We are once again deep into the NBA playoffs, essentially the only time of year when I am actually subjected to extremely unhealthy doses of a distressingly small collection of television advertisements. I narrowly escaped a gruesome death last year. Then, it was at the hands of a strange Wingstop Jenga game, a mangled song by some Oklahoma City Thunder stars too rich to be having a discussion about phone plans, and of course, Burger King’s ongoing war crimes. Here are the ads that have been coming for my throat this time around:
5. Draymond Green’s Kia
This one has been kicking around for quite some time, but there seems to be a cumulative murderous effect at work here. The ad involves Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green driving down into the woods to retrieve a basketball, then racing a CGI wolf back up to his palatial woodsy estate, where his daughter (?) can immediately huck the ball back down a cliff into the woods. The idea, of course, is that driving your cool Kia through the beautiful woods is good, actually, even though the ostensible activity here seems to be to “play basketball,” but I have a bigger, crazy-making question: Why can’t Draymond Green afford a better-designed outdoor basketball court???
4. Ch/Krises Pratt, Hemsworth, and Jenner shill for Meta
There are a few of these floating around, where two charming Marvel heroes engage in various modern art-related foibles including eating a banana and knocking the head off a sculpture. The ads are for a Ray-Ban/Meta collaboration where one can talk to one’s glasses and potentially film and then delete one’s shenanigans; the various Chrises are fine, I suppose, this just goes here because of the Meta of it all.
3. Gemini doesn’t seem that helpful?
Perhaps the most ubiquitous commercials during this playoff run have been for Google Pixel and its associated chatbot assistant, Gemini. They make the list for sheer repetition, but also because the portrayals of Gemini seem… poorly thought out? “That hole is easier to fix than it looks,” the voice intones, just before some gamers’ television rips off the wall and makes it quite a bit worse. “Go back a step!” shouts a bedraggled dad attempting to assemble a driveway basketball hoop. “Okay,” Gemini responds, “let’s go back to step three.” And the dad again: “We’re only on step three??!” So, your robot buddy doesn’t seem to be helping you make progress here, not to mention the fact that your dipshit son is literally standing over you holding a basketball as if the hoop is just a bolt or two away from readiness rather than a pile of metal on the ground. Anyway.
2. Somebody make Burger King stop
In a monumental upset, these never-ending commercials to which we will not link featuring the worst songs the planet has ever experienced somehow do not top the list. That said, whoever makes them still belongs in the Hague.
1. Will Ferrell, please stop what you’re doing
I acknowledge that the entire conceit of Will Ferrell’s PayPal ad is that he is being weird and annoying. That does not, in fact, make him less weird and annoying. I have never muted a television as fast as when I see his head poke out from behind a lady to get this particular murder ball rolling. Kill the entire thing with fire.
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