‘I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!’ Yeah, that line became a joke about five minutes after it was first broadcast 21 years ago. (Seems longer.) Life Alert is using it in their commercials. Only now they’ve added ‘I need help!’ to the end. The line is still a joke.
Seriously, guys. It’s a bad line. Get yourself someone who can act, a director who knows how to direct, and someone who can write a good 30-second story. I know, I know, ‘But it’s a memorable line!’ Doesn’t make it any less lame. Hell, the home alarm commercials are better.
I hate the Home Alarm commercials with the “stalker” and “lurker” home invaders, respectively, for different reasons. Those commercials crossed a line that is more and more endemic of Commercialism and Fascist (corporate) Propaganda. They have gone to a place that we can never cross back from. The Fear Pandering must stop in the USA, it is creeping in, and everybody is becoming irrational and militarized, turning countrymen against countrymen. Banning fucking Salt… that’s some democratic health fascism for ya… the republicans aren’t solely to blame.
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” is the line that everyone remembers, but I also remember a guy in the ad who was clutching his chest and moaning “I’m having chest pains!”, which was equally hilarious to me.
Ummm… who are these people saying “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” and “I’m having chest pains!” to?
Are we to believe the old lady on the floor sees her first husband Gerald gazing beatifically (or, knowing Gerald, tauntingly) from heaven? Or that Infarction Guy can somehow see us?
Or is the message “Life Alert™ : the perfect gift for insane, delusional seniors”?
The latter option is some pretty honest demographic marketing.
It’s a fuckin’ inured and cynical IT operator at some callling center in Connecticut who offers professional arguments and poo-poos to betsy Jane who has pulled her “cord” for the 10th consecutive time that week> Or its some poor fucking dude, who realizes somebody is in their dying moments or extreme crisis, and they offer cold corporate condolences and worthless assurance from a script… rather die cold and alone than to have my last heard words be that corporate motherfucker guiding me to the light, “Hold on Mr. *******, help is on the way.”
I know this is probably threadshitting, but…what would you have the old lady say, exactly? “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” isn’t exactly Shakespeare, I agree, but it’s what someone would actually say to a Life Alert operator were they in that situation.
(Life Alert, or maybe one of their competitors, saved my grandmother’s life. Twice. I don’t find their ads so funny anymore.)
I remember them showing the guy sitting up in his chair and stating “I’m having…CHEST PAINS!”
My friends and I thought the commercial was hilarious; I can remember my mom yelling at me for laughing at the commercial. I think it was something about the overly dramatic delievery of the line that made it so amusing.