or something and so uh guillermo de la cruz is his character's name provides kind of like a you know an everyman perspective on these incredibly like out there characters and he's always very put upon and abused by them and it's he's super funny and the actors just so phenomenal and so i was so excited to just like turn on the tv and see this geico commercial i don't love it's with the geico gecko which is honestly the worst of the worst of the geico commercials typically is the gecko and i i i like they've done so many great ads and the gecko is almost always the worst one but this is great so harvey is just sitting on a leather sofa and a sort of nice looking but not overly fancy looking apartment or home he's got a container of what looks like chinese food open in front of him and he's not explicitly playing guillermo but i think he's doing a little bit of a his vibe feels a little guillermo which is a little bit like stumbly bumbly kind of tripping over himself getting getting himself into awkward word

tangles yes a little sheepish yeah but charming and and a little bit awkward and i think the commercial probably can pick it up from there yeah he's just having a conversation with the geico gecko on his sofa who for some reason is sitting on a sofa because nobody ever explains

how or why the gecko gets anywhere huh is that true geico's been saving folks money for 85 years yep that's right wait so if geico's 85 that makes you are you asking if i'm 85 years old i mean sea turtles live to be 150 so no i was not do i look 85 what no you don't you look young you you you you look young for however old you are geico saving people money for 85 years

sweet little charming commercial you look young for however old you are have you ever gotten yourself into that situation where you guess the wrong age on somebody

well you do that once

and then you just say 25 for everyone

you just go oh 29 and then they get to say it's my 15th annual 29th birthday I've seen that commercial before and I did not put him together with the guy from What We Do in the Shadows but But that reminded me of how much I don't enjoy the gecko commercials. And, again, that's not on the actor who's the human. There's no way that there's even a slight another layer of comedy about the age of the gecko in that vampires are immortal. That's probably a reach, right? Because the vampires are like a thousand or something.

Well, they're whatever age. They're however old.

They were when they got bitten.

Well, yeah, or however long ago it was that they got bitten. And so there's one who's like from a Victorian era and one from like the sort of like almost like the the horde, the Mongol hordes era.

Maybe anyway, I don't know if that's like an implication or a reference there. It didn't it didn't jump out to me. But I just it made me look up Harvey Guillen because I was sort of curious about him. And he's a really interesting guy. He's a he's a queer actor. He's like been featured in Out magazine and he's just like a really charming guy. And he gave this like interview and I think GQ or something where he talked about where he got the acting bug. And I think he grew up kind of poor and like not destitute, but like, you know, from a very working class family. And Annie, the musical, came on TV and he saw them all cleaning and, you know, doing the hard knock life cleaning song. And he told his mom, he said, I always have to do the cleaning like that anyway. I just wish I was an orphan so I could do it on TV.

That's what every parent wants to hear, right? You know, I think we should probably just move on and check in with the Ad Council here. But one thing, I'm going to quiz you on something, Luke, that's just popping in my head. Genevieve, I think you'll know this because we discussed it a long time ago. But, Luke, do you remember who voiced the very first Geico Gecko?

The first Geico Gecko. Did he have – was it Paul Hogan? No. Did he have an Australian – what is it? Is it British? What is the Gecko's accent, British?

I think it's Australian now, but it wasn't originally.

I think it's just... I think it's... We've been around and around this block. I think it's just British, right? Oh, is it just British? I don't know. I thought it was going to ask you this.

Did the person die, or did they... Because, I mean, Gilbert Gottfried was the Affleck duck. Right.

No, it wasn't a scandal. I think that they booked a famous person to do it, and I don't think that they thought it was going to run that long. Yeah. And so I think it was going to be a one-off. And it wasn't a British person. Cindy Lauper. It was not Cindy Lauper. Well, I'm out of guesses. It was Kelsey Grammer.

