Tonight, an Excedrin commercial aired during Invasion. It featured an intense-looking woman in an over-lit closeup. She talked very seriously about abolishing headache pain. But my husband and I recognized her and started laughing.
They showed a preview for next week’s episode, in which the same actress plays a cold-blooded killer, a nasty nutcase of an alien hybrid. I do not want to know what this character’s headache cure is. She’s carrying a knife that has something reddish-brown all over the blade.
It’s one thing if the show’s star is in a commercial for their next movie or something, but this was so bizarre, I’m surprised Excedrin would pay for it (probably they didn’t know). Have you ever seen such a weird case as this?
Dennis Haysbert is in several Allstate insurance commercials, many of which air during 24, where he played President David Palmer for the first four seasons. His deep voice and calm, controlling manner as the president made him an insurance pitchman you can see trusting. And hey, he has the loyalty of Jack Bauer!
Aside from my devotion to The Simpsons, 24 and Arrested Development, I don’t watch Fox a lot - but I swear they run the Haysbert AllState ads at a much higher frequency during 24. Maybe they’re trying to trade in on the recognition?
That was excellent when the commercial started airing in that context, but they were showing him in AllState ads for at least the two seasons prior to that.
The first time I saw that Exedrin commercial, it was during an episode of The West Wing. That’s Elisabeth Moss, and she plays one of Martin Sheen’s daughters on that show.
Since HBO doesn’t do commercials as such (I’m not counting their promos for their upcoming shows) we’ll likely never see the Flonase commercial on HBO where Agent Harris (from The Sopranos) is going on about how this product will keep your sexy looking babe from getting all snotty. But I can’t help but wince whenever I see it on commercial channels. Poor Agent Harris. Degradation.
I vaguely recall one of those Sonic dudes (the passenger) in some minor role on some show, but it didn’t seem abrupt. He’s yet to get much face time on TV other than that series of Sonic things.
Of course it’s no big deal to see athletes hawking something in the middle of a game where they’re also on the field. I just wish Peyton Manning had more taste!
Of course, there’s a difference between a commercial with a celebrity spokesperson (like Gellar or Haysbert) and a commercial with a “character” who happens to be played by the same actor as appears in the show as a different character. For instance, I’m almost sure I saw that commercial with Morena Baccarin as a woman who notices make-up on the sweater her roommate secreta borrowed played during an episode of Firefly.
That’s pretty funny. She must be taking all kinds of roles all at once.
I guess the question is, would you take that character’s advice for headache medicine? Because seriously, the woman in Invasion would cure a headache by sticking a rusty knife through somebody’s eye. And then she’d lecture people about it.
I was startled when I saw Mandy Patinkin playing Gideon in Criminal Minds, followed by Mandy Patinkin descending a set of stairs, pimping some cholesterol drug.
Hell, radio shows used to do that all the time. I still can’t look at Lipton’s “edgy” offering without thinking of the ads on The Inner Sanctum, with the surreal conversations between the morbid, corpse-obsessed, icy-voiced host and the cartoonishly cheery Lipton Tea Lady:
“You’ll have to excuse my friend’s lethargy, Mary. All the blood’s just run out of him.” “Ooh, I know just how he feels. When I feel like that, I like to brew a nice cup of Lipton tea. It always picks me right up, because it’s brisk!”
Or Phil Harris, who’d actually have shows about him and Remley trying to invent a new drug to impress Rexall, and testing it on the neighborhood brat, paraphrasing their slogan to cops during field sobriety tests – (“I’m as fine and pure and dependable as science can make me!”) etc.
tom cavanagh, who starred in that show ed, and is currently starring in that show love monkey (neither of which i have seen, i’m aware of their existence through promos only. not that there is anything necessarily wrong with those shows. i’m just saying…) has been shilling for everything from beer to banks in commercials for the last decade or more. (though i gather the commercials only air in canada.)
Jeffrey Tambor just appeared in an insurance commercial during Arrested Development. I don’t think any of his Planter’s Peanut ads have ever run during the show, but he does those too.