Pop culture: humour: lessons from Captain Obvious

Self-tutoring about messages and humour from popular culture: the tutor discusses a gem from Hotels.com

A recent ad on YouTube has me laughing, simply because of the incredible content it delivers in maybe 30 seconds. I’m sure many of my readers have seen it as well, which helps. It’s not my aim to relate what the ad says, but rather to explain why I find it so funny.

What follows is how I recall the ad.

To begin, you see a lady join two others in a convertible Mustang with its top down. I think she jumps from the pavement, over the trunk, into the backseat. (She makes this move look easier and more natural than I imagine it would be.) Next, she turns, looking backward, waving: “I’ll come back for you!” The Mustang speeds away.

Now we see to whom she’s waving: a solo lady with a suitcase. Next to her stands Captain Obvious.

“By the way…they’re not coming back for you,” he comments.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she replies, lightly crying.

We then see, in the background, the hotel she must be booked at, all by itself, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The point is that it’s so remote relative to the one her friends have chosen, they won’t bother to include her in their plans. Yet, supposedly, they were meant to be on the same vacation.

Captain Obvious points out that the reason the lonely vacationer got such bad advice is that she didn’t book with Hotels.com.

I usually tune ads out, but this one I couldn’t, for a couple of reasons:

1. I wasn’t sure, at first, why the traveler was being deserted by her friends.
2. It never occurred to me that friends planning a vacation together would book their hotels without consulting each other.

Once I’d made peace with those two ideas, I realized the irony of the ad, and how à propos it is. Notably, the ad conveys three truths that, while current, I find completely absurd:

1. People openly lie to their friends, and it’s “okay” to do it.
2. People know when their friends are lying to them, and don’t object. Rather, they facilitate it.
3. People will count on their friends even when they know their friends can’t be trusted.

We also see some saving grace from Captain Obvious: even though the misguided lady booked with another company, he doesn’t desert her.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.