I watched the movie everyone was talking about this past weekend just to see what all the fuss was about. You know the one: The Avengers Endgame.
I’m not so much a fan of action movies, but after several years of watching local television newscasts, it did give me an idea for a sequel.
I have long contended that the only purpose of local TV news is to keep the lawyer ads from bumping together but hell, they don’t even make an attempt at separating them anymore. We get an ad for Attorney A, followed immediately by an ad for Attorney B, followed by some ad for some medication for some illness I didn’t even know I had, followed by the disclaimer that’s longer than the ad for the medication.
In one recent ad, I learned that the side effects for one medication can be both constipation and diarrhea, insomnia and drowsiness, depression and exhilaration—all in a single pill.
My neighbor was telling me the other day that his baby’s first words were: “Ask your doctor about…,” Other symptoms may include…,” One call, that’s all,” and “I want to be your lawyer for life.”
It’s a good thing the kid can’t answer the phone yet or he’d be saying, “Don’t hang up til you’ve heard this exciting offer,” “We can reduce your credit card interest rate,” “Your student loan application is approved,” or “Congratulations, you’ve won a free cruise.”
The glut of lawyer and prescription medication ads reminds me of one of my favorite sitcoms, WKRP in Cincinnati, where the radio station’s sole source of income seemed to come from its “Red Wiggler Worms” fish bait ads.
If you’re like me, you don’t care to hear any of that crap and you damned sure you don’t want your afternoon nap interrupted by some robo or push poll call.
And let’s face it, I’m sure a certain attorney is proud of his daughter’s going off to college and that he wants his son to get a haircut. But seriously, are we that eager to have them foisted off on us when we’re trying to watch the news to see who got shot last night in Baton Rouge?
I mean, we have our own families to fuss over. After all, I have a grandson who needs a haircut and a granddaughter in college, but so what? Do you really need to know that Every. Single. Noon. and. Night. On. The. Local. News? Get the cotton pickin’ haircut already and quit badgering us about it.
And do we really want a “paid actor” pretending to be a satisfied client of the attorney who “got me $700,000” blaring into our living rooms uninvited when the graphic beneath his/her image is telling us (in oh, such small lettering) that he/she is fake, a fraud, a shill? I think you can check that box “no.”
So, here’s my idea for the plot to the sequel:
Recruit Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Falcon and any of the others, the names of whom escape me for the moment.
Their mission is twofold:
One team, we’ll call it Team A, is to infiltrate every local TV station in Louisiana, find, and destroy all those mind-numbing medication ads and those goofy attorney commercials—and I mean ALL of them (except for that one Baton Rouge lawyer whose ads make fun of other lawyers, especially the one about a rival lawyer falling off the top of an 18-wheeler—those I like). It seems there’re more personal injury attorneys advertising today than Trump tweets. And your doctor is sick of being asked about all those medications. Zap all their ads. It would probably take only one or two superheroes to carry out that task what with all the TV stations being in Louisiana.
The second team, Team B, has a little more difficult assignment: Find the boiler rooms whence all those robo calls are emanating. Many of them are offshore, so it may take a few days, but it needs to be done as expeditiously as possible and with as much fanfare, forcefulness, crashes, fire, and explosions as in a real action movie.
Once located, a two-man team would be all that would be necessary to carry out wanton destruction: Thor and the Hulk. On second thought, maybe Spider Man could also have a role here.
With Thor’s hammer and the Hulk’s gigantic fists, they would crash through the doors of the boiler rooms and set about wreaking havoc on computers, phones, stolen IDs, and any other electronic equipment while Spider Man could secure all the “representatives” (I prefer to call them scam artists) in a giant web to be delivered to a hungry South Louisiana alligator.
I think that would be a great sequel, but I’m open to any ideas from others to improve on my concept.
Louisiana Voice 
This post was amazing. I could care less about an injury attorney’s new puppy, how expensive his house is (the pictures tell all), his child’s haircut and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was once married to a local television director and sadly believe that these types of commercials keep the local stations in business. Having said all this I mute the ads when they come on. One time I counted all the lawyer ads in a one hour show and as I recall the number was 15.
Oh, come on. Cable TV is really great and quite entertaining in the evening; especially since I am a night person. After selecting the Easy Listening cable music channel, I enjoy reading my latest book! Occasionally I look at the screen to view a bit of the history of a piece of music. The only distraction is when I accidentally fall asleep while reading and listening.
As for the medical adverts, the side effects scare the hell out of me. They seem to leave out the caveat that death is a possible outcome.
I have great doctors [Plural]. I think the number of doctors one has is proportional to one’s age. Once there was an advert for a potion to cure toenail fungus so I asked my doctor if that would cure my single toenail problem. He told me that it would work. Then he recited a few related issues AND that I would need lab work each month to ensure I wasn’t going to be poisoned. He recommended that I visit the apothecary and purchase the bottle of liquid that you simply brush over the bad toenail(s) each day. Sounded good so I invested in a bottle that cost $5.00 and it worked; in less than a month. I still have a quarter of the bottle. Should probably throw it away since it is nine years old now.
There are certain lawyers who obviously are deficient in common-sense. Those are the ones who advertise in the book of yellow page listings touting their services. Even worse is that some buy the really expensive option, a stick on label attached to the cover of the book that offers a coupon for the consumer. Mine travels directly from my porch to the recycle bin in my garage. Somehow they don’t realize that yellow page volumes in the past were six inches thick and they are signing on for a book about 60-pages total. Even us old folks find who we need on the Internet.
Tom, perhaps you should tweet the story to Frump. Today’s news included a story that the feds are going to force big-pharma to include list price of any med on the advert screen.
Thanks,
Bob
Lighten up, Tom.
I like Peyton Murphy’s dog and I hope we get to see Gordon’s grandpuppy grow up [I am particularly pleased to learn Peyton does not make more money than his clients – so reassuring]. I used to work in the same building as Morris Bart’s office, but never got a glimpse of Morris in person, so it’s good we get to see him age on TV (ever so slowly). My favorite commercials are Spencer Callahan’s customized ones that make easy to pretend he is doing them live. I thought Dudley DeBossier was one person until the truth was revealed in their ads where they sometimes look disarmingly away from the camera as if they are really talking to somebody we can’t see while talking. It’s also fun to go to different cities and see the exact same commercials, but with different phone numbers to call.
As far a the pharmaceuticals are concerned, I have fun trying to figure out exactly what diseases some of them are for. It’s easier to grasp the side effects, up to and including death, that are so cheerfully, albeit rapidly, reported. Figuring out the diseases is almost as much fun as playing Jeopardy and I am sure my doctor would be happy to go over the list of them and explain each, in detail, if I could remember to make such a list…say, maybe I need some of that jellyfish stuff.
As you can see, I get a lot of entertainment value from these commercials – more than from most commercial television programs, themselves.