Okay, so I’ve been avoiding this for too long. It just seemed too obvious, I guess. But if you want to embrace life, truly embrace it, you have to pause every now and then and recognize true genius when you see it. Even when it’s obvious.
This is the greatest television commercial I have ever seen.
That’s the commercial for the dating site Farmer’s Only, and it’s so brilliant – so dazzling – that, like a great novel, I’m constantly discovering something new and unexpectedly luminous in it. What I think makes the Farmer’s Only commercial even better than legends of the past like the Cozy or The Hawaii chair is that it reaches an extraordinary high, then somehow hits another higher point, then reaches an even higher point again, and then finally, when you believe the volume is all the way up to 10 and there’s no place left to go, goes one higher still. Our story begins with three completely unattractive people who are apparently supposed to be farmers, although realistically they seem to have escaped from the set of 1978’s Hee Haw. One is wearing suspenders and looks about 55. I’ll call him Horatio. A second wears a green cap, boots, has a belly button over his jeans and stands next to a dog. For our purposes he will be Cinna. A third, apparently the smart one, wears a red cap and seems wistful in a Gomer Pyle-esque way. Let’s call him Gomer.
It’s a bold move to start a commercial seemingly aimed at farmers by casting three actors who resemble the horrible and insulting cliché image of farmers that could have been created by someone who has never been outside of Los Angeles. But the genius has only just begun.
The “farmers” are of course standing in front of a barn. Our story begins with Horatio telling a story.
Horatio: So I’m reeling her in, and that fish was so big.
Horatio extends his hands so that they are about 20 inches apart.
Cinna: No, it was only so big.
Cinna extends his hands just eight inches apart. The camera pans to the resting dog.
Gomer (while looking at his cell phone): I need to find a nice country girl.
Horatio leans over to look at this magical device of Gomer’s. Cinna points at it suspiciously.
Cinna: On that thing?
Gomer: Yes. Farmersonly.com.
The camera cuts to a shot of Gomer holding the phone. It shows a young woman in shorts looking at us, but apparently also fishing. Anyway, she has some kind of fishing rod in her hands.
Horatio: Wow, she sure is beautiful.
Cinna: And she also loves fishing!
The camera cuts to the dog, which seems to want to see the girl too, but can’t get anyone’s attention.
Gomer: Guys, I found a date. I have to go.
Gomer leaves.
At this point – we are now halfway through the commercial phase – we have already achieved a fairly high level of excellence. Let’s say you’re targeted by Farmers Only. Let’s say you’re a country woman who doesn’t really care about the city, but loves the city simple American life and would like to meet a nice man with similar interests, pastimes and passions. There are many millions of people like this, lonely people who, through no fault of their own, keep hitting dead ends when it comes to meeting people. Here’s a dating site that might suit their lives, a dating site without pretensions – it’s called Farmers Only, for crying out loud. This really could be the place.
Okay: Can there be a bigger nightmare on earth than putting your profile on the dating site and making these three guys think about it?
But the commercial has barely warmed up. Gomer has left. And we are left with Horatio and Cinna in a familiar scene, in the back of the barn.
Horatio: I’m telling you, that fish was so big.
Again he places his hands two feet apart. The camera cuts to Cinna, who seems changed somehow.
Cinna (with a new thing in hand called a computer): “What’s the name of that dating site again?”
Yes, you know women are happy everywhere. THIS GUY figured out how to use a computer. But now the advertising is exploding. There’s the rosebud scene in Citizen Kane. There’s the final scene in Sixth Sense. There’s the appearance of the last angel in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and the scene where Boo Radley comes to the rescue in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. There is that extraordinary moment in the Bible when Moses asks the name of God in a roundabout way, and from the burning bush God said to Moses, “I am who I am.”
Cinna asks, “What’s the name of that dating site again?” And… well… three amazing words.
The… dog… speaks.
Dog: Farmersonly.com.
I have come to realize that I have spent much of my life looking for an answer. But I never knew the question. As I approach my 47th birthday, I finally know what I’m looking for. The question is, “Why is that dog speaking in the Farmer’s Only commercial?” Why? What combination of genius and madness and inspiration and drunkenness forced the creators to make the dog speak? How was that pitch meeting? What were they going for? How did they find a talking dog?
I’m no closer to an answer now than I may ever be. And if the commercial ended here, it would be beautiful, downright magnificent, but no, it moves forward, because as Horatio and Cinna look in surprise at the dog and then at each other – apparently their dog had never had anything interesting enough to say – a sweet song begins.
You don’t have to be lonely. At Farmers Only dot com. Okay, wait a minute, that song is, what, 11 words long (assuming Farmers Only dot com is four words). That’s not a lot of words. So how could they smell one of the eleven words so completely? Shouldn’t it be: “You don’t have to be lonely WITH Farmer’s Only dot com?” Wouldn’t that be the point: that with Farmer’s Only you don’t have to be lonely? But that’s not what it says. It says, “Bee.” Why would anyone be lonely at Farmer’s Only? Is this a worrying possibility? And if so, do they really need to advertise it in the commercial?
And so ultimately we think we’re at the peak of Olympus with that song. The rural people have overcome their fear or loneliness as well as their technology. The dog has spoken. The song has been sung. We’re sure it’s over. But no, not here: there is still a push. There is the piece de resistance.
And that is: the slogan that appears when the commercial ends.
“CITY PEOPLE JUST DON’T GET IT!”
It’s almost the perfect commercial. There’s only one way I can imagine it would be better. And that is the case if the last words had been: “Les citadins ne comprennert tout simplement pas.”
That’s my best attempt (with the help of the brilliant reader Mr. Furious) of “City People Just Don’t Get It” in French.
#dont #lonely