Digressions: My Life in 500 Words or Less

OK, this is no surprise, but TV is not reality. In fact, escapism is one of the reasons many watch TV. That goes for TV advertising. In a world filled with disappointing services, complicated relationships and frustrating products, TV ads promise us all things bigger, better and shinier.

Still, like everything else, TV advertising is subject to taste and as prone to failure as anything else. I am reminded of this now and again as I navigate the airwaves

Case in point, sometime in the past year or so, a couple of commercials stood out to me because of their inaccuracies, whether intentional or not.

One had a little girl asking the TV audience if they thought she was cute and asking us to note her dimples as proof. The problem was this: she had no dimples. Really. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

This raised some questions. Did the production crew just not know what dimples are? Was the kid supposed to be non-dimpled so the TV audience would come to the conclusion she was not as cute as she thought? Will the girl eventually grow up to be an insecure adult who will get dimple implants?

The commercial irritated me. Whether or not it was intentionally using the dimple reference as some sort of device, it just didn’t work, as far as I’m concerned.

Another example was a commercial for a fast-food restaurant that mentioned how cool convertibles are. A car appeared in the scene to underscore the point. The problem was this: it wasn’t a convertible. It had only a moonroof, which opened up to the night sky as if proving it was a convertible.

Was this a poorly-conceived joke? Or was this ad produced by the only people on the planet who don’t know what a convertible is? Or was the car in the ad really a convertible in disguise, unwilling to take off its top unless the scene was crucial to the plot and tastefully done?

Regardless of the answer, it just made the company seem … well … dumb.

Then there are a few TV ads featuring obnoxious children. Here again, as I mentioned earlier, these spots are subject to taste and perception, but when a child calls a parent who is trying to apologize for missing a game a “dork” — as in one commercial — it just comes off as disrespectful and ruins a nice moment.

Or when a parent tells his daughter to “make good choices” and is told by said daughter: “You make good choices” the child’s reply comes off as snotty. It made me wish the father had replied: “Too late. I have you for a daughter.”

But then that might be just me.

Sure, I’m aware some TV ads are intentionally annoying so they will stick in the minds of potential customers. Unfortunately that’s the true reality of TV advertising.

And that’s why I like the reality of the remote control.