TV Review: "Mr. Sunshine" / Groupon

I had intended on reviewing Matthew Perry’s latest cancelled television program this morning and took a surprising left turn. Come with me on a journey through the career wasteland of an actor who got really lucky one time, and freshly shorn vaginas that hate the environment.
The smirk of a son of a bitch who knows exactly how lucky he is.
The smirk of a son of a bitch who knows exactly how lucky he is.

Let us begin with the debut of “Mr. Sunshine”, a show that you’d better hate now while you’ve still got the chance. From the writers who heard about “Becker” and saw almost half an episode of “Parks and Recreations”, we get “Mr. Sunshine”, featuring Matthew Perry playing Matthew Perry as a vaguely defined San Diego sports arena muckity muck. Finally answering the age-old question “Why don’t I care about who orders all of the peanuts in a place like that?”

The main problem with “Mr. Sunshine”, aside from it being shown to anyone not responsible for making sure that those involved never got another job in the entertainment industry ever again, is it’s half-hearted attempt at “edge”. It feels like all of the interns working on “Community” rose up and decided that they could make their own, edgier show if they could just raise enough money to rent a “Friends” star for an afternoon.

There is absolutely nothing special about “Mr. Sunshine”, except for how precisely it has all of the pieces of a successfully failed show: the uppity lead who will spend a half a season learning a lesson and then never changing again, the functionally retarded buffoon man-child who can say all of the writers most pointless non-sequitors, and the Allison Janney as Jane Lynch playing Alec Baldwin.

Halfway through this waste of everyone’s time, I was actually worried about how I would formulate a review of a show as bland and predictable as a beige whoopee cushion, but then I was treated to a pleasant surprise in the form of one of Groupon’s new commercials.

I’m not going to bore you with all the details, but the punchline was “I got a super great deal on a pussy waxing!”

Perhaps I SHOULD elaborate.

It's like a raped tropical rain forrest, in her pants.
It's like a raped tropical rain forrest, in her pants.

I, like most people who own a television, saw the debut of Groupon’s new ad campaign during the Super Foot, Bowl Match Contest last Sunday. Now, the name of the game in Super Bowl advertising is “Zow!”. That is an actual industry term and is in no way me simply belittling the proud men and women whose job it is to try to trick us into purchasing shit we don’t need. The Super Bowl is, for lack of a more exactly fitting term, the Super Bowl of advertising. A thirty-second commercial spot during the game costs anywhere between 14 and 700 quatrillion Dollar Bucks. That’s big time money, and it is so much because for that four-hour block every single person, living or dead, is tuned into the game and just sitting on shit piles of money that they need to be told what to do with. It’s a true science fact. So the way you make your mark on an audience of that size is by doing something either very clever, or very stupid, and since we are in a very real clever drought, stupid usually rules the day.

So it turns out that there was a group of people who told viewers that they should have been offended by Groupon’s new “Suck it, World” ad campaign. And while I thought that openly mocking the plight of a mostly peaceable people, was certainly an interesting choice by the people at a website for coupons to flight simulator classes and restaurants that people don’t go to, I didn’t really think much else about that specific message because I don’t generally put a lot of curry in my mouth. But this ad, oddly enough, did get my attention.

So the basic set up is the same, a sort of mock public service announcement with your standard insincere run down of something that we should all really care about if only we could get 50-90% off of our not caring. Elizabeth Hurley in a bath robe pretends to educate us about the Brazilian rain forest being stripped bare of trees, like so many labia follicles being torn from mother Earth’s tenderest of flesh. But that’s okay, because she got a voucher for a discounted cunt deforestation of her own, so YAY!

Now, it’s really no secret that America doesn’t give a shit about the rest of the world, but is it really necessary to rub the planet’s collective nose in your freshly de-pubed twats of uncaring? And why are so many people pretending to be offended by being reminded that they don’t care. We knew you didn’t care about Tibet or the rain forest before this commercial, so what you’re really upset about is someone pointing out the fact that you don’t care. You see, as long as everyone doesn’t care equally we’re all right, but the second someone reminds you of something horrible and mocks you for not caring about it, it suddenly becomes the only thing in the world that you’ve ever wanted anything done about. For a second, until everyone forgets and we can all go back to comfortably not caring again.

So cut it out commercials. Stop making people feel bad that they don’t feel bad. People don’t watch horrible new Matthew Perry television shows to be told they don’t care enough about once proud, respected institutions that have since become pathetic, pitiable charity cases!

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