I’ve been seeing the ad for the new TV series Speechless. And it kind of annoys me.
The premise of the show is there’s a family where one of the kids is handicapped. And the mother does this big “mama bear” thing to defend her child.
To illustrate this there’s a scene where the family van pulls into a handicapped parking space and a woman in an adjacent car yells at them that they don’t have a handicapped placard. Then the father dramatically opens the back door of the van and the mother wheels out the handicapped boy and they all join in on mocking the woman in the car.
(I can’t find the ad that features just this clip but it’s included in this longer trailer.)
The first time or two I saw it, I went where the writers wanted me to go and I was on the family’s side for defending their son. But then I realized I was cheering for the wrong team. It was the woman in the car who was in the right and the family who were in the wrong.
Think about it. The woman didn’t complain about handicapped parking or handicapped people - she was defending the concept of handicapped parking to a driver who, as far as she could see, was misusing the spot. But the family - instead of explaining the situation - treated her like shit.
The scene shouldn’t have ended as it did, with the handicapped kid flipping off the woman. Instead it should have ended with the woman flipping off the family and saying “Fuck you all. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never speak up on behalf of handicapped people again. The next time I see somebody taking a handicapped parking spot, I’ll give them a thumbs up.”
Trying very hard not to TS, here, but as neither of those is worth much annoyance or outrage, and the combination exponentially less so… I’d bet that what specifically annoyed you was at least partially intended by the ad creators.
Whether the response is “Hey, new TV show!” or “Aw, poor little kid” or “What a bunch of @$$holes”… it “made ya look,” right?
Based purely on the description of the ad, then yes, I agree that it doesn’t hold water.
However, it is possible that the ad shows an edited version of the actual scene in the episode, and that in the actual scene the hero/villain dynamics are clearer? One can hope?
So, then it would be a weakness in the ad editing, and not the show itself.
Nitpick…promo, not ad (unless it’s airing on a network other than the one that’s airing the show. Then it’s an ad.)
So she was complaining because they didn’t display the placard? Ivylad’s been fined for Failure to Display (once he showed the handicap card, he just had to pay a smaller fine.)
Who writes the stuff? Obviously the woman in the adjacent parking space couldn’t see a disabled placard, but she also wouldn’t be able to see their disabled/ handicapped license plate.
I’m pretty sure the idea is that the complaining woman jumped to conclusions before seeing if someone in the van needed to use the handicap spot. The way the promo is edited we can’t tell if the mom and/or dad put a placard in the window after they parked, or if there is a handicap license plate on the back of the van (there wasn’t one on the front plate).
Same here. The threat of a citation on the signs isn’t for not having a handicapped person in the car; it’s for not displaying the placard or having the plates.
And before anyone nitpicks me, there’s a separate infraction of displaying the placard and NOT having the handicapped person in the car. That one isn’t being discussed here.
Maybe the intent of the ad is to show that Driver’s character tends to go off half-cocked and be overprotective rather than merely protective? Just because she’s the lead character/protagonist doesn’t mean she’s right or even nice (cough! Seinfeld cough!).
I realize this is a trivial point to get annoyed over and I assure everyone I’m not losing sleep over this. But I think it’s an interesting example of how TV series and movies manipulate us. We root for one side and boo the other based mostly on how they are presented rather than on what they actually are.
I also smirk a bit at ad-v-promo. What the industry calls them internally, for its own reasons, doesn’t make them two different things. It’s irrelevant to the viewer who’s paying for them.
The dad is John Ross Bowie, who some people know as Kripke from The Big Bang Theory. I know him from his days of doing improv at the UCB Theater and always liked him, so I’ll give it a try because of him. Earlier in the summer, I saw a play that he wrote about The Ramones working with Phil Spector.
I follow him on Twitter, so I’ve been seeing a lot of his own hype for this series. He’s been sharing the promos but also articles written about the show.
Regardless of what the greater context of the show might be, the ad still has to stand on its own. If it’s not accurately depicting what happens in the show itself but is edited to get viewers to watch the show, then that’s just an added level of audience manipulation.
I think one of the story arcs of the show (it certainly was one in the premiere) is to have Driver learn to be less obnoxious. Even her son thinks she’s trying too hard; in the general sense, she’s right, but she’s coming on far too strong (the gag about the cops recognizing her license plate is a good one).