I don’t want to dwell on my own humble role in driving the national narrative that the Peloton ad is actually a searing drama about a domineering man and his traumatized wife.
I just think it’d be nice if each of you individually thanked me for having made this new ad possible.
Confession: I didn’t recognize her at first when this went live last night, without that familiar look of inexplicable anxiety on her face.
Exercise bike not included. #AviationGin pic.twitter.com/jYHW74h81l
— Ryan Reynolds (@VancityReynolds) December 7, 2019
The reason she seems dazed and distant at the start of the ad is because she hears his voice in her head even now: “You know how many calories are in gin, right?”
She remembers what happened the last time he caught her sneaking a cookie between Peloton sessions. Two days locked in the basement.
Needless to say, this is a brilliant bit of creative exploitation of another company’s viral misery. It’s so clever in leveraging what’s essentially a giant Internet in-joke that I want to call it trailblazing, with more mischievous crossovers now destined to happen in the future whenever some terrible ad gets a lot of unwanted attention online. I wonder how much of a role Ryan Reynolds had personally in pulling it together. He didn’t tweet the clip out last night just because he enjoyed it; he owns part of Aviation Gin. If you want to write, cast, film, edit, and finish an ad in the span of 72 hours or so, having an A-lister around to pull strings must be helpful.
No reason to stop here either. A gun company could do an ad with her at the range shooting with a friend:
“Is this the, uh, same gun you used on–”
*bang* “Yep.”
“Cool. Cool.”
Imagine a Peloton wife ad multiverse across 10 different brands tracing her path to freedom. In the final ad she’s on trial for his murder because he reacted … badly to their break-up, of course. She’s nervously sipping a White Claw at the defense table when the jury comes in. Verdict: Not guilty, says the foreman, because “ain’t no laws when you’re drinking Claws.”
Dynamite. I’m willing to write the whole series for a modest fee.
The Aviation ad is titled “The Gift That Doesn’t Give Back,” by the way, a direct reply to the title of the Peloton ad. At the rate she’s drinking in the clip, I feel like this gift actually might give back before the night’s over.