Oh yes Who I have said Along with John Lithgow Is the most British seeming American actors

They got super close and they said let's go full Brit

Yeah exactly let me see if I can find the Original one I actually remember

The days of Kelsey Grammer doing it

And I believe so here I don't even remember Because he was supposed to be posh Yeah he was supposed to be posh and so this begins with him At a podium giving a Press and he looks The gecko is animated and looks so much different back then.

This is my final plea. I am a gecko, not to be confused with Geico, which could save you hundreds on car insurance. So stop calling me Geico.

Doesn't really sound like Kelsey Grammer, but I think that's him. Okay, can I also say that's the only one of those commercials I've ever seen that I like? Because it's 15 seconds. And because it makes sense. Yeah, right, right. There's a premise. Yep, the premise. That's good. I would like, hey, effective. Yep, you're absolutely. Man, we've lost our way.

Yeah. Everybody's talking at me. I don't hear words they're saying. Only the echoes of my mind.

All right, let's do this. Let's check in with the Ad Council here. Genevieve, a couple of follow-ups to our show last week. our show last week, Luke, was I guess the theme was about kind of second-rate brands. I don't remember how it got in my head, but like, okay, so you got your Cokes and your Pepsis, but then you also have your Shastas and your Fagos, right?

Craigmont was a biggie in my life. Oh, what is that? It was just kind of a what do they call it? Generic brand that was available in the Northwest.

Maybe it was attached to a store. I think it might have been Safeway. Interesting. It might have been Craigmont country. Never heard of it. But yeah, exactly that kind of thing. And I think that's why we were talking about Hydrox the other day. And anyway, we were talking about these sodas, and listener Mike said, all the second-tier soda commercials from this week's show has me thinking about a favorite soda ad from my youth. It's for a cherry soda called Cheerwine. Now, you're nodding, Genevieve. Are you familiar with Cheerwine? Oh, of course.

Have we already talked about this? Well, I don't know, but I grew up in the South, and it's a soda that you can get typically more in the Carolinas than in Georgia.

But excuse me, it's called Cheerwine.

Yeah, but it's just a it's just a soda.

Was it somebody's name maybe? And they're called Cheerwine Soda. Yeah, I don't know. But but you are absolutely right. It's a cherry soda called Cheerwine that's only available in the southeast. The premise of this ad is that people from New York are smuggling Cheerwine across state lines. Now, I grew up in upstate New York and I would go on a family road trip every year to visit relatives in South Carolina. And we would often bring back a couple of cases of Cheerwine. So we were basically playing the part of the mobsters in this commercial. Upstate New York. New York. Trying to riff on an upstate.

Utica? I couldn't even think of an upstate New York City. All right, so let's take a listen. This is an incredibly low-budget commercial, and the premise is it's an investigative news report. Cherry different soft drink.

Are northerners hoarding cheer wine to take back home? Here's our report. That's right. We're at this local market to show you how Yankees are taking our cheer wine. There they are now. Why are you taking our cheer wine? Where in New York are you bringing it? Hey, we don't know nothing about that. We's from Charlotte. They don't sound like they're from Charlotte, Skip. Skip? After you, Stacey!

At the end, the reporter ends up in the trunk of the mobsters. Can I tell you something? Economical storytelling for 27 seconds. Indeed. I'm not even kidding. That's actually pretty good.

But it really...

And I can definitely hear somebody from the South saying, you don't sound like you're from around here. That is true.

But there's a real strong sort of, I don't know, post-reconstruction or mid-reconstruction vibe happening here that's almost a little upsetting. It is uncomfortable. Oh, sure, of course.

It plays on a terrible trope, but they fit a lot into 27 seconds.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like they were one take away from using the phrase carpetbagger.

Now, speaking of these, as Mike says, second-tier sodas, we have the Faygo boat commercial, which I'm so excited to tell you about, Veeves. Now, of course, we did listen to this full commercial last week, but I don't care. We're going to listen to it again because Luke's going to listen to the whole thing. I love the song. The first two lyrics are very confusing. We already discussed this. It'll make sense once you get past them. It's just some bad decision making as far as where to put the lyrics, I would say. But essentially, you just have a whole bunch of people on this big boat for some reason singing the praises of Fago. Everybody ready?

