There’s this XFINITY (all caps are theirs, not mine, but I’m going with it) commercial that plays at least 15 thousand times during every NFL game. If you’ve watched even three minutes of football this year (so two minutes and 30 seconds of commercials and 30 seconds of actual play), you know what I’m talking about. It’s this one, called Hooking Up Grandma’s House, which sounds like the title of a rejected adult film:
All the reasons the commercial where that teen subtweets her grandparents is messed up
This ad for Wi-Fi and cable is the worst.
XFINITY
In case you don’t want to watch the whole thing, here’s a synopsis of the shortened spot (the extended one is above) that runs during most games. It starts with a delightful-looking pair of older people reading a tweet out loud. The tweet goes like this:
“Entering the gates of hell where there’s no Wi-Fi and no shows, AKA Grandma’s.”
We deduce that these two old people are the grandparents of the little brat who tweeted this dumb shit. They’re both like, “Oh no she didn’t!” — but in a smiley, “gosh-darn-kids!” kind of way. Then they call Comcast and trick out their den with super fast Wi-Fi and tons of cable channels.
Christmas rolls around, and their family, including the ungrateful granddaughter, comes over. We watch Grandpa — silly Grandpa! — say “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!” into his new remote control, which is apparently voice activated, so we’re officially living the future. The quote is from everyone’s favorite relatable, wacky Christmas movie Home Alone 2, so we can deduce that the robot inside the TV then ostensibly starts playing Home Alone 2. But the camera cuts away from the screen before we can be sure.
So, then the teen who did the Bad Tweet pokes her head — ensconced in a wool beanie to show that she’s alternative and moody — around the doorway of the living room. Based on her pleasantly surprised expression we can tell that she’s thinking, “Hot damn! Grandma and Grandpa got some dope WiFi! I love it here, now! Family and the holidays are great, and all because of XFINITY!”
Then the camera pans out from the snowy, cozy home located off a cul-de-sac (that’s just a guess; we can’t see the cul-de-sac, but if they kept panning out long enough I guarantee that there would be a cul-de-sac, because this whole thing feels very cul-de-sac-y). We marvel at the glowing Christmas lights and feel the satisfying closing of the commercial’s narrative arc.
I cannot watch this ad without experiencing the same kind of low-grade rage you feel when someone cuts in line in front of you at the deli and the deli person starts helping them before you can be like, “uh, hello, I was waiting for a sandwich?” Or when you think you have the perfect avocado and cut it open to find that the whole thing is black and stringy. Or — to use a more pertinent analogy — when your Wi-Fi cuts out and you’re technologically inept so you can’t fix it.
I have been dealing with said low-grade rage for almost an entire football season now, and I just have to get it off my chest. So, here are the reasons this commercial is messed up. Maybe this will be cathartic for some of you, too. I can only hope so.
- If Grandma and Grandpa know how to read Twitter, there’s no WAY they don’t have Wi-Fi. No one over the age of 75 who knows how to work Twitter doesn’t have an internet connection. Grams and Gramps aren’t, like, chewing through phone data just so they can read their granddaughter’s asinine tweets. Also, don’t they have email? All grandparents have email, and you need Wi-Fi to check email. Email is, like, the thing that makes you a grandparent. You don’t even have to have grandkids to be a grandparent, you just have to be older than 75 and have an email address. Boom, you’re a Nana or a Papa, congrats.
- This girl sucks. Look, I don’t know what the family situation is, here. Maybe Grandma’s a real piece of work, or maybe Grandpa goes nuts and takes his shirt off when he has more than one Maker’s Mark on the rocks. But judging by the wholesome vibes we’re shown, it seems like these are good ol’ American folks who just want to spend some time with their loved ones, and their granddaughter’s out there rudely subtweeting them.
- The grandparents’ reaction to this obnoxious tweet is to go out and get Wi-Fi for the granddaughter who sent it. I’m sorry, but that’s absurd! You do not reward this kind of behavior. If I were in their position, I would shut off the electricity altogether and make that ungrateful girl spend Christmas reading the Bible outside while wearing a hair shirt.
- This all brings me to the greater issue, here, which is that are too many commercials during NFL games. Speaking of grandmothers, I watched football with my grandmother yesterday, who is 95-years-old and a real firecracker. She, who never watches football, agreed that the ads are getting out of hand.
“They’re too many commercials,” she said as we watched the Patriots play the Broncos. “I hate commercials. I’ve never watched a game all the way through.”
Thirty seconds went by.
“Another commercial, oy vey,” said Nana. “It’s for beer. All my life I tried to like beer. People would say, ‘You live in Maryland! On a hot humid summer day, go get yourself one of those Maryland crabs and a cold glass of beer! You will love the beer!’
“So I did,” she continued. “And I threw the beer away. I like the taste of a mild wine. Your mother knows that. The kind that tastes a little bit like ginger ale. I do like a very pale flavor. And a vodka martini.”
The moral of this blog post is: Cherish your time with loved ones, don’t subtweet your grandparents over the holidays, and please, football producers, for the love of god: Ease up on the ads.
(Or maybe the takeaway is that this commercial is very effective, seeing as I just wrote a bunch of words about it. I think ... I think I just played myself. Congrats, corporate America. You win again.)
Correction: A previous version of this article stated that “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal!” is from Home Alone. It is not. It is actually from Home Alone 2.
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