It is Sunday night and you are getting ready to sit down in your favorite spot to watch Desperate Housewives - or, if a nighttime soap about women and their "problems" is a bit too girly for you, Mr. Macho, then Sunday Night Football. You probably have your usual provincials: slippers, pj bottoms and your favorite TV food.
The programming starts and you enjoy the illegitimate affairs and exciting touchdowns while you relax and get in that last little bit of the weekend before Monday. The commercials cut in and you see this group of four people in a car, discussing a movie they are coming home from. Ladies, you laugh at the fact that the woman says she saw her boyfriend crying because you know your boyfriend does the same thing, and guys, you start to think about how many passing yards Peyton will get in tonight. Suddenly, your thoughts are shattered. The commercial has gone terribly wrong, as another vehicle has just smashed into our new friends' car.
I do not know about you, but I do not really feel like watching Eva Longoria cheat on her husband anymore.
We have all seen these commercials for the Volkswagon Jetta where the characters are driving along, having a seemingly innocent conversation before some huge crash takes place. It is always unexpected, and after you watch these commercials, they will most likely dampen your mood.
Besides the Jetta, other commercials are adopting a more shocking approach to getting our attention.
There is a public service announcement where somebody is video recording a pool party when they realize that a child has fallen into the pool and drowned.
There is another where an old lady is left by herself while her grandchild who was supposed to be having dinner with her is out getting high, and there's one where the mother is sleeping with her baby and it suffocates.
OK, I get it. The Jetta is a superior vehicle and I have a chance of living when a truck comes plowing into me at 40 mph; don't leave my children unattended by pools or they might die. My grandma loves me, so I should not go out and get too stoned to remember to call her, and if I have a baby, I should not lay on top of it or it might not be able to breathe.
I just want to know if it is necessary to ruin my regularly scheduled programming in order to tell me these things.
It is true that if a commercial is eye-catching people might be more apt to remember it. It is also true that people remember funny commercials, but I guess they have not found a way to make a 4-year- old drowning in a pool hilarious.
I am curious, though, as to how many lives these things are actually saving. While it might affect me to think of my 76-year-old grandma sitting at home by herself, I doubt very much that the punk getting too stoned to spend time with his family cares at all. Same thing goes for the parents who have preschoolers but no fence around their pools and the idiots who sleep with their newborns on couches.
I do not see these commercials as beneficial.
They are nothing more than a new approach to advertising, meant to scare us into doing and buying the things that they promote.
When I watch television, I want to be entertained.
What I do not want is a reason to go to therapy.
Christian Robinson is a junior telecommunication major and writes 'Overshare!' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
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