Yes, already. Is that the Yes? This guy from The Simpsons, he's definitely got that vibe, for sure. That pencil-thin mustache thing.

Everybody ready? Comet books and rubber heads Climbing to the treetop Falling down and holding hands Tricycles and red pop Pony rides and Sunday nights Roller skates and yo-yos Fairy tales and snowball fights Climbing through the window Remember when you were a kid Well, part of you still is And that's why we make Faithful

Faithful Drew Barrymore Yeah, that doesn't like Drew Barrymore. So anyway, I love that song. Although the song does start off confusing, right? If you don't know what they're getting at, you're like, why are rubber bands climbing up trees? But they're just listing a bunch of things that are associated with childhood, of course.

It's weird being a person who only knows about Faygo because of Insane Clown Posse. Yes, right? Being a Detroiter, the first I became aware of was that they would spray it on the crowd, etc. So to see this version of Faygo.

That was my reaction, too. I had no other context for Faygo, and I've never had a sip of it.

I have. It's actually totally tasty. I would bet that they have a million flavors that we were going through. Yeah, like any sugary soda product, it doesn't taste bad to the mouth.

It doesn't taste bad. It's not too sweet because it looks like it's very sweet.

I haven't had the red one that they're promoting on this boat, but I've had something that was kind of Mountain Dew-ish when I was in Detroit, and I found it to be tasty.

Do you remember what that one was called, Veeves? It wasn't Dew, but we went through all the Faygo flavors.

And they have Dr. Fago, which is their Dr. Pepper ripoff. And then there was one that was like Mountain Mist or something.

Something, yeah. Just looking at it, you knew that it was the one that was ripping off Mountain Dew.

Moo Mist, yeah.

Is that what it is? Moo Mist. So anyway, Vives and I were like, that's a great song. Into the tune. Why are they on a cruise ship or whatever the hell this thing is? Well, it's not a cruise ship. I love the specificity of this. This is from Teresa, who's writing in from Pennsylvania, but says, howdy. I'm from New Jersey, but I married a Michigan guy. As soon as you started playing the Faygo ads, I knew he would love them. I had never heard of Faygo until we met. Faygo was made in Detroit and has been since 1935. I thought maybe the boat that you were describing in the ad was the famous Boblo boat that I have learned so much about over the past few years from my husband and his family. We watched the ad, and my husband confirmed it. The boat cruised the Detroit River for many years, taking families to Boblo Island. an amusement park. My husband was also super happy to hear the song again. He couldn't believe I hadn't already heard about it. And she sent a note, or I'm sorry, a link to some more background on the boat.

So, Boblo Park or whatever is an amusement park. And Boblo Island is an amusement park. And the way to get there is you take the Boblo boat.

Doesn't that sound fun? Yes. And you were trying to sell like a soda pop where the message was relive your childhood. You're still there. Like, would you not use that boat?

I am into this.

Everything I love. I mean, I know that this is true for communities around the country. But there is something about the specificity of Detroit that remains that I find so charming and I'm almost jealous of because I think of like – it was the Detroiters. Was that the show, the Tim Robinson show? Yeah. And like that whole thing was based on these guys, Sam Richardson too, who were making local commercials. And that show was jam-packed full of all kinds of little jokes that only Detroiters get. Little true local references. Because they're references to other commercials that aired. I just feel like Detroiters have a little club. I agree. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I could see that, too, because, I mean, it's a city that has been through a lot and has had high highs and low lows and all of the stuff in between, and, like, that would really bond you. Yep. I agree. I also just feel like geographically, I mean, I guess you could say a lot of cities exist in their own kind of geographical sphere, but Detroit feels somehow like it's very much its own thing, that there's not anything else exactly quite like.

