I think I understand what Butterfinger was trying to do with this commercial. They were trying to push the envelope a little bit to get people all riled up, and have a little fun in the process, and it looks like it all worked out for them. Great. Wonderful. But here’s the thing: trying to tell a full story in 30 seconds is hard, and you often end up taking some leaps to get from Point A to Point B to Point C. If viewers take the commercial at face value, like normal people, this is fine. However, if they decide to double back the next day and poke around in the areas that the plot leaped over, they might start noticing things. Strange things. Potentially disturbing things. Things that could turn a fun commercial about candy into a tale of con men going on a cross-country spree of fraud and sex crimes.
My point is that I have a few questions.
What is going on here?
Chocolate and peanut butter are married now?
Why is chocolate so upset?
I know she says it’s because their relationship is getting dull, but it seems like there might be some very real, very heavy stuff just under the surface there, doesn’t it?
Do you think peanut butter has been having an affair with his high school sweetheart, jelly?
Ugh, what a dog, right?
Or do you think it’s something less deliberately malicious, like maybe he’s been staying home a lot lately and refusing to go anywhere because parents of children with nut allergies shoot him dirty looks whenever he’s out in public, and it makes him feel like a leper, and the whole thing is starting to suffocate her?
Has chocolate been all “You said you’d take me to Paris!” only to have him reply “I CAN’T EVEN GO ON THE PLANE! PEOPLE COULD DIE! DO YOU WANT THEIR BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS? GOD, SOMETIMES I WISH YOU WERE MORE LIKE JELLY!”
She probably got real quiet when he said that last thing, huh?
Do you think all of it drove chocolate to have a brief, torrid fling with strawberries, like the kind you read about in romance novels?
Is that why they’re in therapy now, because they both feel trapped inside the marriage and have started acting out sexually, but they really want to give it one last chance before they call it quits?
What is the deal with this therapist?
Did he just suggest they consider having a threesome?
Is that really anything resembling a responsible suggestion for a couple you’ve been working with for all of 15 seconds?
I mean, he did jump to that awfully quick, right?
Do you think that’s just his solution for everything?
Like, when he goes to Dunkin Donuts for his coffee on the way to work and they’re out of low-fat blueberry muffins, but they tell him a fresh batch will be out in five minutes, do you think he looks at the cashier and is all “Vhat if you vere to try something different?” before going on to suggest that the cashier should consider bringing a strange second or third party into his or her bedroom?
Or do you think he just says “Oh, okay” and gets a donut?
Does he have a reputation as “the threesome therapist”?
Has he been the subject of one of those reports on Dateline where they start out all “One therapist has some pretty crazy ideas about how to lower the divorce rate in this country. And you know what’s even crazier? He might be right,” but then the second half of the report is respected members of the field lining up two at a time to dispute his findings and call him a loon?
If you saw that report, and had been to a bunch of other therapists to try to repair your broken marriage with nothing but a dented savings account to show for it, would you consider seeing him anyway?
Does he even work with regular people, or does he only work with food combinations, like chocolate and peanut butter here, or, say, a bagel and cream cheese?
How does it work with foods that go well in lots of pairings, like how cheese is great with ham and with eggs and with macaroni and on a burger and on a pizza?
Does that mean cheese is kind of, you know, easy?
If you’re paying this doctor for therapy, and he’s providing the third party for the purpose of sex, doesn’t that make him a pimp?
Or do you think he’s real slick with the language like those escort ads in the last few pages of independent newspapers to skirt legal liability?
Wait a second… was the dude in the Butterfinger shirt hiding behind the chair the whole time?
What the hell is going on here?!
Are these two just a couple of perverts?
Is the doctor faking that accent so people will associate him with Sigmund Freud and treat his freaky-ass suggestions like sound medical advice?
IS HE EVEN A DOCTOR?
Or is he really just, like, some dude named Larry from Indiana?
Do you think this is a scam he and the guy in the Butterfinger shirt run?
Like, do the two of them pop up in a quiet little town somewhere, open a “doctor’s office,” invite themselves into couples’ beds as many times as they can before people start to get suspicious, then POOF vanish in the middle of the night and run off to start it again in another town in the next state over?
How many times have they pulled this off?
Do you think they switch roles each time they get to a new town, or do you think that the fake doctor gets off on the non-sexual part of the ruse?
You know, like a power thing?
This is some real SVU sh*t right here, huh?
If this were an episode of SVU, do you think Ice-T would be all “Wait… you’re telling me these sick freaks get their kicks from tricking couples into sleeping with one of them?” like in that one John Mulaney bit?
Do you miss Detective Stabler?
Do you think Dick Wolf and NBC ever considered making a show called Law & Order: Overworked City Attorneys that focused on the mountains of lawsuits people probably filed against Stabler during his run on the show?
Like, literally just an entire series about lawyers reading over the accusations, saying “Dammit. Again?,” and cutting six-figure checks to wrongly accused saps with brick-shaped lumps on their heads?
But anyway, in all seriousness, what the hell is Butterfinger even doing with all this?
I mean, did they really spend millions of dollars on a Super Bowl commercial only to have their brand represented by a sex-crazed character — who may or may not be a fugitive — who looks like someone whose house you’d tell your kids to skip on Halloween?
Is that worse than the commercial from last year where M&Ms had one of their anthropomorphic candies set up another one to be eaten alive by a flame-haired psychopath while he screamed for help?
It’s close, right?
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO CANDY COMMERCIALS?
What’s next, a Snickers commercial directed by Lars von Trier?
Potential multi-state fraud and sex crimes investigations aside, isn’t it a little strange how quickly this couple got on-board with the idea of inviting an excitable unshaven stranger in a shiny track suit into their marriage?
Maybe they’re the real freaky ones here, huh?
I don’t know. This is all very strange. I just wanted some candy.
