DirecTV - The Whale

I'll tell you what's a funny puzzler; why do companies always beat every clever ad concept into the ground until only the lowest common denominator of the human race finds it appealing?  They had a good run with last year's Russian billionaire commercial ("Opulence?  I has it.").  That commercial was funny as hell, but, as is typical following a successful promo, they had to do a sequel this year that lost about 50% of its funniness.

Now, they've retired the Russian guy and replaced him with a Vietnamese rich guy instead.  They even kept the pacing of the Russian guy commercial exactly the same, with the women flanking the rich guy, the jokes coming on the same beats, and the addition of what would appear to be a heinous genetic alteration of an animal, used in these cases as a vanity pet for the ultra-wealthy.  You could almost substitute the audio in each commercial and have them match up.

As if they weren't already being duplicitous enough, they upped the ante of commercial plagiarism by making Vietnamese guy act very much like Ken Jeong (you know, the naked Asian dude in The Hangover) in his line of Adidas commercials featuring NBA players from last year.  DirecTV has apparently enlisted some lazy assholes in their marketing department in 2011.  DirecTV usually has some good commercials (like the ones where they replace dialogue in movie scenes with DirecTV propaganda or the 1000080P one from a couple years ago), but this half-assed attempt is disgusting at best.

To be honest, the commercial isn't that bad, it's just wholly unoriginal.  It's packed with racial stereotypes, which is kind of awesome because I'm all about people being offended.  The CGI on the panda is pretty damn awful, which I actually kind of like since I researched where to buy a miniature giraffe for like 7 minutes after the first Russian commercial, ultimately becoming heartbroken that they aren't real.  Although I wouldn't buy a big fucking panda anyway, simply because I don't want to clean up after the monster dumps that thing would produce.

I feel the need to mention that the background song is Public Enemy's version of "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield.  Strange selection, huh?

Final Grade: C-

Update: Technical difficulties precluded this post from showing up properly the last few days.  It is now restored to its full glory.  I apologize for the trouble.