I can imagine if you grew up in Detroit, you are a Detroiter for life because it is because like you said, even if you move away, even if you move away. But like that, you they have suffered so much, but they have produced so much incredible culture and such a storied place in American history. And yeah, like it's an it's an incredibly you it's a it's a unique and special place that I do think there's a magic to Detroit.

More so than and I say this advisedly than being from Phoenix.

yeah like there are places i'll like look i'll say and not that there aren't you know cultural touchstones in atlanta and things and you know people can feel free to disagree with me but it's just not even even a place like atlanta doesn't have the same kind of um just like overwhelming cultural like let like doesn't live as large in the interior lives of the people who

are from there i don't think interesting way to put it i think there's a little bit of that with cleveland and maybe there's some bias there because i'm from there but you know i mean when you're from any place and maybe you get to our age you will share ephemera from the past together but i do feel like there's something about cleveland like i'm getting all these text messages about like big chuck and little john and of course i mean luke i mean you and camaro kev bonded the first time you met over the kind of old ephemera minutia of seattle minutia of seattle so every I think everybody does have it, and I love those kinds of things. But I do think you're right that there's something about Detroit and maybe some other communities, maybe that tend to be more hardscrabbled. I'm not sure. Probably like San Jose. Right. I was actually thinking, I was actually going to say like San Diego. Like it's probably not. Oh, were you being serious? Oh, I was joking.

I was trying to think of a city that I think has an identity that's very close to a lot of other cities' identities. Exactly. Right, right.

So anyway, for the last note here, we were, and Luke, I'd really like your opinion on this because I have been struggling, and this was a big thing we talked about last week. I've been struggling with these Kate McKinnon Verizon commercials because the very first one came out, and it was very stylized, and she's very kind of stylish and striking, and I just generally love her and root for her and was happy to see her in a big national commercial. She was playing a character that was kind of big, but, you know, it was enjoyable enough. But as this commercial campaign goes on, her character is just getting bigger and bigger and more and more annoying, and they're giving her the Verizon treatment where you take somebody that you generally like, you put them in a Verizon commercial, and the next thing you know, you kind of want to kill them. They're middle-ditching her. That's exactly what we said last week. Precisely. And this latest – I'm going to play this latest version, this holiday version.

Although I don't actually agree with you on the middle-ditching. I just, I didn't have a positive response, but I didn't have the negative response that I know you did, Andrew. I'm not sure what your take was. Yeah, no, Veeves from Middle Ditch, that is.

Yes, and as a matter of fact, I heard Middle Ditch, he was actually improvising as a character on Comedy Bang Bang years ago when those commercials were in rotation. And Aukerman or somebody else who was on the show made some joke about, well, you know, one of those things where, you know, you're in a role where people start liking you less and less. And this character was like, yes, I think I'm very familiar with that. But also that character was supposed to be sort of a Budinsky kind of character getting in your face. It wasn't supposed to be a super lovable character. Well, the thing about these is I think McKinnon is supposed to be lovable in these. But like the comedy is getting more physical.

I think one of the problems with it is it's unclear what the energy or what the emotion she's supposed to be eliciting is. Is her actual.

sister in one of them have you seen the one where there's someone yeah i think playing her sister and i was kind of revealed it yeah and what's the point of that too i bet you it is her sister because otherwise what's the freaking point yeah yeah pretty confused by all of them yeah yeah exactly um so anyway maybe i'll play a little bit of this one um in a second but megan says andrew i don't think you're wrong to be annoyed by the kate mckinnon verizon ads but i think your ire is directed in the wrong direction as genevieve said at one point that's not kate's fault and she's right while you were critically in analyzing the commercials frame by frame you were laughing quite a bit at some of her comedic choices the problem is the ad wizards who writes this stuff i give props to kate she's getting hella money i agree with that like yeah i'm glad that she's getting hella money i don't think it hurts her image at all it hurts verizon i don't know if i'm agreeing with megan all the way here but megan says it hurts verizon it makes their ad copy so much more obviously bad when they have a big name famous comedian doing that copy as best as it can be done so what's up with cell phone company advertisement strategy as a whole why do they have to pack so much official garbage in these commercials because number one it means nothing to me and number two i don't believe the stuff that i do understand and i gotta say that did make me i can't i can't fully go with megan on this because i do think that what i'm also reacting to is some of the physicality in these and her getting bigger and bigger with her kind of gesticulation but also it did make me kind of go back and re-listen to it more closely and it occurs to me so much of this shit that they say in these commercials you could quiz me immediately afterwards and I don't know what the hell they said

