Commercials are largely irrelevant in the days of DVR. This is a blessing. But sports — advertisers have learned — are still in-the-moment, and so we’re forced to sit through car, beer and gadget commercials ad nauseam that become Twitter fodder and finally the inexorable leaky faucet that drives us insane during TV timeouts. Except we’ve already watched this Guinness commercial 5 times and it’s still re-watchable.
This in no way an endorsement of the product being advertised, but the commercial is fantastic. A bunch of guys playing wheelchair basketball with the intensity we want out of our favorite pro players. Only if NBA players ran 40 minutes a night on a back-to-back, could they match the enthusiasm displayed by the guys in the ad. And yeah, it’s syrupy. Cinematic Orchestra’s “That Home” lilts underneath the sounds of crashing chairs and strained hollers while a narrator’s baritone utters one-word epiphanies “Dedication” and “Loyalty,” before crescendoing with “Friendship.”
It’s hokey, but we don’t care.
Then it ends, and the players get up out of their chairs, save one friend who is in a wheelchair all the time, before they all congregate at the bar to enjoy an Irish dry stout. That’s something we don’t mind toasting again and again.
If companies bring more of these commercials during the NBA season, those three TV timeouts in the fourth quarter will piss us off at least 4.5 percent less.
And as always, drink responsibly.
What do you think.
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