The lingering eye contact is reportedly the thing that turned people off.
Funny, that one makes me laugh every time I see it; it’s a great portrayal of teenage awkwardness and hormonally-induced indiscretion.
Came in here just to mention the nasty, awful foot hands. D: Still can’t decide whether I want to gag or scream.
That, and I think the apparent lack of age difference also makes their interactions seem just a bit off. The original version of the commercial had a much larger age difference, with a little girl waiting for a much older big bro to get home just in time to wake everyone up with coffee for Christmas morning.
Heh, the thing here is that they are, of course, actors playing siblings and not actual siblings - and these particular actors appear to be demonstrating non-verbally that they are “into” each other.
It’s the disconnect between the plot (sibling affection) and the subtext (long lingering glances, that sort of thing) that makes it funny/disturbing.
The exact same commercial without that interplay between the actors would not raise an eyebrow.
I suppose the Folger’s commercial is one of those things that you either get, or don’t. I don’t - I didn’t see any eye contact or body language that expressed anything other than “little sister who loves her big brother and is glad to see him home for Christmas.” I thought it was kind of sweet. Especially when the mom and dad wake up and express exactly the same thing. He’s been away at college, or at his first real job - fill in the back story of your own choice, but now he is home.
The idea that it is incestuous or even inappropriate would never have occurred to me. Maybe I am naïve, but there is such a thing as innocent love between siblings. I love my sisters, and I am glad to see them after an absence. I’m sorry for people who don’t share that experience. So, honi soit qui mal y pense.
Regards,
Shodan
And since the original is somewhat dead and all, they really can’t use him for the commercials anymore.
I guess they could hold a seance but that would be creepier.
I wasn’t suggesting that. I was suggesting they could come closer to the original.
At this point, he’s more extra crispy than original anyway.
Raised in another thread some time ago - this advert for Tourism South Australia is set to Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand.
The combination of southern Gothic imagery, Nick Cave’s vocals, and South Australia’s reputation as the freaky sex killing capital of Australia make this a winner on all counts.
Creepy without Cave, creepier with it but everything is creepier with Nick Cave.
Well, they did bring him back from the dead recently - I guess they were out of new Colonels that week. It was as disturbing as you’d guess, but probably more for the goth kids than the re-animated Colonel.
Sorry but that isn’t a commercial… it is a sketch taken from a bit done by Bob and Tom (syndicated morning radio show). It even acknowledges this in the beginning of the clip.
I love my sister, too. But we would never act like these guys. From the beginning, the girl opens the door and just stares at him and smiles, much longer than most people would other than in romantic situations.
Then, once they get inside, she’s staring him in the eyes again. Not glancing at his eyes and at the coffee, but straight at him. And she delivers the “you’re my present this year” and does the slow staring thing again. And, when the parents come in, she’s still staring at him, not even looking aside to see them come in.
It just reads to me like she’s got a crush on him. And, honestly, I suspect the actress did have a crush on the actor.
My sister would never stare at me for very long at all.
Creepy or nauseating, the point is that the part she didn’t like was the kid being disrespectful to his elders, not his condition. You were the one who told us he had a condition. It’s hard to be making fun of him for it when you don’t even realize he’s anything but a normal kid.
The original is better.
This really doesn’t merit continuing to harp on, but let’s do anyway. The statement was two thoughts:
the first was “that kid in the first fios commercial creeped me out.”
The second was “The one where he lectures a bunch of women is nauseating.”
This very clearly means that she was referencing two in the series of FIOS commercials, the first of which “creeped her out” and the second one where he delivered the pitch for the merits of the FIOS service as “nauseating.” I’m not in the marketplace where these commercials are shown, so I don’t know which was the one that aired first. Maybe the one where he was playing video games with his friends? Maybe one of the others? In any case, the only thing I see that could be construed as “creeping her out” is his speech impediment caused by being without teeth and needing dentures.
No, the statement is three thoughts, all connected. You keep leaving out the final statement in your analysis. In doing so, I believe you misconstrue her post.
That last line is important, as it’s the one where she explains exactly what she finds creepy and nauseating. It’s not his voice. It’s not his looks. It’s that he (looks like he) is a little kid going around lecturing all these adults.
This isn’t that rare. I don’t know how often I’ve heard people talk of kids that act like little adults as creepy. I know people who found Fred Savage all sorts of creepy when he was a kid.
She says she finds the kid creepy. She says she finds a particular commercial he is in nauseating. And then she explains why. I don’t see any need to come up with an additional reason, let alone one that assumes she’s some sort of ableist bigot.
That said, I do appreciate you “white knighting” the kid, as they seem to call it these days. I think it’s good that your heart is in the right place. I just think you somehow misconstrued her post.
And (never let anybody say that I won’t keep digging at a small point long past the point of diminishing returns) I think that you are misconstruing it. There are a couple of key phrases here: the first one is “the first fios commercial.” The second is “the one where he.” This, to me, very clearly represents two different commercials. I don’t know which the “the first” that she saw is, but from the utterly unjustified amount of googling that I have done, it could be this one from September 2017, this one from November 2017, this one from December 2017, or this one from December of 2017. The one with a teen having the utter gall to share knowledge with adults(!!) doesn’t appear until January of 2018.
So you don’t know the preferred gender pro-noun of this child yet you are shoving them into a societal predetermined box based solely on the child’s looks? That is not a very enlightened approach to take. If I had done that I would take a good hard look at my own biases.
And as always we appreciate your White Knighting. Keep up the good work. 
I move we make this the Straight Dope’s new motto.
The Twilight Zone, Poltergeist II… toy telephones can be really creepy… though not as effective with Bill Mumy in the TZ as it was with Heather O’Rourke in Poltergeist II, or that nameless female toddler in the Irish Santa advert.