no with a gun to my head that actually even happened last week

I said they don't tell you what the four services are and you said well they actually listed the four services I was like you're right I I blanked it out at a certain point let's listen to this again

what's better than giving a better phone this holiday season oh i know i know giving a better phone on a better network how much better rank number one in network reliability 16 times in a row better the most awarded for network quality a whopping 27 times by jb power better yeah and horizon is ranked number one in customer satisfaction for small business wireless service better this rounds on me holiday better with 5g from america's most reliable network because everyone deserves better now i know i don't care where what happened to the

associates i don't care where anyone is ranked stop telling me that your service was ranked best

by jd power and associates well no she said jd power what happened to the associates i don't

know but i don't care i don't care i probably got tired of being anyone is anyone looking for the associates part of this dumb thing like does anyone has anyone ever bought a product because

of a jd power rank well no but here's what they're trying to do they're trying to essentially like flood the zone with information that makes you later not remember the specific things but think that's the best of that thing right so they're just trying to confuse you and kind of bamboozle you with so much positive information that you don't remember any of it specifically or individually but you generally think that seems like a phone that works but it creates the same

mild sense of irritation that i have from those chevy ads where they just go on and on about some dumb rankings that no one understands

or cares about. Well, those were J.D. Power and Associates. With Boyd Potsch. Before the Associates drowned off the boat. Under suspicious circumstances. I think Christopher Walken was on that boat. Can I say one quick thing? Wait, you're looking at me. Wasn't he supposedly on the boat? Where Natalie Wood died? Yeah, with

what's his name? Robert Wagner. Oh, Wagner. Yeah, Wagner's the one that seems to have been possibly At fault in that I apologize for harping on this And for presenting myself as somebody Who sort of knows from this industry Because again anything I've ever done In the world of ads is Very very low level But it's interesting something Megan said about the ad wizards Who wrote it because it kind of takes me back To the J.B. Smoove thing I was talking about Funnily enough in my experience It's less about the writing of these things and more about The editing because when you get Into the making of these things you film whatever the script is and then there's so much time arguably much more time where you're just trying stuff and then what they choose to use from the stuff you tried is really what defines what ends up you know being the thing we see as the viewers so what Kate McKinnon who knows how many things Kate McKinnon did that were great but we will never know because the editors which again are working for the ad agency that all gets cleared you know through that and then the client ultimately i mean really comes back to is it verizon yeah the fact that i don't remember the company is a pretty bad sign it is it is an extremely weird world until you've been in some part of it making it what ends up being the thing that gets on tv and again it's it's mostly an outtake that you didn't think they were going to use that some person fell in love with and was Like, love that.

crayon joke love that kate mckinnon doing a like you know like squatting down today i was doing a thing where they wanted me to do mind explosion and i filmed it and it will be in the thing she's

getting so much more manic i mean that's got to be a directorial choice though because i mean the first one she was a very big uh character who's stomping around in this one she's actually seems manic she's like hyperventilating when she goes to open the little red box like they clearly said

like bigger bigger bigger they're turning the water up on the frog which which have also had happened to me again in a much smaller universe which is okay the client loved and the client's there right they're at the shoot so verizon's there the agency's there her her agent is somewhere the agency is saying the client loved what you did in the last one and they just thought it was so great and they just they love that version of the character and they like they don't even say they were smart enough to say they don't say in the moment make it bigger but then once she's doing it they're feeding into going like oh that's amazing we love it even more energy and you just one day you wake up if you're kate mckinnon i think and you're just being that manic yeah i

