Spiked: TV evening with movie and mockery

The other day I treated myself to something quite rare: an evening in front of the TV. Oh my God, what have I done to myself! That goes for the completely lowbrow movie with the completely lowbrow Til Schweiger anyway. But who watches Sat.1 after a long absence from television? It's our own fault. Disappointingly, this also applies to the commercials. After two commercial breaks, it was clear to me that the feature films must be so stupid that the viewer doesn't realize how idiotic the commercials are. Once you have lowered yourself to the subterranean level of the films, you won't switch over or switch off even if the commercials are brain-dead, or so the program strategists hope. Nonsense stuns. To ensure that the battle plan works, films and commercials virtually flow into one another. After a few minutes, viewers can no longer tell whether they are watching a commercial break or the (wrong) movie, and their soft-boiled brain stem can no longer manage to get their thumb or any other part of their body to press the off button. The ratings are over.

Couple ship capsizing

Til Schweiger disappears and a middle-aged, middle-pretty lady wobbles out of the white background onto the screen and says: "Today we live in the same apartment. We met at the same address." Then a half-beautiful, half-aged guy wiggles onto the screen next to the lady and smiles smugly. He has nothing to say. This thoroughly realistic scenario is an advertisement for the dating site Parship. Dear people, if a dating agency sets itself the simple goal that two half-beautiful and half-old people end up "living in the same apartment", then it could also simply find partners in shared flats or rooms in retirement homes. Moving out of a shared flat is also cheaper than getting divorced. And the two people in question would be spared a long process of getting to know each other and countless "what are you doing like this" interrogations. Oh, it's about more than a shared doorbell sign? Then the commissioned advertising specialists would do well to convey this content. They'd love to be clever. But: puns are not the last word in advertising.

Egg of the daus

Then a few animated eggs, a tube of mustard and a tube of mayonnaise make their grand entrance. The eggs cheer, the mayonnaise is amazed at the joyful frenzy, and the mustard explains that it has "added its mustard" - hence the great mood. Oh dear, flat joke producers were at work here too! Who would be tempted to buy a product like this? I don't want to imagine these people and hope that Til Schweiger will finally come back to me. And if I'm longing for Til Schweiger, I must be in a really bad way.

But before the dubious redemption comes, a blonde Polish housewife intervenes. She has wrapped herself in a white coat and introduces herself as Dr. Lefkowitz. In other words, she moves her mouth and a dubbing artist has come up with an ill-fitting text. Somehow it's about dandruff. Then a black-haired woman appears and the doctor presses a black piece of paper on the top of her head, which she then pulls up again, beaming with joy. Take a look at this commercial without sound ... "Head & Shoulders" - well, even the brand name was taken by some branding expert just before it was too late.

Somehow I must have dozed off. In any case, I'm not woken up by Til Schweiger, but by a voice chanting: "So fresh, so close, so ... SPAR." What a nightmare!