believe you we got to wrap things up here but i actually want to ask you guys a quick question i don't know if this is a good good way to go out or not but um can you think of any pitch i mean going back 20 years now can you think of any pitch from one of these cell services that you can even remember like that that seems sticky to you like i'm thinking of one right now that i don't totally care about but it was actually a pitch that i'll tell you what it is if you don't mind me going first to give you time to think about it the pitch from oh genevieve i can't even think of which company it is but cricket no it's one button for when you fall down am i wrong about it being a self-service it's the one where they say whether you're a new customer or an old customer well

Well, they're all saying that now.

But there's one that they had the two people coming in. And I am a new customer. That's AT&T. That's AT&T.

With our girl, Malena.

Malena. I was trying to remember her name. I have to remember the company. I have to remember all these things. But that one actually, it illustrated something to me that, I mean, Kate McKinnon says that in this, but she also buries it in J.D. Power. And there's so much garbage in the copy that I don't even take anything away from these. I do remember, even though I didn't like them, I do remember the commercial where a new customer, an old customer face off because they both want to get a deal.

Yeah, that's an AT&T ad. We did talk about it. It's from the series that Melina Vaintreb, who's been their spokeswoman for a long time, is also now directing, I think. Oh, really? That's cool. Yeah. And I agree. I think that those are cleaner, generally speaking, than these. Just the copy is cleaner. Yeah. I'll tell you what pitch makes the most, is the stickiest to me for any service. And it's not one of the like big legacy ones. It's the Mint Mobile one, which Ryan Reynolds is just killing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I don't know what the sell is there other than you should, you know, I'm charming. So you should sign up for mine. Like, what is the pitch? It's super cheap. Just super cheap. Yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

This didn't move my needle in terms of buying anything. But the cell phone related commercial that has haunted my life is Can You Hear Me Now? Because I cannot say to someone when the cell phone becomes problematic. I say, are you hearing me? Are you accepting the sonic waves from my voice into your ear holes? The rest of my life is chasing.

No, you're absolutely right. And it's very clear. Did that come through okay?

And that is very clear with their pitching, right? Clearer service. It didn't make me want to buy the phone, but it makes me never be able to say, can you hear me now? I know. I'm with you, buddy. You can't sell anything.

Oh, hey, some people might be hearing this who actually haven't heard this spiel before. So I guess we should actually a good one to emphasize and not rush through it for a change. We have a voicemail line that you can call and potentially sing a jingle that you love, maybe from your childhood, maybe from something that you hear constantly now. We love hearing your voice. Give us a call at 607-444-5597. Again, that spells 607-444-5597 We also have a Facebook group

Yes, we are the After These Messages Facebook group Just ask to join There's just a couple of questions to prove that you're not a bot or a hacker I don't know if that's what you would be doing Why you would be trying to hack our Facebook group But just don't, I guess Stop hacking us Stop hacking us Come to the Facebook group It's really fun And it's a really good community there. Or you can email us at after these messages show at Gmail.

All right. That'll do it. Luke, thanks for doing so much for having me. Can we do this again next year, please?

Hey, same time next year.

Do you have anything you'd like to plug? You working on anything that you'd like the listeners to know about?

I've recently been cast replacing Kate McKinnon. Oh, interesting. Verizon ads. They said they wanted someone more manic, and I am here to deliver. Sounds good. Could you do that a little bit bigger? Alright, everybody. We'll talk to you next week. Hello, I'm Dale Baskets, Dean of Baskets Career College. I look forward to meeting you and getting your career off to a great start. In this competitive job market bcc will give you the upper edge you need to make it out there sports management cell phone repair learn how to become a legal guardian ice cream truck repair ice cream truck management learn to make homemade condiments all kinds of chutneys gerald learn how to personalize your license plate i did i just graduated with a degree in college management not only am i the dean i'm also a student power out Let's go.